Portland, Maine
Deacon Byron Greenough, 1798-1871
by Douglas Cruger, Immanuel Baptist Church 2010|
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Twenty-three
year old Byron Greenough settled in Portland in 1821, coming to Maine
from Haverhill, Mass., to open a retail hats, caps, boots and shoes
business. Within a year of arrival he erected a brick flatiron building
at the head of Free Street (later occupied by H.H. Hay, and today by
Starbucks Coffee) and set up business. ln 1858 he moved his thriving
business to Middle Street where, on the Fourth of July 1866, it was
destroyed, along with 1,800 other homes and businesses, including 8
churches, all of the city's banks, every newspaper office, every
lawyers office, and 7 hotels, in what history now knows as the Great
Fire of Portland. Fortunately Byron Greenough was fully insured, and he
rebuilt, bigger and better, within months of the fire. |
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Byron
Greenough |
What makes Byron Greenough's story important to us at lmmanuel,
however, wasn't his business enterprise but his Christian faith. He was
already a Deacon at First Baptist Church in Portland when, in 1835, he
was called upon to lead the effort to establish a “second" Baptist
church, in Portland's west end, to be called Free Street Baptist
Church. Coincidentally, the new church edifice would be a remodeled
theatre building ("purged as with fire" to become a temple) just across
the street from Byron Greenough & Co.
From 1836 until his death in 1871, Deacon Byron Greenough was the
"venerated father of Free Street Baptist Church. Even his place of
business came to be known as "Baptist Head Quarters.' Calvinistic
though he was, and ever attentive to stewardship - his own as well as
others - it was Greenough's constant effort and enterprise which
contributed to the enlargement and expanding mission of the fledgling
“second” Baptist church.
Byron Greenough died in 1871. By his will he remembered his former
pastors Dr. George Bosworth and Dr. Albion K.P. Small, the Aged Women's
Home, Maine General Hospital, Colby University (now Colby College),
and, most of all, the Maine Baptist Missionary Society. From his
generous bequest to Maine Baptists came the Greenough Church Edifice
Association, organized )n 1872 to buy, build, and improve Baptist
meeting-houses. Over the last century and a quarter, thousands upon
thousands of dollars have been granted to dozens and dozens of
churches, all emanating from Byron Greenough's initial $10,000 bequest
to the Baptists of Maine.
Our own Greenough Chapel is dedicated to the memory of Byron Greenough,
and four of our members today serve as Trustees of the Greenough Church
Edifice Association.
updated 26 February 2011
url: www.greenough.org