Deacon Byron Greenough, 1798-1871

by Douglas Cruger, Immanuel Baptist Church 2010

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 (now the Children's Museum of Maine). 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 in 1872 to buy, build, and improve Baptist meeting-houses. Over the last century and a quarter, thousands of dollars have been granted to dozens of churches, all emanating from Byron Greenough's initial $10,000 bequest to the Baptists of Maine.