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Subject: Rev Dunham vs Mr Bonham, how the Piscataway church split
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 04:11:32 +0000

In the past few days I've read a several versions of how the division in the Piscatway Baptist Church came to be. They are all basically the same. Here are two.

"Morgan Edwards Materials Toward a History of American Baptists," Philadelphia, 1770, an original copy held by the Library Company of Philadelphia, Locust St, Philadelphia.

"About the year 1700 a separation from this church took place: the occasion was as follows: 'one Hezekiah Bonham was doing some servile work on Sunday: Mr Edmund Dunham admonished him: Bonham put Dunham to prove that the first day of the week was holy by _divine_ institition. How the debate was carried on was not known: but it was known that the above attack was the thing which set Mr Dunham to study the subject: and that embracing the seventh day of the week was the effect. In a short time after Mr Dunham went to Westerly (in 1705) and there received ordination at the hands of Rev William Gibbons: and in 1707 he and his party were formed into a church.'"

Other sources say 16 or 17 families went with Rev Edmund Dunham to form the Seventh Day Baptist Church in Piscataway. .

Another, more detailed, version from:

http://members.aol.com/ggilb10335/Dunham.html

Edmund Dunham was active in the organization of the First Baptist Church of Piscataway 1686 to 1689.
It is a matter of accepted tradition that in the spring of 1689, Edmund Dunham with his brother-in-law, John Fitz Randolph and Hezekiah Bonham, and the latter's father-in-law, Hugh Dunn, together with John Smalley and John Drake, and by the help of the Rev. Thomas Killingsworth, of South Jersey, an ordained baptist clergyman from Norwich, England, finally completed the organization.
Edmund Dunham was chosen Deacon of the Church at its formal constitution. He was a lay preacher and took his part in sustaining devotional services among pioneer families in their own homes.
He changed from a first day Baptist to a seventh day Baptist by reason of an argument with his brother-in-law, Hezekiah Bonham, who demanded scriptural proof of the day on which we should worship, which set Edmund Dunham to examining the point.
A short time after, or about 1700-1701, seventeen persons separated with him from the mother church ( The First Baptist) and formed a separate congregation, observing the seventh day as the Sabbath.
Besides the leader they included:
(x) Edmund Dunham and wife (x)
Benejah, his son and wife, Dorothy Martin.
(x) Benjamin Martin (1st Deacon) and his wife, Margarte Alston.
(x) Jonathan Martin (son of 1st Deacon) and his wife Elizbeth Dunham, daughter of the pastor
John Fitz Randolph and wife, Sarah Bonham, sister of the pastor's wife.
Thomas Fitz Randolph ( brother of John and his wife Elizabeth Manning (Mother of Mrs. Edmund Dunham, Jr.)
(x) Hugh Dunn 2nd, and his wife, Elizabeth Martin, the daughter of John Martin Jr. and Dorothy Smilth.
Samuel Dunn (2nd Deacon, 1724) and wife Esther Martin, whose children subsequently united with the church.
Joseph Dunn, unmarried, brother of Samuel and Hugh.
Gershom Hull, a young man not married until the following year. He was a cousin of Mrs. Edmund Dunham, Jr.


There were more Hezekiah Bonhams than Jacob Piatts. A good book to help sort them out is "Bonham and Related Family Lines," Howard E Bonham, 1996, 646pp.

How does this all relate to Pyatt? Rev Edmund Dunham was a contemporary of Rene Piatt. Dunham's son Rev Jonathan married Rene's daughter Jane Pyatt.

--
Laverne Ingram Piatt
Ontario, OH

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