The Cluster of Spiritual Songs, Divine Hymns, and Sacred Poems was first published around 1800 – though the oldest known existing copy was published in 1810. The compiler, Jesse Mercer (1769-1841), was the son of noted Separate Baptist minister Silas Mercer and Dorcas Green. Jesse Mercer was born December 16, 1769, in Halifax County, North Carolina. The Mercer family moved to Georgia in 1774, where Silas would later constitute several pioneer churches after his conversion to Baptist principles. In 1786 Jesse married Sabrina Chivers. He was converted and baptized in 1787, was ordained to the ministry in 1789 – all at the Phillips Mill Church organized by his father. After Sabrina’s death in 1826, he married the widow Nancy Mills Simmons in 1827. Jesse Mercer died September 06, 1841, and is buried at the Penfield Cemetery in Greene County, Georgia.Jesse Mercer made his mark in the Baptist ministry. He also made enduring contributions to the welfare of his state as a delegate to the 1798 Georgia state constitutional convention. He became a leader in the Georgia Baptist Association, the state’s first Baptist association. He helped organize the Georgia Baptist Convention in 1822 and served as its president from that time until his death in 1841. Mercer purchased The Christian Index, a Washington, D.C.-based newspaper, in 1833. It still survives today as “the nation’s oldest continuously published religious newspaper.” He made gifts to the first two missionaries sent by the American Baptist Home Missionary Society to Texas – James Huckins and William M. Tryon. Mercer may be best remembered in modern times as the namesake of the Georgia Baptist Mercer University.
Online, see Jesse Mercer, The Cluster of Spiritual Songs, Divine Hymns and Sacred Poems; Being Chiefly a Collection. Third Edition, Revised, Philadelphia, PA: William W. Woodward, 1823, pp. 155-156; via R. L. Vaughn, baptistsearch.blogspot.com - Scanneed and formatted by Jim Duvall.
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