(Receive our blog posts in your email by clicking here. If the author links in this post are broken, please visit our Free PDF Library and click on the author’s page directly.)
Do you know what a “colporteur” is? It is a someone who “peddles” or hands out books, newspapers, tracts, etc. - especially, in 19th century America, religious tracts, books and Bibles. Jonathan Cross (1802-1876) was one such colporteur, who worked for the American Tract Society for over two decades. He wrote about some of his experiences in western Virginia as “the pioneer colporteur in the Alleghany mountains” in Five Years in the Alleghanies (1863).
There are autobiographical details in most of his published writings, but we turn to the History of the Presbyterian of Washington (1889) for a brief biographical sketch of this interesting pioneer, who late in life, after having served as a ruling elder for many years, became a Presbyterian minister. Rev. Jonathan Cross
Was, for about six years, a member of our Presbytery. He was born in the year 1802, in Beaver County, Pa. At the age of twenty years he became a Christian, and afterwards was made a ruling elder. His burning zeal led him to enter the service of the American Tract Society, in which capacity he labored for many years, chiefly in West Virginia, in the double work of distributing evangelical literature and of winning souls by personal appeal and prayer. It was his great success in this line of service that led him to his entrance into the ministry late in life. In 1866, at the solicitation of that godly man, Samuel Ott, Esq., he came to his only pastoral charge, the Third [Presbyterian] Church of Wheeling [West Virginia], when that church was at the point of disbanding; but great success and increase marked his work until 1872, when ill health compelled him to retire. He died at Newark, Ohio, December 18, 1876, aged about seventy-four years. In many place he is remembered as an earnest evangelist.
Elsewhere in this volume we learn that Cross was ordained as a ruling elder on September 2, 1832; and he was installed as a pastor on December 16, 1866; until his pastoral charge was dissolved on February 4, 1873.
Cross is known to students of the Westminster Shorter Catechism for his 2-volume Illustrations of the Shorter Catechism, for Children and Youth (1864). In the preface to this work, we are told that Cross had memorized the Shorter Catechism by the age of six. But his heart was not changed by God’s Holy Spirit until he became a young man, and then he became zealous to share the gospel of God’s grace with others, and the Catechism was for him a valuable tool as a Sabbath School teacher. He was experienced in the expositions of the Catechism by John Brown of Haddington, John Willison and that which goes by the name of “Fisher’s Catechism.” But he felt the need for another tool to help teach children the truths of the Bible - thus, his Illustrations of the Shorter Catechism was born.
As a colporteur for the American Tract Society (Superintendent of Colportage for Virginia and North Carolina), Cross reported the following summary of his work in 1866:
In other parts of Western Virginia, after a great deal of labor you may find a few persons who can read; then they are furnished with books, and a Sunday-school is started by them, which becomes the means of the formation of a church. That is the work of the colporteurs. They go there and plant a little seed, and by the blessing of God it increases and prospers.
I could tell you many instances of such things. We generally found the people very ignorant, and in huts and cabins which the foot of a religious man had never entered. Here we scattered the seed; and the publications of this Society were placed in their hands.
In North Carolina, under my own supervision, one hundred thousand children were gathered into Sunday-schools; and I know of no other agency which is so well calculated to meet the wants of our destitute population as the Tract Society.
Cross and other colporteurs did much to promote education in the backcountry, as he tells us in an 1851 colportage report to the American Tract Society.
In many instances families were found, numbering from five to twelve persons, who did not know a letter of the alphabet; they wanted no books, of course. The colporteur would open some book, read a passage, and exhibit some of the pictures. The eyes of the children would sparkle; ‘Mother, get me that book — I want to learn to read it.” What mother can resist such an appeal? The book is bought, or received as a gift. In a little time the child is in school. Such an occurrence as the above has been very common in the experience of our colporteurs.
The labors of Cross and other colporteurs in 19th century America did much to bring the word of God, and many edifying religious books and tracts, to people who would not otherwise have received them. Is there a place for colporteurs in 21st century America? We do not wish to see Jehovah’s Witness tracts spread abroad, but the online work of Log College Press is perhaps akin to what pioneer colporteurs did two centuries ago in that we make accessible to many, through the internet, godly literature which might otherwise lay obscure and unconsulted in libraries. For this opportunity, we are grateful to the American Tract Society, its colporteurs, the Presbyterian Board of Publication, the Presbyterian Historical Society, librarians, and the staff of Internet Archive, Google Books and many other institutions, including the PCA Historical Center, and others, for their labors in making possible what we at Log College Press do. And so, in remembering the work of Jonathan Cross, we also aim to carry it forward.
