Who Was David Brainerd? Missionary to Native Americans, 1718–1747

Missions Biography Revival

David Brainerd was a young American missionary who preached to Native Americans in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey in the 1740s. He was born in Connecticut in 1718, was expelled from Yale College, and spent about four years in the wilderness preaching, praying and living in huts he built himself. In 1745 a revival broke out among the Delaware Indians at Crossweeksung, New Jersey. He died of tuberculosis in 1747, at twenty-nine, in the Northampton home of Jonathan Edwards.

He's remembered mostly because of his diary. Edwards edited it into a book after Brainerd's death, and generations of missionaries and pastors have read it. You can read that book free in TheWay Library: The Life of Rev. David Brainerd, Chiefly Extracted from His Diary.

Childhood and conversion in Connecticut

The book opens plainly: "David Brainerd was born April 20, 1718, at Haddam, Connecticut." He was the third son in a family of nine children. His father died while he was a boy, and his mother died when he was about fourteen. One of his younger brothers, John, would later take over his mission.

Brainerd was serious and religious from youth. He read the Bible, prayed in secret, and met with other young people on Sunday evenings. But looking back, he said all of it rested on his own efforts. For months he struggled under a sense of sin and tried to make himself acceptable to God. In his own account, in chapter 1, he describes the morning he saw it was hopeless:

I at once saw that all my contrivances and projects to effect or procure deliverance and salvation for myself were utterly in vain; I was brought quite to a stand, as finding myself totally lost.
The Life of Rev. David Brainerd, Chapter I

A few days later, on a Sunday evening in July 1739, he was walking in a grove trying to pray when, as he put it, "unspeakable glory seemed to open to the view and apprehension of my soul." He was careful to say he saw no outward light. What changed was his view of God, and of salvation "entirely by the righteousness of Christ." He dated his conversion from that evening.

Yale and the expulsion

That September he entered Yale College in New Haven. Two years later a revival swept the college as part of the Great Awakening. Brainerd joined a group of earnest students who met to talk about spiritual things.

One day, after a tutor had prayed with the students, a friend asked Brainerd what he thought of the man. Brainerd answered privately, "He has no more grace than this chair." A freshman overheard it and the remark reached the college's rector. Brainerd was told to confess publicly before the whole college. He refused, since he'd said it in private. He had also attended a separatist meeting he'd been forbidden to attend. For these things he was expelled in the winter of 1742, during his third year.

He never stopped thinking he'd been treated unfairly, but he didn't stay bitter. In 1743 he gave the college a written apology for his words, which Edwards prints in chapter 5. Edwards, who was at New Haven then and met him for the first time, said he saw in him "a great degree of calmness and humility." The college still did not grant him his degree. On the day his class graduated, he wrote:

This day I ought to have taken my degree; but God sees fit to deny it me.
The Life of Rev. David Brainerd, Chapter V

Called to the Native Americans

After the expulsion he studied for the ministry with pastors in Connecticut, and in July 1742 he was licensed to preach. That fall he was examined in New York by the men who managed the missions of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge, and they appointed him a missionary to the Indians.

Kaunaumeek, New York (1743–1744). His first post was a small settlement in the woods between Stockbridge and Albany. He slept on straw, ate boiled corn and hasty pudding, studied the language, started a school with his interpreter as teacher, and built a hut with his own hands. He wrote that he had "but one single person to converse with that can speak English."

The Forks of the Delaware, Pennsylvania (1744–1745). When the Kaunaumeek Indians moved to Stockbridge, he was sent to the Delaware Indians along the Delaware River. He was ordained at Newark, New Jersey, in June 1744. He also made hard trips on horseback over the mountains to Indian towns on the Susquehanna River. The work was slow. He met open opposition and idolatrous feasts, and his health was failing.

Crossweeksung, New Jersey (1745–1746). In June 1745 he visited a scattered group of Delaware Indians at Crossweeksung, near present-day Crosswicks. At first there were only a few listeners. Within weeks there were dozens, and in August 1745 a revival broke out.

The revival at Crossweeksung

Brainerd kept a public journal of the work for the Society in Scotland, and it's included in the book as chapters 7 and 8. His entry for August 8, 1745 describes the day the revival broke out:

The power of God seemed to descend upon the assembly ‘like a mighty rushing wind,’ and with an astonishing energy bore down all before it.
The Life of Rev. David Brainerd, Chapter VII

Old men and women, children, and a man who had been a conjurer and a drunkard cried for mercy. The first converts, he notes, were his own interpreter and his wife. Lives changed. Drinking was given up, families attended worship, and the children learned the catechism. In March 1746 Brainerd counted about a hundred and thirty people gathered there, when there had been fewer than ten at his first coming. In April he served the Lord's Supper to twenty-three Indian believers. He moved the congregation to land at Cranbury (spelled "Cranberry" in the book) so they could farm and live together.

His last year and death

Brainerd had been coughing blood since his college years. In the summer of 1746 he rode to the Susquehanna one more time with six Christian Indians, and came back worn out. He spent the winter sick in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, and visited his people for the last time in March 1747. His brother John came to take over the congregation.

He rode north hoping the travel would help. At Northampton, Massachusetts, a doctor told him he had confirmed consumption. He nearly died in Boston that summer, recovered enough to return to Northampton, and spent his last weeks in the home of Jonathan Edwards. Edwards' daughter Jerusha nursed him. He kept writing letters for the Indian mission and correcting his papers almost to the end. He died on October 9, 1747. Jerusha died a few months later.

Shortly before his death he said:

I am almost in eternity; I long to be there. My work is done.
The Life of Rev. David Brainerd, Chapter IX

Why people still read about him

Brainerd didn't want his diary published. He gave in only when friends persuaded him to leave his papers with Edwards, to use "for God's glory." Edwards published the account in 1749, and it became one of the most widely read Christian biographies in English. Missionaries such as William Carey and Henry Martyn are among the many who said it moved them.

Readers find two things in it. One is honesty: Brainerd wrote openly about depression, doubts and his own pride. The other is prayer. He spent whole days alone in the woods praying and fasting, and the results at Crossweeksung came after years of that. E. M. Bounds points to him as a leading example in Power Through Prayer; see Men Are God's Method.

David Brainerd's diary quotes, with dates and chapters
David Brainerd's prayer life, in his own words
The Life of David Brainerd: a summary, chapter by chapter
More in Missions and Biography

The best way to know him is to read his own words. Start with the book's page or open chapter 1 in the reader.