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J.R. Graves
James Robinson Graves (April 10, 1820 – June 26, 1893) was a US Baptist preacher, publisher, evangelist, debater, author, and editor. He was born in Chester, Vermont, the son of Z. C. Graves, and died in Memphis, Tennessee. His remains are interred in Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis.
Engraving illustrating the caning of J.R. Graves by an ex-congressman in front of Scovel's drug store in Nashville for alleged slander.
Though raised in a Congregational background, he joined a Baptist church at age 15. Contemporary fellow ministers in the Southern Baptist Convention praised his preaching abilities. Thomas Treadwell Eaton wrote, "We have seen him hold a congregation packed uncomfortably, for three hours and a half without any sign of weariness on their part. This was not done once or twice, but scores of times." Denominational leader J. B. Gambrell described one of Graves' sermons at a small church in Mississippi as "The Greatest Sermon I Ever Heard." Scholars have recognized Graves as an early and chief promulgator of the Landmark movement.[1][2] The subject's Nashville publishing house, Graves, Marks, & Co, which later became South-Western Publishing, published all of fellow 'Landmarker' Amos Cooper Dayton's books. Both were expelled as 'schismatics' between 1858 and 1859 from the Nashville First Baptist Church due to their theological perspectives on their apostolic connection. [3]
^Stookey, Stephen (2008). "Baptists and Landmarkism and the Turn toward Provincialism: 1851". In Williams, Michael Edward and Walter B. Shurden. Turning Points in Baptist History. Mercer University Press. pp. 178–181. ISBN978-0-88146-135-0. Retrieved 2011-10-16.
^Hensley, J. Clarke and Grice, Homer L. "A.C. Dayton". Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists. (1958) v. 1, p. 352.
