Jesse Mercer

Mercer, Jesse. (Halifax County, North Carolina, December 16, 1769--September 6, 1841, Washington, Georgia). Baptist. Son of Rev. Silas Mercer. Married Sabrina Chivers. Ordained November 7, 1789. Pastorates at Hutton Fork (now Sardis), Indian Cree, 1793-?; Sardis, 1788-1817; Phillips' Mill, 1796-1835; Whatley's Mill (now Bethesda), 1796-1827; Eatonton, 1820-1826; and Washington, 1827-1841, all in Georgia. Editor of The Index of Georgia Baptist Convention.

Author of many articles on theology, Baptist history, and ecclesiology. Compiled The Cluster of Spiritual Songs, Divine Hymns and Sacred Poems, Augusta, Ga., in pamphlet form, and issued three editions before 1817, which contained as hymn no.233, in its later editions, entitled "The Experience of J.M." Wrote second part of Edmund Jones' well known hymn "Come, humble sinner in whose breast," (also in the The Cluster) which second part was intended as a response, as follows: "Resolving thus I entered in . . ." Mercer's Cluster has been used in some Southern Baptist churches at least through 1888.

See: Mallary, Charles Dutton. Memoirs of Elder Jesse Mercer. New York, 1841.

--E. F. Quinn, DNAH Archives