author
Abraham Cummings
1755–1827
An early American clergyman and religious writer, he is best remembered for a striking 1826 work on apparitions and the afterlife that grew out of events witnessed in Sullivan, Maine. His surviving books also show a minister deeply engaged with baptism, prophecy, and the urgent moral questions of his day.
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About the author
Born in 1755 and dying in 1827, Abraham Cummings was an American minister and author whose published work places him in New England, especially in Maine. Sources connected with later editions of his writing describe him as the Rev. Abraham Cummings and identify him as a graduate of Harvard University.
His books reveal the range of his interests. The Nature and Subjects of Christian Baptism Considered was delivered at the Baptist Society in North Yarmouth, while The Present Times Perilous was a sermon preached at Sullivan on April 25, 1799. Another work, A Dissertation on the Introduction and Glory of the Millennium, shows his interest in biblical prophecy and religious interpretation.
Today he is most often associated with Immortality Proved by the Testimony of Sense, a work published in 1826 and later reprinted in 1859. In it, he argued for the reality of the soul’s continued existence by recounting extraordinary phenomena said to have been witnessed by many people in Sullivan, Maine. No suitable verified portrait was found from the sources reviewed, so a profile image is not included.