John Byington

Who was John Byington?

John Byington was a Seventh-day Adventist minister and the first president of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. His father, Justus, was a soldier in the American Revolutionary War, an itinerant Methodist Episcopal preacher, and later one of the founders of the Methodist Protestant Church, becoming an early president of its Vermont Conference. At 7 years of age John first came under the conviction of sin, and at 18 was converted. He became active in Methodist laity work, but at 21 years of age his health failed, and for three years he suffered depression. He returned to work dividing his time between farming and preaching.

Byington was active in the antislavery movement and when the leadership of the Methodist Episcopal Church opposed abolitionism, he withdrew from that denomination and joined the new antislavery Wesleyan Methodist Connection. He helped to erect a church and parsonage that are still standing at Morely, New York. He went as a lay delegate to the Wesleyan organizational General Conference meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1844; and later became a Wesleyan minister pastoring the church at Lisbon, New York.