John Deodatus Gregory Pike

John Deodatus Gregory Pike (1784-1854) was born at Edmonton, Middlesex, and studied for the ministry at Wymondley. He pastored the General Baptist church in Derby, 1810-1854, which, at the time of letter 182, had just opened a new chapel in St. Mary’s Gate. When the General Baptist Missionary Society was formed in 1816, Pike became the first secretary, a position he held until his death in 1854. He also edited the General Baptist Repository and Missionary Observer. His best-known publication was Persuasives to Early Piety (c.1820). His son, James Carey Pike (1817-1876), who studied at Stepney College, succeeded him as secretary of the GBMS.  See John Baxter Pike and James Carey Pike, A Memoir and Remains of the Late Rev. John Gregory Pike, Author of “Persuasives to Early Piety” (London: Jarrold and Sons, 1855); Payne, First Generation, 133-140; “The Origin of the General Baptist Missionary Society,” Baptist Quarterly 1 (1922-1923), 270-275 (a transcription of Pike’s account of the origin of the GBMS); G. P. R. Prosser, “The Formation of the General Baptist Missionary Society,” Baptist Quarterly 22 (1967-1968), 23-28.