Stpne Gardens: Princeton-trained missionary interred in one of Cherokee County's most historic cemeteries

In the dirt-rich farmland of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in the small settlement of Churchtown, a boy named Alexander Hamilton Balentine was born in January 1817. His father, recorded in later family accounts as James Ballentine and of Irish stock with Scots-Irish roots, and his mother both died before the child reached the age of six.

Left without means, he and his siblings, Samuel, Sarah Ellen, William, and at least one other brother, were placed with local families.

Young Hamilton spent his earliest years in the household and service of a farmer in Montgomery County, where neighbors noted his quickness, intelligence, industry, and fidelity

. After about two years he moved into the care of William Hamill. There the same traits deepened, joined by a growing fondness for reading and study. While in that household he experienced a hopeful conversion that drew the attention of friends who saw promise in him and helped open the way for formal education.

He attended ordinary country schools for a time, then entered the Lawrenceville High School in New Jersey under the care of the Reverend Samuel H. Hamill.

At Lawrenceville he studied industriously until prepared for college, served for a period as an instructor, and joined the Lawrenceville Presbyterian Church. In November 1843 he was admitted as a junior to the College of New Jersey at Princeton.

He graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1845. That same year he entered Princeton Theological Seminary, where he completed the full three-year course distinguished by diligence, regularity, and piety, graduating in 1848.

On February 2 of that year the Presbytery of New Brunswick licensed him to preach.

On May 29 the same body ordained him as an evangelist. Having already devoted his life to foreign missionary service, and answering an urgent call for workers among the Indian missions, he set out at once for the Indian Territory.

In July 1848 he reached Kowetah, a station among the Creek people, and began teaching and preaching with an ardor that never abated. He served there until 1850, also teaching at nearby Tallahassee Mission. The Board of Foreign Missions then appointed him to Spencer Academy among the Choctaws, where he instructed from 1850 to 1852.

In 1852 the board opened a boarding school for girls at Wapanucka among the Chickasaws. Balentine became its first superintendent, opening the institution on October 1 with forty pupils who soon numbered one hundred. He remained until the autumn of 1855, when family illness took him briefly to Philadelphia for medical advice. He next took charge of the female boarding school at Good Water among the Choctaws, serving from 1855 to 1858.

A short period at Fort Gibson followed. In 1859 he returned to Wapanucka as evangelist and school head, continuing until the Civil War disrupted communications and support from the board.

Even without regular aid he kept teaching and preaching among the people. From 1863 to 1868 he worked at Boggy Depot, opening a school there. After the war he answered a request from fellow missionaries and moved with his family back into the Cherokee Nation, arriving at Park Hill in August 1868 to open a school. In November 1869 they settled at Pheasant Hill, deeper in the nation.

From that base he conducted services and taught at Cabin Creek school and at outstations that included Paw Paw (later Timpton), Vinita, Pleasant Valley, and Landrum’s schoolhouse. He helped organize the Pheasant Hill church and became its first minister. In the autumn of 1875 the Cherokee Council appointed him superintendent, steward, and principal teacher of the Cherokee Female Seminary near Tahlequah.

He had held the post only a short time when illness overtook him.

On June 14, 1849, at Tahlequah, he married Nancy Ann (Anna) Hoyt, daughter of the missionary physician Dr. Milo Hoyt and granddaughter of the Cherokee leader Major George Lowrey, long assistant principal chief under John Ross.

Anna herself had been the first teacher in the Tahlequah school in 1845. Together they raised a family that shared the itinerant life of the missions

. Their children included Alexander Hamilton Balentine Jr., born in 1850, who later suffered severe loss of sight; William Henry Balentine Sr., born in 1854, who would himself become a teacher and public figure among the Cherokees; Joseph Addison Alexander Balentine, born in 1857 and dying in 1875 at eighteen; and at least one daughter, Ellen Anna, who died in infancy.

Another son, Jonathan Hamilton, appears in later records. The household moved with the work, enduring wartime isolation, scarce resources, and the constant demands of teaching, preaching, and domestic management at successive stations.

Surviving portraits of Rev. Hamilton Balentine, including the one published in The Sunday Oklahoman, reveal a marked physical likeness to Abraham Lincoln. Both men shared a high forehead, deep-set eyes framed by strong brows, a prominent nose, and the full dark beard and mustache common among mid-nineteenth-century public figures.

Balentine’s angular cheekbones and solemn, contemplative expression further echo the familiar Lincoln countenance, an impression heightened by the formal black coat, high collar, and white necktie of the era. The resemblance was close enough that viewers of the photograph often remarked upon it at once, the missionary’s features carrying the same lean intensity and quiet gravity that marked the president’s face in the years of the Civil War.

In early 1876 his health failed under the weight of long labors. Pneumonia seized him, and he died on February 21 (or 22 by some accounts) at Vinita in the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory, in his sixtieth year. His last hours were marked by peace and strong faith.

He was buried in the Worcester Cemetery at Park Hill, in the old fenced plot near the grave of the missionary Samuel Austin Worcester.

The inscription placed on his stone records twenty-eight years of service among the Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Cherokees, and closes with the words from the prophet Daniel:

“They that shall be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.”

His widow continued teaching music at the Female Seminary for a time and lived until 1890.

The traceable line of the family runs from the orphaned Pennsylvania boy through the missions of the Indian Territory and into the educational and civic life of the Cherokees in the decades that followed.