Biographical Statement

John Danforth Nutting was a 1878 graduate of Wheaton College and received an M.A. in 1881. He had a career as a preacher, lecturer, missionary, writer, editor, and publisher. He was born March 8, 1854 in Randolph Center, Vermont, the son of Rufus and Sarah Hubbard Nutting.

After graduating from Wheaton College, Nutting attended Oberlin Theological Seminary and graduated in 1881. Nutting married Nannie Keith Miller (Oberlin, 1883) on June 23, 1885. She died the following year while in childbirth. He later married Lillis R. Morley of Mentor, Ohio (January 1, 1890).

He was ordained in 1885 and later pastored in Wauseon, Ohio (1886-1888), Newport, Kentucky (1888-1890), St. Louis, Missouri (1890-1892) and Plymouth Congregational Church in Salt Lake City, Utah (1892-98). In 1900 he returned to Ohio and organized the Utah Gospel Mission in Cleveland, Ohio, serving as its secretary until his death in Cleveland, Ohio on October 4, 1949. In imitation of Mormon evannglelistic methods, the Utah Gospel Mission sent out young men, two by two, who traveled throughout the regions in the western United States occupied by Mormons, holding evangelistic meetings, visiting from house to house, and distributing literature while living out of covered wagons. Missionaries with the Utah Gospel Mission only received funds sufficient to cover their actual expenses since Mormon missionaries themselves went without a regular salary.

John Nutting died in Cleveland, Ohio in 1914. Following his death, Lillias Nutting assumed leadership of the Utah Gospel Mission until her death in 1961. Despite their decades of effort, the Utah Gospel Mission achieved little evangelistic success among the Mormon populations of Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana.

Citation:

Author: Wheaton College Archives & Special Collections staff

Citation:

Nutting, John Keep. Nutting genealogy: A record of some of the descendants of John Nutting, of Groton, Mass. C. W. Bardeen, 1908. The Book of Clevelanders, A Biographical Dictionary of Living Men of the City of Cleveland, Burrows Book Company, 1914

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