Author: Casson, Henry
Biography:
CASSON, Henry (1718?-88: ancestry.com)
He was born in Maryland US, probably in 1718 although no official record has been found of his birth or baptism. The names of his parents are unknown. He was probably a farmer or planter. On 18 Oct. 1739 he married Esther Baynard, from a planter’s family, in Talbot County. They later settled in Caroline County and had at least six children, some of whom died young; he died there on 29 Jan. 1788. Almost nothing is known of him beyond the internal evidence of his writings. He was a self-proclaimed prophet for many years. In a posthumous work, A Gospel Alarm to Christendom (1794), he claimed to have prophesied the “grievous struggle” of the coming Revolution in 1754, besides unspecified other “verified predictions.” In the same introductory essay he describes himself as “a very old man” with an “unlearned pen,” “a mournful pilgrim” vilified and at odds with the religious establishment but still answering only to God, “my sacred Employer.” It is not clear how the Philadelphia publisher of two posthumous tracts by Casson—deceased, “late of Maryland”—came by them. In the second, A Dissertation on Saving Faith (1795), Casson mentions that it was the first of 25 pamphlets that he intended to publish to counteract the “false guides” of the “spiritual Babylon” of his time. (ancestry.com 6 Nov. 2023; findmypast.com 6 Nov. 2023) HJ