James A. Ranaldson

James A. Ranaldson (1789 – 17 June 1849) was a Baptist missionary who was active in the Mississippi Baptist Association and one of the founders of the Alabama Baptist Convention.[1]

Ranaldson was born in Brunswick County, North Carolina in 1789. He became a Baptist minister around 1812. Moving to New Orleans, Louisiana in 1817, he worked for several months as a missionary in the Indian territories of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Later that year he founded Shiloh Church in Feliciana, Mississippi, and became a teacher to cover his expenses, establishing the Society Hill Academy in 1818.[1] In October 1817 the Mississippi Baptist Association appointed him to a committee to create a plan for an educational fund for pious young men, and to prepare an address to churches on the subject.[2] In October 1818 the report was received and he was made Secretary of the Mississippi Baptist Education Society for three years.[3] He was an active member of the Mississippi Baptist Association until 1829, preaching in different churches and serving at different times as a messenger, clerk and secretary.[2]

Ranaldson founded a Baptist church in St. Francisville, Louisiana in 1823.[1] The same year he assisted in the formation of the Alabama Baptist Convention, arranging for a meeting of Baptist leaders in October 1823 at Greensboro, Alabama. Along with Dempsey Winborne and Hosea Holcome he prepared the plan for a constitution, and his address (after revision by Winborne and Alexander Travis) was printed for distribution to the churches of Alabama.[4] Charles Crow was appointed president of the new Convention, and Ranaldson secretary.[5] Ranaldson moved to Jackson, Louisiana around 1831, where he founded a school. After briefly associating with the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement and becoming a farmer, he returned to the Baptist faith and founded a church at Port Hudson, Louisiana, where he died on June 17, 1849.[1]