Henry Simmons letterbooks

Henry Simmons (1768-1807) was born on September 15, 1768, to Henry Simmons Sr. and Mary Paxson, the youngest of the five children. Before he was a year old, Simmons's mother died, and his father married Sarah Dun. Simmons's father and step mother went on to have eight more children. Despite Simmons's relative lack of formal education in his youth, he went on to be a school teacher on the Oneida reservation from 1796 to 1797, and at Cornplanter's village from 1798 to 1799.

Henry Simmons belonged to the Middletown Monthly Meeting, where he first expressed his desire to help Native American populations. After Middletown Monthly Meeting found Simmons suitable for missionary work, he was given a certificate from that meeting recommending him for missionary service to the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Indian Committee. Along with Halliday Jackson and Joel Swayne, Simmons was invited by Cornplanter (Gaiänt'wakê, John Abeel) to spend a year with the Seneca Nation during which the group of missionaries set up a school and model farm.

Henry Simmons married Rachel Preston in 1800, and the couple had four children: Deborah (b. 1804), John (b. 1803), Hannah (b. 1806), and Henryetta (b. 1808). Simmons died in Pennsylvania in 1807.