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A graduate of the College of New Jersey in 1751. Pastor of Kensington Congregational Church, succeeding The Reverend Mr. Burnham, he was installed on July 14, 1756. At the time the church had been without a pastor for more than six years. When the church was divided he chose to stay in the Kensington parish [rather than the Worthington or Berlin parish] and remained there until his death at age 49. Hale cemetery records give his date of death as 1778, W.W. Woodruff gives it as 1775, probably the accurate date.
At the time he assumed his duties as minister the church records were in his words "imperfect and broken." He proceeded to make a list of "Such as were members when I came." He dedicated the present Kensington Congregational Church building in 1774. He was a graduate of Princeton, built his home at 67 Burnham Road, Kensington, using bricks and hardware brought from England Catalog card notes that "he married a wealthy English woman" and North records that he was from "Elizabeth town." The house was elaborate and notes from a paper by Mary Upson Pratt in the Wilcox scrapbook says that it outranked in size and cost most country houses of the colonial period. It is still (in Oct. 2000) standing and occupied. Woodworth's history records that his tombstone has the epitaph: "in the gifts of preaching he was excellent, laborious and pathetic."
Catalog card also notes that he was in trade with Jonathan Hart and died insolvent due to reverses in England.
Berlin records: p. 1, 12, 105
North. History of Berlin, p. 104
Beers, p. 548
Meyers. Other times, other voices, p. 27-28
Connecticut Magazine: 1900, p. 403, 409
Trumbull. Memorial history of Hartford County: Vol. 2. Chapter 2: Berlin [by W.W. Woodworth] |
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