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Notes for Eben Edwards Beardsley



Rev. Eben Edwards Beardsley, D.D., LL.D., son of Elihu Beardsley, was born at what is now the town of Monroe, Fairfield county, Connecticut, formerly the town of New Stratford, January 8, 1808. His boyhood was spent largely on his father's farm and in the district schools. At the age of sixteen he was sent to the Staples Academy at Weston, where he began his classical studies. While a student he taught a few seasons in the district schools of the vicinity. He went to the Episcopal Academy at Norwalk to prepare for college under Rev. Reuben Sherwood, then rector of St. Paul's Church at Norwalk, when Rev. Allen L. Morgan was head master of the academy. He entered Trinity College in 1828, and took the academic course of four years. He was especially fond of literature, and he took a place of honor at graduation. About the same time he received pay for a magazine story that had been accepted, and this money, he often said, seemed the best to him of any that he ever earned or received. He taught school for one year in Hartford, and for two years was a tutor in Trinity College, pursuing at the same time the study of theology by himself, with what help he could get from the college curriculum. He was ordained deacon by Bishop Brownell, August 11, 1835, and immediately placed in charge of St. Peter's Church at Cheshire, Connecticut. In 1838 he was called to the position of principal of the Academy at Cheshire, and he continued also as rector of the church there. Under his management the school prospered. He was anxious to have a new church built, and offered to give his services without salary, if the undertaking were accomplished within a given time. The church was built. Soon afterward he resigned as rector to give his undivided attention to the school; but in 1844 the parish again had need of him, and he relinquished the academy for the church, and became rector once more. He continued his good work in this field of labor from 1835 to 1848. He then came to New Haven, as the first rector of the Third Parish. St. Thomas's Church. This church was organized by men of modest means, and had a small beginning. At first services were held in the chapel of the First Ecclesiastical Society, beginning April 20, 1848. The increase in numbers came sooner than expected, and preparations were soon made for building a church. A lot was bought on Elm street, and a brick chapel, seating about three hundred, was erected in the summer of 1848. On this site a handsome new church was erected a few years later, and consecrated April 19, 1855. Great difficulties had to be overcome by the rector and his parishioners; but the church continued to grow, and now St. Thomas's is unsurpassed in richness, convenience and beauty by any church in the city. He continued in the same parish until his death in December, 1891, a faithful, gifted and popular pastor and preacher.
Dr. Beardsley was a trustee of Trinity College from 1851 until his death, a period of forty years, and his wisdom and zeal were of great service to this institution. He opposed the removal of the college from the center of the city to the suburbs. He did not approve of the building up of Berkeley Divinity School at Middletown about the person of Bishop Williams. He was trustee of the Diocesan School at Cheshire for a long time, and was always alive to its well being and never absent from its anniversaries; he had doubtless the largest sense of responsibility for the institution of any of the trustees. He received the degree of D.D. from Trinity College in 1854, and it was well earned, though unsought and unexpected. He was in July. 1851, orator at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the college. In 1859 he was elected to the standing committee of the diocese, the bishop's council, and served the remainder of his life in this office. He declined other calls from parishes that sought him as rector, and year by year grew in influence and reputation. All kinds of offices came to him unsought, because of the good judgment and wisdom, the strong and manly character he possessed. The sixth decade of his life was devoted largely to the preparation and publication of historical works. He was throughout life a student of history, and especially fond of local and church history of his native state. He often wrote historical sermons and lectures, and was frequently called upon as orator for historical celebrations. A series of parochial lectures in his own church led to the preparation of the "History of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut," his first large work. The first volume was printed in 1865. the second in 1868. This book was a labor of love. He was careful in research, and thorough in verifying facts, seeking the original records and corresponding with living witnesses to the facts of which he was writing. In later years he took a unique place as adviser and counsellor in the church. He was a constant and productive worker, taking few and brief vacations. He went abroad in 1870, and was welcomed heartily in England and Scotland; his history had made him known across the sea, and he formed many new friendships there. In 1868 he was a member of the general convention of the Protestant Episcopal church, composed of the house of bishops and the house of clerical and lay deputies, four from each diocese. He sat in eight conventions, and presided over the lower house in 1880 and 1883. He always served on the most important committees, and exerted a potent influence in the deliberations of the conventions, though he was not given to frequent speaking. He undertook the writing of a biography of Dr. Samuel Johnson, commonly known as the Father of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, and also the first president of Columbia College. He spent three arduous years in the preparation of this work, which was published in 1873. Dr. Johnson, it may be said, was the first in Connecticut to teach the Copernican theory of astronomy, when Yale College and the Pope at Rome still agreed that the sun went around the earth. Dr. Beardsley's Life of Bishop Seabury was finished in 1880, and in the same year he attended the provincial synod of the Church of England, at Montreal, as representative of the American Episcopal church. He loved his work, his church, and the services of the church, and often attended divine services in other churches. He was rarely disabled by sickness, and enjoyed uniformly good health all his life. The first Sunday of August, 1890, was the first time in forty years, unless out of the country, when he failed to be present on the first Sunday of the month to administer communion. A collection of his historical papers and addresses at various anniversaries was made at the request of his friends, and published under the title of "Addresses and Discourses." In 1884 he was one of a deputation from Connecticut to Scotland and the Scotch Episcopal church to commemorate the consecration of Bishop Seabury, of Connecticut, at Aberdeen, and to renew and strengthen the bond between the two Episcopal churches. He had many friends in Scotland then to welcome him. He was interested in the new diocesan school called St. Margaret's for girls, established in Waterbury in 1875, and in the raising of the diocesan fund for the support of the bishop to one hundred thousand dollars, bringing much relief to the churches and parishes and improving the financial condition of the diocese. Friendship with Philip Marett, to whom New Haven owes in great measure its public library, led to placing Dr. Beardsley in a position of great trust and responsibility in the disposition of his estate at the death of his daughter, Mrs. Gifford. Many worthy institutions were benefitted. Dr. Beardsley was the one man above all others in whom Bishop Williams trusted, and on whom he leaned in later years.
"Dr. Beardsley was a remarkably wise man; shrewd in good sense, able to look at things in a quiet, judicial way, to see the probable course of things and the end from the beginning. It was New England wisdom of a good kind. He had his own way of judging men, and he felt strongly on many questions; but he measured men quite accurately, and made not many mistakes. He knew well the Connecticut parishes, and was in full sympathy with them in their desire to keep in the old paths. He knew how the people in the parishes felt, what traditions were behind them, what feelings and motives and desires appealed to them and were likely to influence them. Of course Dr. Beardsley was a conservative, a man not given to change, distrusting a good many new methods and ideas in the religious world. He trusted to the ministry of the Word and Sacraments, to the preaching of the Gospel, to ordinary parochial ministration, to build up the church."
He died December 21, 1891.

The foregoing is cited from the address of Rt. Rev. Bishop Edwin S. Lines, D.D., on the occasion of the presentation to the New Haven Colony Historical Society of a portrait of Dr. Beardsley, November 19, 1902. Dr. Lines was then president of this society. Dr. Beardsley was its vice-president 1862-73, and its president 1873-84, and to him the society owes much of its importance and possessions.
Dr. Beardsley published: "Historical Address at Cheshire" (1844); "History of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut," of which a second edition was published in 1869 in two volumes; "History of St. Peter's Church at Cheshire" (1837); "Life and Career of Samuel Johnson, D.D." (1874); "Life and Times of William Samuel Johnson" (1876); and other works. He contributed a number of papers that are published in the proceedings of the New Haven Colony Historical Society.

He married, in Cheshire, Jane Margaret Matthews, born at St. Simon's Island, Georgia, March 20, 1824, died August 30, 1851, daughter of Rev. Edmund Matthews, of St. Simon's, Georgia; her father was born at Charleston, South Carolina. Mrs. Beardsley was the only daughter. She had a brother, Dr. Henry W. E. Matthews. Mrs. Matthews and daughter came north to live among friends in the village of Cheshire. The only child of Dr. and Mrs. Beardsley was Elisabeth Margaret, born at Cheshire, March 16, 1844, now living at 30 Elm street, New Haven, and well known in church and society
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