NATIVE MINISTERS. 



BY FRANCIS H. LINCOLN. 



The following biographical sketches are of those natives of 

 Hingham who became ministers and were settled in other places. 

 The list is as complete as our records have enabled the writer 

 to make it, and it is hoped no important omissions have been 

 made. There are also sketches of a few who, though not born 

 here, are sufficiently identified with the town to entitle them to no- 

 tice. Ministers who have been settled here are noticed, in con- 

 nection with their parishes, in the chapter on Ecclesiastical 

 History. 



Jedidiah Andrews [II. 12], sou of Thomas Andrews, was born 

 in Hingham, July 7, 1674, and was graduated at Harvard College 

 in 1695. He taught school in Hingham in 1697, and was or- 

 dained in Philadelphia in the autumn of 1701. He appears to 

 have performed a good deal of missionary labor in other places, as 

 his record of baptisms shows that he ministered in Hopewell, 

 Gloucester, Burlington, Amboy, and Staten Island. He was the 

 Recording Clerk of the Presbytery and of the Synod as long as he 

 lived. He conducted most of their correspondence, especially 

 with New England, and was considered to be particularly gifted 

 in bringing to a successful termination any disputes, both in con- 

 gregations and among individuals. He died, after a long ministry, 

 in 1747. Benjamin Franklin speaks of him thus : — 



"Though I seldom attended any public worship, I had still an opinion 

 of its propriety, and of its utility when rightly conducted, and I regularly 

 paid my annual subscription for the support of the only Presbyterian minis- 

 ter or meeting we had in Philadelphia. He used to visit me sometimes as a 

 friend, and admonish me to attend his administrations ; and I was now and 

 then prevailed on to do so, — once for five Sundays successively. Had he been 

 in my opinion a good preacher, perhaps I might have continued, notwith- 

 standing the occasion I had for the Sunday's leisure in my course of study ; 

 but his discourses were chiefly either polemic arguments or explications of 

 the peculiar doctrines of our sect, and were all to me very dry, uninterest- 

 ing, and unedifying ; since not a single moral principle was inculcated or 

 enforced, — their aim seeming to be rather to make us Presbyterians than 



