Breckinridge, John (04 July 1797–04 August 1841), Presbyterian clergyman and editor, was born at “Cabell’s Dale,” near Lexington, Kentucky, the son of John Breckinridge, the U.S. attorney general under President Thomas Jefferson, and Mary Hopkins Cabell. He entered the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in 1815 and graduated with distinction in 1819....
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Breckinridge, John (1797-1841), Presbyterian clergyman and editor
T. Erskine Clarke
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Cornish, Samuel Eli (1795-1858), clergyman and newspaper editor
Graham Russell Hodges
Cornish, Samuel Eli (1795–06 November 1858), clergyman and newspaper editor, was born in Sussex County, Delaware, the son of free black parents. Cornish was educated after 1815 in Philadelphia, where he studied for the ministry with John Gloucester, pastor of the First African Presbyterian Church. During Gloucester’s illness, Cornish served as minister to the church for a year. In this brief tenure Cornish learned much about the tenuous finances of black churches, knowledge that would serve him later. Cornish gained a probationary license to preach from the Presbyterian synod in 1819. He then spent six months as missionary to slaves on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where his license gave him greater credibility than most black preachers enjoyed. In 1821 he moved to New York City, where he worked in the blighted ghetto around Bancker Street and organized the first black Presbyterian congregation in New York, the New Demeter Street Presbyterian Church. Ordained in 1822, Cornish preached at New Demeter until 1828, while itinerating among blacks in New York and New Jersey. In 1824 he married Jane Livingston; they had four children....
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Corrothers, James David (1869-1917), journalist, poet, and clergyman
William C. Fischer
Corrothers, James David (02 July 1869–12 February 1917), journalist, poet, and clergyman, was born in Chain Lake Settlement, Cass County, Michigan, a colony first settled by fugitive slaves in the 1840s. His parents were James Richard Carruthers (spelling later changed by Corrothers), a black soldier in the Union army, and Maggie Churchman, of French and Madagascan descent, who died when Corrothers was born. Corrothers was legally adopted by his nonblack paternal grandfather, a pious and respected man of Cherokee and Scotch-Irish origins, who raised young Corrothers in relative poverty. They lived in several roughneck towns along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, where Corrothers attended school and became aware of racial hostility. In his boyhood family members introduced him to a rich vein of African-American folk tales that he would later draw upon for a number of his dialect sketches....
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Lovejoy, Elijah Parish (1802-1837), abolitionist editor and preacher
Merton L. Dillon
Lovejoy, Elijah Parish (09 November 1802–07 November 1837), abolitionist editor and preacher, was born near Albion, Maine, the son of Daniel Lovejoy, a Congregational preacher and farmer, and Elizabeth Pattee. Lovejoy graduated from Waterville (now Colby) College in 1826 and a year later moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he conducted a private school and edited the ...
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Wallace, Henry (1836-1916), cleric and journalist
Richard S. Kirkendall
Wallace, Henry (19 March 1836–22 February 1916), cleric and journalist, was born in West Newton, Pennsylvania, the son of John Wallace and Martha Ross, farmers. Initially choosing the ministry rather than farming as a career, Wallace graduated from Jefferson College in 1859 and Monmouth Theological Seminary in 1863. After taking up his duties in the Presbyterian pulpit, he married Nancy Ann Cantwell in 1863. They had seven children, five of whom lived into their adult years....
