- Call Number:
- HIL-MICL FC LFR .P5S3P3
- Category:
- Family
- Creator:
- Peters, Samuel, Rev., 1735-1826
- Material Description:
- 3 microfilm textual records (8 volumes) ; 35 mm.
- Background:
Reverend Samuel Andrew Peters was a Connecticut Anglican clergyman and historian. He was born in Hebron, Connecticut and graduated from Yale College in 1757, the same year he was elected rector of St. Peter's Church in Hebron. Returning from England in 1760 after becoming an Anglican Priest, he took charge of this church and settled down with his wife, Hannah Owen (1740-1765). He would marry twice more, to Abigail Gilbert (1751-1769) and Mary Birdseye (1750- ).
Due to his loyalist sympathies, he was forced to flee to England in August 1774. While in London during the American Revolution, he served the scattered and impoverished Anglican loyalist clergy of North America as a spiritual father and business manager. He gathered and relayed the behind-the-scenes politics, scandals and jockeying for personal advantage within the State Church. In 1781 he published, under a pseudonym, "General History of Connecticut...." He returned to America in 1805 and died in New York City.
- Contents:
The papers contain the correspondence and other types of documents of the Reverend Samuel Peters, detailing his experience as an Anglican minister in Connecticut as tensions were rising between America and Britain, his flight to England due to his loyalist sympathies, his time in England during the American Revolution and for some years thereafter in which he communicated often with other loyalists across the Atlantic, providing guidance and support, and of course sharing news and situations. The other documents include as examples, memorials to British officials of his plight after the war and sermons. Subject matter includes religion - Anglican Church history and developing church in Connecticut, ecclesiastical and secular Nova Scotia, loyalist migrations into New Brunswick, and difficulties surrounding the church in Vermont in the early 19th century.
Loyalists among those as communicants include, among others, Ebenezer Dibblee of Stamford, Connecticut, and New Brunswick thereafter; William (member of the Queen's Rangers 1st American Regiment under General Simcoe) and Hannah Jarvis (daughter of Peters); and Simon Baxter of Hebron, Connecticut and New Brunswick thereafter, as well as fellow ministers, including these after the war - the Reverend Ranna Cossit at Sydney, Nova Scotia; Reverend Richard Clarke at Gagetown, New Brunswick; and the Reverend William Clark at Digby, Nova Scotia.
- Originals:
Originals are held at the New York Historical Society Library.
- Finding Aids:
The Papers of Loyalist Samuel Peters...by Kenneth Walter Cameron contains abstracts of each of the documents in this collection, with an index at the end. Also includes an Appendix with summaries of documents from other collections.
- Notes:
Material is also known at the New York Historical Society Library as the Rev. Samuel Peters Papers.