Gadsden was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1785, the son of Phillip Gadsden and his wife, Catherine Edwards. He was a grandson of Christopher Gadsden, the South Carolina Revolutionary leader. As a youth, he attended both the Episcopal Church of his father and his mother"s Congregational Church.
Yale University.
She died in 1826, and Gadsden remarried in 1830 to Jane Dewees, the youngest daughter of William Dewees. Beginning in his junior year, Gadsden attended Yale University, graduating in 1804. Soon thereafter, he became rector of Saint John"s Church in Berkeley County, South Carolina.
In 1814, Gadsden became rector of Saint Philip"s Church in Charleston, the oldest congregation in the diocese.
He received a doctorate of divinity the following year from South Carolina College. In 1840, after the death of Bishop Bowen, a dispute arose in the diocese over who would succeed him.
Gadsden was elected, and was consecrated bishop in Trinity Church in Boston. Gadsden was the 35th bishop in the ECUSA, and was consecrated by Alexander Viets Griswold, George Washington Doane, and Samuel Allen McCoskry.
In 1852, at the diocese convention, he announced that ill health would prevent him from continuing his ministry, and he died shortly thereafter, in June of that year.
