Background

Ezra Stiles Gannett was born on May 4, 1801, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was the son of Rev. Caleb Gannett, for nearly forty years steward of Harvard College, and his second wife, Ruth Stiles, daughter of President Ezra Stiles of Yale College.

His father was a slow, dignified, exact, trustworthy person with a taste for mathematics, and his mother a refined, sensitive, deeply religious woman who had read the Bible through twenty-two times.

Education

Ezra grew up a sober-minded, conscientious boy with scholarly proclivities. He prepared for college at Phillips Academy, Andover, and at the age of fifteen entered Harvard, graduating with first honors in 1820.

After a period of hesitation during which he contemplated taking up the study of law and taught in a private grammar school at Cambridgeport, he decided to become a Unitarian minister and enrolled in the Harvard Divinity School. He finished the course there in 1823.

Career

On May 27, 1824, Ezra accepted an invitation to become assistant to Dr. William Ellery Channing at the Federal Street Church, Boston, where he was ordained, June 30, 1824. With this church, which later moved to a new edifice on Arlington Street, he was associated as an assistant and, after Channing’s death, as pastor during the remainder of his life.

The year after his ordination, he was active in organizing the American Unitarian Association for which he is said to have written the constitution, and of which he was the first secretary, serving for six years.

Later (1847 - 51), he was the president of Benevolent Fraternity of Churches. As secretary, he directed its early work, and from 1857 to 1862, was its president. He assisted Henry Ware, Jr. in the editorship of the Christian Register, and in 1831, started the Scriptural Interpreter which he conducted until 1835.

Broken in health, he went to Europe in 1836, returning in 1838. In 1840, he suffered a paralytic stroke which deprived him of the use of his right leg, but he was soon active again, and the click of his short crutch-canes became a familiar sound on the Boston streets.

From 1839 to 1843, he edited the Monthly Miscellany of Religion and Letters, and from 1844 to 1849, he was co-editor of the Christian Examiner. To the latter, he contributed some notable articles on Theodore Parker and Transcendentalism.

Death came to him in a railroad wreck on the evening of August 26, 1871, while he was on his way from Boston to Lynn to fill a preaching engagement.

Achievements

• In 1834, Ezra Stiles Gannett was instrumental in the formation of the Benevolent Fraternity of Churches for the Support of the Ministry-at-large, which became the principal Unitarian missionary society of Boston. For more than forty years, he not only ministered faithfully to the needs of his parish but was conspicuous as well among the New England proponents of liberal religion. He is said to have written the constitution for the American Unitarian Association, of which he was the first secretary.

Works

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  • Ezra Stiles Gannett, Unitarian minister in Boston, 1824-1871, a memoir

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • A Letter to Rev. Ezra S. Gannett of Boston, Occasioned by His Tract On Atonement

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • A Discourse on the Life and Character of Rev. Ezra Stiles Gannett, D.D.: Delivered in the Meeting-House of the First Parish in Hingham, on Sunday, September 3, 1871

    ( About the Book Biographical books, or bios, are detaile...)

  • The useful man. A sermon delivered at the funeral of Hon. Charles Paine, at Northfield, Vt., Sept. 1

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • The Monthly Miscellany Volume 2

    (This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for ki...)

  • Unitarian Christianity, etc. (Printed from the American edition.)

    (This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for ki...)

  • The Monthly Miscellany Volume 1 - Volume 2, Issue 2

    (This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for ki...)

  • The Monthly Miscellany Volume 3

    (This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for ki...)

  • The Religion of Politics A Sermon Delivered Before His Excellency John Davis, Governor, His Honor George Hull, Lieutenant Governor, The Honorable Council, ... At The Annual Election, January 5, 1842.

Religion

For more than forty years, Gannett not only ministered faithfully to the needs of his parish but was conspicuous as well among the New England proponents of liberal religion.

A conservative Unitarian, with a tenacious belief in the miraculous mission and superhuman authority of Christ, he vigorously opposed the Transcendental movement, his lectures expounding “old-fashioned Unitarianism” drawing large audiences.

Views

Ezra was an advocate of temperance, education, and peace was opposed to slavery but was wholly unsympathetic toward the Abolitionists. To the activities of the Civil War he gave little support, but on the bronze bas-reliefs of the Soldiers’ Monument, Boston Common, his face appears in the Sanitary Commission group.

Personality

Ezra lived a life of unselfish, enthusiastic activity, although a sense of duty beyond his power to perform inclined him to habitual somberness and self-reproach.

Gifted with reasoning faculties of a high order, the ability to express ideas in clear and cogent language, an eloquence which sprang from intensity of feeling, and no little executive talent, he exerted a strong influence as preacher, lecturer, editor, and administrator.

Connections

On October 6, 1835, Ezra married Anna Linzee Tilden of Boston, who died on Christmas Day 1846.

Father:

Caleb Gannett

22 August 1745 - 25 April 1818

Mother:

Ruth Stiles Gannett

20 August 1765 - 11 June 1808

Wife:

Anna Linzee Tilden Gannett

13 July 1811 - 25 December 1846

Daughter:

Catherine Boott Gannett Wells

6 April 1838 - 13 December 1911

Son:

Henry Tilden Gannett

18 January 1841 - 26 January 1852

Son:

William Channing Gannett

13 March 1840 - 15 December 1923

great-grandson :

Ruth Stiles Gannett Kahn

Born on August 12, 1923.

References

• Ezra Stiles Gannett, Unitarian Minister in Boston, 1824-1871: A Memoir