Gideon Hawley was an American Congregational preacher and missionary. He was a member of the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians, and went to establish a mission to the Iroquois Indians in Massachusetts and on the Susquehanna River in New York.
Background
Gideon Hawley was born on November 5, 1727, at Stratfield (Bridgeport), Connecticut, United States. He was a descendant of Joseph Hawley, who emigrated to America in 1629, the son of Gideon and Hannah (Bennett) Hawley. His mother died at his birth; his father three years later.
Education
Little is known of Hawley's youth before he entered Yale, where he graduated in 1749.
Career
Gideon Hawley was licensed to preach by the Fairfield East Association, May 23, 1750. Hawley seems to have been a man with a single purpose in life, to be a missionary to the Indians. In many ways he was temperamentally unfitted for such a career, for his letters give the impression of uncompromising Puritan virtue and a lack of sympathy with Indian character. Yet just because he believed the Indians inferior to the white men, he felt a more insistent call to serve them. His career began in 1752 when he accepted a position at Stockbridge in the pay of the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians, under the supervision of Jonathan Edwards. He described his duties as those of a school-master for the Iroquois, many of whom came from great distances to his school. On the Lord’s Day he preached to them. Edwards visited his school occasionally and gave him advice about his work. Hawley was not happy in this place, however, because of the existence of opposing cliques among the controlling authorities, who hampered each other’s efforts and hindered the work of the missionaries.
Consequently, he was glad to accept an offer from the Society to establish a mission among the Six Nations on the Susquehanna. He was ordained for this task in July 1754 at Boston, and left for his frontier post, near the present Windsor, New York. Apparently his services at this place were much more extensive than they had been at Stockbridge. Besides trying to convert and civilize the Indians he seems to have acted as interpreter, and, of greater importance on the eve of war, to have been highly respected in their diplomatic councils. Outbreak of war did not at first interfere with his labors, but in May 1756 he was forced to leave. He went to Boston and accepted a commission as chaplain to Col. Richard Gridley’s regiment, about to depart for Crown Point, but unfortunately illness compelled him to return in October. After an unsuccessful attempt to resume his mission labors, he was sent by the Commissioners of the Society on a temporary mission to the Indians at Marshpee, Massachusetts, who had been long without an English minister. He succeeded so well at Marshpee that the Indians requested his appointment as their preacher. He died at Marshpee in his eightieth year.
Hawley seems to have been a man with a single purpose in life, to be a missionary to the Indians. In many ways he was temperamentally unfitted for such a career, for his letters give the impression of uncompromising Puritan virtue and a lack of sympathy with Indian character. Yet just because he believed the Indians inferior to the white men, he felt a more insistent call to serve them.
Connections
Hawley married his first wife Lucy Fessenden, on June 14, 1759, by whom he had three sons and two daughters. After her death in 1777, he married, October 7, 1778, Mrs. Elizabeth Burchard.