Background
Henry Knox Sherrill was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Henry Williams and Maria (Prue) Knox Mills Sherrill. His father died when he was ten-years-old, and his mother raised him to be religiously observant.
bishop clergyman professor rector
Henry Knox Sherrill was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Henry Williams and Maria (Prue) Knox Mills Sherrill. His father died when he was ten-years-old, and his mother raised him to be religiously observant.
Bachelor of Arts, Yale, 1911, Doctor of Divinity, 1929. Doctor of Laws 1960; Bachelor of Divinity, Episcopal Theological School, 1914. Doctor of Laws, Boston University, 1930.
Doctor of Divinity Harvard, 1936, Trinity College, 1936, Philadelphia Divinity School 1947, Princeton, 1947, Columbia, 1948, Hobart College, 1948, U. Edinburgh, 1949, Seabury Western Theological Seminary, 1949, U. Rochester, 1952, Hamilton College, 1953, Berkeley Division School, 1954.
South.T.D., General Theological Seminary, 1947, Russian Orthodox Theological Academy, Paris, 1953. Doctor of Civil Law Union College, 1952, U. Denver, 1952, Lehigh University, 1956.
Little Doctorate., Norwich University, 1954.
At age sixteen, he entered Yale College, from where he obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1911. While a student at Yale, he taught Sunday school at Saint Paul"s Church in New Haven and experienced a call to the ordained ministry. Sherrill was ordained to the diaconate on June 7, 1914, and to the priesthood on May 9, 1915.
He then served as an assistant minister at Trinity Church in Boston until 1917, when he became a Red Cross chaplain at Massachusetts General Hospital.
He later became an Army chaplain, with the rank of First Lieutenant, at Base Hospital 6 in Talence, France. Upon his return from the war service, he served as rector of the Church of Our Saviour in Brookline from 1919 to 1923.
He then returned to Boston"s Trinity Church, where he had begun his ministry, as rector. In addition to his duties as rector, he served as a professor at the Episcopal Theological School and the Boston University School of Theology, and was active in various civic and religious organizations, including the Greater Boston Council of Churches.
He also proved to be a gifted fundraiser, increasing Trinity"s average annual contribution to the national church from $30,000 to $35,000—one of the largest of any Episcopalian parish in the country at that time.
In 1928, he was elected Coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, but declined the position. On October 14, 1930, Sherrill was consecrated the ninth Bishop of Massachusetts. He served in that position until June 1, 1947, when he resigned to become Presiding Bishop.
He served on the President"s Committee on Civil Rights in 1946 for President Harry Truman.
At the General Convention of 1943, a canon was passed which required the Presiding Bishop to tender to the House of Bishops the resignation of his previous jurisdiction to take effect on the date of assuming the office of Presiding Bishop or no later than six months thereafter. Sherrill was the first Presiding Bishop chosen after this canon was passed.
He was the first president of the National Council of Churches from 1950 until 1952. He resigned as Presiding Bishop in 1958 for reasons of health.
Sherrill died in Boxford, Massachusetts, and is buried at Cone Hill Cemetery in Richmond, Massachusetts.
Sherrill House, a nursing and rehabilitation center in Jamaica Plain, Boston, is named in his honor.
Fellow American Academy Arts and Sciences. Member Massachusetts History Society. Club: Union (Boston).
Married Barbara Harris, September 6, 1921. Children: Henry Williams, Edmund Knox, Franklin, Barbara (Mistress Mason Wilson, Junior.