Jacob Bailey was an author and clergyman of the Church of England, active in New England and Nova Scotia.
Background
He was born in 1731 in Rowley, Massachussets, a descendant of James Bailey, one of the first settlers of that town. His parents, David and Mary (Hodgkins) Bailey, were poor, and as a boy he had to work long days on the farm, but he shortened his sleeping hours in order to read and write. An early distaste for democratic conditions seems to have been created in him by the disfavor with which such efforts to elevate one-self were viewed by his fellows; for in after years he referred with feeling to the "ignorance, narrowness of mind, and bigotry" which prevailed in his native town, where a boy was "whipped for saying Sir to his father, " and "nothing could be more criminal than for one person to be more learned, religious, or polite, than another".
Education
A composition of his fell into the hands of the village parson, Rev. Jedediah Jewett, who, impressed by its excellence, prepared the author for college. At Harvard, where he was a member of the class of 1755, he was supported largely by the gifts of the charitably inclined, and on the class list, arranged according to the social standing of its members, his name was at the bottom.
Career
For several years after graduating he taught school, first, in Kingston and Hampton, New Hampshire, and later in Gloucester, Massachussets.
Although he had been licensed to preach, June 4, 1758, by the Association of Congregational Ministers in Exeter, New Hampshire, his temperament inclined him toward the established church, and in 1759 he wrote to Dr. Caner of King's Chapel, Boston, acknowledging the loan of Potter on Church Government, and saying: "I have carefully perused it, with Bennet's Abridgment, and find all the objections against Episcopal Ordination, and Conformity to the Church of England, answered entirely to my satisfaction".
To secure ordination, he set sail for England on the British gunship Hind, and after a trying trip of twenty-eight days, reached his destination, and on March 16, 1760, was ordained priest by Dr. Terrick, Bishop of Peterborough. The Society for Promoting the Gospel in Foreign Parts, appointed him Itinerant Missionary on the Eastern Frontier of Massachusetts. This frontier extended up the Kennebec River to Canada on the north and indefinitely to the east. Arriving on the field, July 1, 1760, he fulfilled his mission faithfully for nineteen years.
He lived first in the barracks of Fort Shirley, afterward in Fort Richmond, and later in Pownalborough, the county seat of Lincoln County, where St. John's Church and parsonage were built for him in 1770. He traveled among the widely scattered people on foot, horseback, by canoe, and when the river was frozen, by sleigh, frequently suffering from hunger and exposure, and in the summer "afflicted with extreme heat, and assaulted with armies of flies and musketoes".
When the Revolution came he remained loyal, refusing to read the Declaration of Independence in church, to take the oath of allegiance to Congress, or to refrain from praying for the King. He was subjected to all manner of persecution, and frequently had to go into hiding to save his life.
His name was placed on the list for transportation, but in town meeting the people voted to strike it off. He was summoned before the Committee of Safety and tried on several counts, but defended himself well, and was not convicted. Finally, on the plea of poverty, since, as he said, the magistrates would not consider the plea of conscience, he procured permission of the Council at Boston to remove to Nova Scotia. After much difficulty he succeeded in chartering a schooner, and with his family and some of his effects escaped to Halifax, thankful when he reached that place that he was in a land of freedom. He settled at Annapolis, Nova Scotia, where he served as rector until his death.
Religion
He started his career in the ministry as a Congregational preacher in New Hampshire but converted and became an Anglican clergyman in 1760.
