The Rev. James Otis Sargent Huntington, OHC , a priest of the Episcopal Church, was the founder of the Order of the Holy Cross, an Anglican Benedictine monastic order for men whose mother house is now located in West Park, New York.
Background
He was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, the younger son of Frederick Dan and Hannah Huntington. While he was a child his father, a Unitarian minister, converted to the Episcopal Church, and in quick succession was ordained deacon and priest, and then consecrated Bishop of Central New York.
Education
James went to Harvard, as his father did, and later studied at St. Andrew’s Divinity School in Syracuse.
Career
Kent Scool was founded in 1906 by Fr Frederick H. Sill, OHC
He was ordained priest around 1880, and began work among working-class immigrants on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Soon after his ordination, Father Huntington attended a retreat in Philadelphia and began to feel called to the monastic life. They continued working in the poorest sections of the East Side, where Father Huntington became involved in the labor union and Georgist land-tax movements.
Under his leadership the Order moved to Westminster, Maryland in the 1890s, and shortly after to West Park. The cornerstone for the Order’s monastery, which now serves as its guest house, was laid in 1902, and the building was finished in 1904. Designed by Gothic-Revival Architect Henry Vaughan, it was the first building built for an Anglican religious order since the reign of Henry VIII. Father Huntington also founded St. Faith's Home for Wayward Girls, St. Andrew's School at Sewanee, Kent School, and the Mission in Liberia, Africa.
Father Huntington died on 28 June 1935, and is buried in the Monastery Church of St Augustine in West Park.