John was born in 1710 in Newark, New Jersey, United States. He was the son of Jonathan and Mary Sergeant. His grandfather, Jonathan, had settled in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1644, and the second Jonathan had been one of the Branford, Connecticut, congregation which removed to New Jersey some twenty-two years later and founded Newark.
Unfitted for farm work or a trade as a result of a scythe-cut on his left hand, he prepared for college and graduated from Yale in the class of 1729.
From 1731 to 1735 he was a tutor at Yale and was one of the most successful holders of that office in the early history of the College. In addition to his teaching he also pursued studies in theology.
Meanwhile, several clergymen united in an effort to provide Christian instruction for the Indians in what is now Berkshire County, Massachussets. To this missionary project the Boston commissioners of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England gave their support, and the Indians themselves, their consent. John Sergeant readily consented to accept the mission.
Sergeant spent October and November with the Indians, got them to erect a building between their two settlements to serve as school and church, and returned to New Haven, with two Indian boys, to complete his year at the college, having left Timothy Woodbridge, who was to be his assistant, in charge. In July 1735 he entered permanently upon his missionary work.
On August 31, 1735 he was ordained to the Congregational ministry at Deerfield, Massachussets. Until his death in his thirty-ninth year he lived and worked among the Indians, beloved by them and regarded as their father and best friend. He mastered their language, becoming able to speak it, they said, better than they could themselves, and translated into it some prayers, portions of the Bible, and Watts's shorter catechism.
One of his sermons, The Causes and Danger of Delusions in the Affairs of Religion Consider'd and Caution'd Against, was published in 1743, and the same year, A Letter from the Revd. Mr. Sergeant of Stockbridge to Dr. Colman of Boston; Containing Mr. Sergeant's Proposal of a More Effectual Method for the Education of Indian Children.
He died on July 27, 1749, at age 39, after four weeks of illness.
John Sergeant was the first missionary in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, through his ministry many Mahicans converted to Christianity. He helped to establish a day school at what became Stockbridge, and laid the groundwork for a boarding school, in which industrial training was given to both sexes. His famous works: The Causes and Danger of Delusions in the Affairs of Religion Consider'd and Caution'd Against and A Letter from the Revd. Mr. Sergeant of Stockbridge to Dr. Colman of Boston.
Quotations: He told "pains taken by those of the Romish Church, not only in other parts but also in America should methinks excite us to emulation, who at least think we profess Christianity in much greater purity".
On August 16, 1739, he married Abigail, daughter of Col. Ephraim Williams of Stockbridge and half-sister of the founder of Williams College. A son, John, was also a missionary to the Indians, another son was a prominent physician and officer in the Revolution, and a daughter was the grandmother of Mark Hopkins. Jonathan Dickinson Sergeant was a nephew.
