publisher Congregational clergyman
Robert Everett was born at Gronant, North Wales, the oldest son of Lewis and Jane Everett. He was of mingled Welsh, Scotch, and English blood.
His father supported the large family of eleven children by serving as manager of a lead mine; by preference, however, and on occasion, he preached for the Congregationalists. Raised in a strongly Calvinistic atmosphere, Robert early decided to enter the ministry.
Soon after graduating from Wrexham Seminary in 1815 he became pastor of the large Congregational church at Denbigh. He received the degree of D. D. from Hamilton College in 1861.
Though lacking the eloquence of some of his more famous contemporaries in the Welsh pulpit, he possessed such earnestness and learning that he soon gained great influence even outside his own denomination.
In 1822 he published a catechism which ran through many editions in both Wales and America.
Having accepted a call to the Welsh Congregational Church of Utica, New York, he emigrated in 1823.
For the next forty-five years he held this charge or others in Oneida County.
For a time he preached in English, but in 1838 he moved to the township of Steuben where he served two Welsh churches until a few years before his death.
Meanwhile the Welsh Congregationalists had decided to establish a periodical to serve their members.
Everett was chosen one of the three editors, and in January 1840 they published the first issue of Y Cenhadwr Americanaidd (The American Messenger), a monthly religious review destined during the sixty-one years of its life to hold the foremost place among Welsh- American publications and to exert its influence in Wales itself.
Until that time the Cenhadwr had been printed in Utica but, the frequent trips on horseback to that town proving too burdensome to a clergyman in active service, Everett set up a press first in Remsen, then in his parsonage on his hill farm in Steuben.
Here his sons printed the review, the other members of his family assisting in typesetting, proofreading, and sewing of the sheets within the covers.
He had welcomed anti-slavery speakers to his pulpit at an early date and himself had long preached the virtue of total abstinence from alcoholic liquors.
His opponents almost succeeded in ousting him from his pastorates.
Fearing that desertion of disgruntled subscribers both North and South might force a suspension of the Cenhadwr, Everett in 1843 published most of his abolitionist articles in a new monthly called Y Dyngarwr (The Philanthropist).
This he distributed free of charge to Welsh preachers whose aid was vital to the “cause. ”
After its suspension at the end of one year he continued his propaganda in the Cenhadwr.
Plis campaign in favor of Birney in 1844 showed slight results among the Welsh, though Everett himself had a souvenir of the bitter contest in his carriage horse, "Bobtail Birney, ” whose tail and mane had been mutilated by his opponents.
Slowly however his supporters increased.
The Cenhadwr gained in quality and in prestige.
When it advocated the moderate program of the Free-Soilers, it won many converts ; after the Kansas-Nebraska Act it gained far more.
For some years he was the assistant editor of the Dysgcdydd (Inquirer), a Congregational periodical.
At first he met stubborn resistance among the Welsh who, though nominally opponents of slavery, refused to abandon the Democratic and Whig ranks for the Liberty Party and who were scandalized by Everett’s action in bringing politics into the pulpit and into a religious review.
Most of the Welsh went with Everett into the young Republican party where they have remained to this day.
Though Cenhadwr may never have reached a circulation of 2, 500, its influence was out of all proportion to its size.
He was also publisher of a popular Welsh hymnal and for two years, 1850-52, of a small literary monthly called Y Detholydd (The Eclectic).
Constantly he denounced the interstate slave-trade, the Fugitive-Slave Law, and slavery in the districts under federal control. Elimination of these abuses, he believed, would doom slavery in the South.
Everett was a zealous reformer though not an extreme radical.
Before leaving Wales he had married (1816) Elizabeth Roberts by whom he had eleven children.
Their daughter Mary was one of the earliest woman physicians in America.
