Samuel Andrew Peters

Background

He was born on November 20, 1735 at Hebron, Connecticut, United States, a descendant of Andrew Peters whose name first appears in Massachusetts records in 1659.

Education

He was educated at Yale College, receiving the degrees of bachelor of arts in 1757 and master of arts in 1760. King's College conferred the degree of M. A. on him in 1761 and in later life he claimed to have received that of LL. D. from the University of Cortona in Tuscany, although no such institution seems ever to have existed.

Career

In 1758 he went to England to receive holy orders in the Anglican church and in the following year was ordained deacon and priest and appointed missionary by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. In 1760 he returned to America and for the next fourteen years served as rector of the Anglican church at Hebron and ministered to the surrounding country.

As the controversy between Great Britain and the colonies approached a crisis, he was suspected of informing the Bishop of London and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts of events in America, and on the morning of August 15, 1774, he was visited by the Sons of Liberty, who examined his papers and forced him to sign a declaration that he had not written and would not write to England. Following a sermon in which he advised his congregation not to contribute aid or supplies for the relief of Boston, he was again visited by a mob, September 6, 1774, and upon the discovery that he had arms in his house, he was carried to the meeting-house green and forced to sign and read a declaration and humble confession.

Shortly he fled to Boston. On October 25, 1774, he sailed from Portsmouth, for England, where he received a small pension from the Crown. He took up his residence in London and occasionally preached in the churches of the city.

He wrote for British periodicals and in 1781 published A General History of Connecticut, containing his famous account of the "blue laws" which, he alleged, were in force then. It is a highly unfavorable description of the colony of his birth but not as false as some of its critics in New England have maintained. In 1785 he published A Letter to the Rev. John Tyler, A. M. : concerning the Possibility of Eternal Punishments, and the Improbability of Universal Salvation.

He hoped to obtain an American bishopric and in 1794 he was elected bishop of Vermont by a convention of Episcopal clergymen which met at Rutland, and sent John A. Graham to England to secure his consecration at the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Peters accepted the bishopric and prepared to sail for America in the following spring but on the plea that he was limited by the Act of Parliament of January 1786, and could create no more American bishops, the Archbishop of Canterbury refused to consecrate him. About 1804 Peters lost his pension.

He had known Jonathan Carver, the explorer, in England, and at the request of Carver's American heirs returned to America in 1805 to further their claim to a large tract of land to the east of the Mississippi River at the Falls of St. Anthony, which they claimed Carver had received from the Sioux Indians in 1767. In March 1806 Peters appeared before a committee of the United States Senate in behalf of Carver's heirs, and in November 1806 he bought their claim. He succeeded in interesting a company of New York merchants in a scheme to settle the territory on the Mississippi and in the summer of 1817 he himself set out to visit the region and spent the following winter at Prairie du Chien, but in 1826 Congress disallowed the claim.

After Peters' return to America he published A History of the Reverend Hugh Peters, A. M. (1807). Peters died at New York in his ninety-first year.

Achievements

• Samuel Andrew Peters was ordained Deacon, took charge of St. Peter's Church parish at Hebron, Connecticut, climbed Killington Peak, and allegedly named the area Verd Mont giving the state its future name. He also was the author of widely-discussed "General History of Connecticut, from its first settlement. .. ", this work is noted for its unflattering descriptions of the colonists and for its misrepresentation of the Connecticut Blue Laws.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A General History of Connecticut, from Its First Settlement Under George Fenwick, to Its Latest Period of Amity with Great Britain Prior to the Revo

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

Connections

On February 14, 1760, he was married to Hannah Owen, who died October 25, 1765; on June 25, 1769, to Abigail Gilbert, who died July 14, 1769; and on April 21, 1773, to Mary Birdseye, who died June 16, 1774.

Spouse:

Abigail Gilbert

Spouse:

Hannah Owen

Spouse:

Mary Birdseye

ancestor:

Andrew Peters

Friend:

Jonathan Carver

great-grand-uncle:

Hugh Peter

References

• Connecticut's loyalist gadfly: The Reverend Samuel Andrew Peters (Connecticut bicentennial series)