William Wilberforce Lord

Background

William Wilberforce Lord was born on October 28, 1819 in Madison County, New York, United States, the son of John Way and Sarah Bryant (Chase) Lord.

Education

Lord attended the Geneseo high school. Later he entered the now defunct University of Western New York and graduated in 1837. In 1814 he entered the Auburn Theological Seminary but transferred to the Princeton Seminary for his senior year. In 1845-1846 William held a Boudinot fellowship at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton).

Career

For a short time Lord taught mental and moral science at Amherst. In 1848 he took orders as deacon in the Episcopal Church, and two years later he was ordained priest. After holding a few minor posts in the South, including one at Baltimore where he served bravely in a deadly epidemic of cholera, he was made, in 1854, rector of Christ Church, Vicksburg, Mississippi.

In 1845 he had brought out a small volume, Poems, which Wordsworth praised in a letter to the author, but which Poe savagely attacked. In the main the poems show, to use Poe's mildest phrase, "a very ordinary species of talent, " but at least one of them, "On the Defeat of a Great Man, " has found numerous admirers and is included with several others by Lord in Edmund C. Stedman's An American Anthology (1900). His later volumes were Christ in Hades (1851), an epic notable chiefly for its Miltonic echoes; and André (1856), an unacted tragedy, written in uninspired blank verse and showing but little dramatic sense.

When the Civil War broke out, Lord continued as rector of Christ Church and became chaplain of the 1st Mississippi Brigade. Throughout the siege of Vicksburg he worked tirelessly in his double capacity of chaplain and pastor. When Vicksburg fell, Grant urged upon him a passport to St. Louis, where he would be free from danger. Far from accepting it, he pushed still further into the Confederacy in the pursuit of his calling.

Shortly after the conclusion of the war, he assumed the rectorate of St. Paul's Church, Charleston, South Carolina. In 1876 he was called to Christ Church, Cooperstown, New York, and there he served until his retirement from the ministry about 1883.

Achievements

• William Lord was a brilliant man with the variety of interests in literature, science, history, and religion. His fame rested chiefly on his contribution to the literature. His library was reputed to be the largest and most scholarly private collection in the Southwest. He was also noted for the foundation of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Vicksburg.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Christ in Hades: A Poem

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • André: A Tragedy in Five Acts

    (This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for ki...)

  • Poems...

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • A Discourse, by the Rev. W. W. Lord, D. D: In Honor of Capt. Paul Hamilton, Adjutant General, Third Brigade, Army of Miss., Killed in the Battle of ... Vicksburg, December 31 (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from A Discourse, by the Rev. W. W. Lord, D. D: I...)

  • The limits of ritualism in the Protestant Episcopal Church

Connections

William Wilberforce Lord married Margaret Stockton on February 19, 1851. They had a son and a daughter.

Father:

John Way Lord

Mother:

Sarah Bryant (Chase) Lord

Spouse:

Margaret Stockton