Joseph Dresser Wickham

Last updated
Joseph Dresser Wickham Joseph Dresser Wickham.jpg
Joseph Dresser Wickham

Joseph Dresser Wickham (April 4, 1797-May 12, 1891) was an American minister.

Wickham was born in Thompson, Connecticut on April 4, 1797, the eldest son of Daniel H. and Mary (Dresser) Wickham, who in 1799 removed to New York City. He graduated from Yale College in 1815. For the last five years of his life, he was the last survivor of the class of 1815, and for three years was the oldest living graduate of Yale.

For the first year after leaving College he served as amanuensis to Yale President Timothy Dwight, and during the following year was Rector of the Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven. From 1818 to 1820 he held a tutorship in Yale College, at the same time pursuing theological studies under Professors Fitch and Goodrich.

He began his ministerial labors in 1821 as a missionary on Long Island, and then spent some time in central New York in the service of the Presbyterian Education Society. Having been invited to the charge of a Congregational Church in Oxford, Chenango County, he began his labors there in January, 1823, and on July 31, at the dedication of a new house of worship, he was ordained to the ministry.

He removed in the spring of 1825 to Westchester County, New York, where he remained for a somewhat longer period in charge of the united Presbyterian churches of New Rochelle and West Farms. In 1828 he became one of the proprietors of the Washington Institute, a prominent boarding-school for boys in New York City, where he remained (ultimately in sole charge) until 1834, in November of which year he was installed pastor of the recently organized Presbyterian Church at Matteawan in the town of Fishkill, N. Y. At the end of two years, being solicited to renew his service in connection with the Education Society, he spent a laborious year among the churches of Northern and Western New York.

He removed in December, 1837, to Manchester, Vt., to take charge of the Burr Seminary, with which he remained connected for twenty-five years, except for three years (1853-56), in the first of which he was Treasurer of Middlebury College and Acting Professor of Latin and Greek, while for the two following years he was connected with the Collegiate Institute in Poughkeepsie, N. Y. In 1856 he returned after great urgency to the charge of Burr Seminary, but resigned his position in 1862, though continuing to serve the institution as President of its Board of Trustees.

He lived in retirement in Manchester until his death, retaining remarkable physical and mental vigor to the last. He was chosen a member of the Board of Trustees of Middlebury College in 1840, and continued in that position throughout his life. That corporation conferred upon him the degree of D.D. in 1861.

Dr. Wickham was married, on May 26, 1823, to Julia A., only daughter of Jonathan E. Porter, of New Haven and a niece of President Dwight. She died on December 23, 1830. He was again married, on December 28, 1831, to Amy, daughter of Col. Moses Porter, of Hadley, Mass., and a cousin of his first wife, who died October 29, 1832. He was married for the third time, on October 12, 1834, to Elizabeth C., eldest daughter of the Rev. Samuel Merwin, who survived him. Of his two children, a daughter by his first wife died in infancy, and a daughter by his second wife survived him.

He died of old age in Manchester May 12, 1891, in his 95th year.

Attribution

PD-icon.svg This article incorporates public domain material from the 1891 Yale Obituary Record .

Related Research Articles

Timothy Dwight IV American historian (1752–1817)

Timothy Dwight was an American academic and educator, a Congregationalist minister, theologian, and author. He was the eighth president of Yale College (1795–1817).

Cephas Washburn American missionary

Cephas Washburn was a noted Christian missionary and educator who worked with the Cherokee of northwest Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma.

Lyman Beecher American Presbyterian minister and American Temperance Society co-founder

Lyman Beecher was a Presbyterian minister, American Temperance Society co-founder and leader, and the father of 13 children, many of whom became noted figures, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher, Charles Beecher, Edward Beecher, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Catharine Beecher, and Thomas K. Beecher.

Aaron Burr Sr. Father of Aaron Burr and President of Princeton University (1716-1757)

Aaron Burr Sr. was a notable Presbyterian minister and college educator in colonial America. He was a founder of the College of New Jersey and the father of Aaron Burr (1756–1836), the third Vice President of the United States.

Lane Theological Seminary

Lane Theological Seminary was a Presbyterian theological college that operated from 1829 to 1932 in Walnut Hills, Ohio, today a neighborhood in Cincinnati. Its campus was bounded by today's Gilbert, Yale, Park, and Chapel Streets.

Cadwallader D. Colden American politician

Cadwallader David Colden was an American politician who served as the 54th Mayor of New York City and a U.S. Representative from New York.

William Buell Sprague

William Buell Sprague was an American Congregational and Presbyterian clergyman and compiler of Annals of the American Pulpit, a comprehensive biographical dictionary of the leading American Protestant Christian ministers who died before 1850.

Benjamin Woodbridge Dwight

Benjamin Woodbridge Dwight (1816–1889) was an American minister, educator, scholar and author.

John Mattocks American judge

John Mattocks was an American Whig politician, a brigadier general in the War of 1812, U.S. Congressman, and sixteenth Governor of Vermont.

William Adams (minister) American clergyman and academic

William Adams was a noted American clergyman and academic.

Jonathan Blanchard (abolitionist)

Jonathan Blanchard was an American pastor, educator, social reformer, and abolitionist. Born in Vermont, Blanchard attended Middlebury College before accepting a teaching position in New York. In 1834, he left to study at Andover Theological Seminary, but departed in 1836 after the college rejected agents from the American Anti-Slavery Society. Blanchard joined the group as one of Theodore Dwight Weld's "seventy" and preached in favor of abolition in southern Pennsylvania.

Jeremiah Rankin

Jeremiah Eames Rankin was an abolitionist, champion of the temperance movement, minister of Washington D.C.'s First Congregational Church, and correspondent with Frederick Douglass. In 1890 he was appointed sixth president of Howard University in Washington, D.C. Howard's Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel was built during Jeremiah Rankin's tenure as president (1890–1903) and named after his brother. Rankin is best known as author of the hymns "God Be with You 'Til we Meet Again" and "Tell It to Jesus". In 1903 Rankin published a fictional journal of Esther Burr.

Oneida Institute

The Oneida Institute was a short-lived (1827–1843) but highly influential school that was a national leader in the emerging abolitionism movement. It was the most radical school in the country, the first at which black men were just as welcome as whites. "Oneida was the seed of Lane Theological Seminary, Western Reserve College, Oberlin and Knox colleges."

Baxter Dickinson

Baxter Dickinson was an American minister.

William Ives Budington

William Ives Budington was an American minister.

Noah Smith (judge) American judge

Noah Smith was a political and legal figure in Vermont during its years as an independent republic and its early years of statehood. Among the offices he held was Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court from 1789 to 1791 and 1798 to 1801.

John Chester Backus was an American Presbyterian minister.

Nathaniel Smith Richardson was an American Episcopal minister, author, and editor of The American Church Review.

John Welsh Dulles was an American Presbyterian minister and author. He was the grandfather of John Foster Dulles and Allen Welsh Dulles.

Elijah Frink Rockwell was an American minister and educator.