Samuel Seabury, First Anglican Bishop in North America

14 November -- Commemoration
If celebrated as a Lesser Festival, Common of Bishops, page 483

Samuel Seabury was born in Connecticut in 1729 and, after graduating from Yale, was ordained priest in England and assigned by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to a church in New Brunswick, New Jersey. During the American War of Independence, he remained faithful to the British Crown, serving as a chaplain in the British army. At a secret meeting of the clergy in Connecticut, Samuel was chosen to seek consecration as bishop but, after a year of fruitless negotiation with the Church of England, he was ordained bishop by the non-juring bishops in the Scottish Episcopal Church on this day in 1784. Returning to America, he held his first Convention in Connecticut the following August and the first General Convention of the American Episcopal Church in 1789. There, they adopted the Scottish eucharistic rite and a similar name to the Church which had proved itself their friend. Samuel died on 25 February 1796.