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.