f o u n d i n g fat h e r o f c h e s h i r e a c a d e m y
SEABURY I
t’s notable that Cheshire Academy’s founding father, Bishop Samuel Seabury, was a British loyalist whose plan to build an Episcopal Academy in Connecticut was financially successful due to the support of colonists who fought against Britain in the Revolutionary War.
Seabury was so notorious for his outspoken loyalty to Britain that he was jailed for his actions against the colonists. The offense was a steady stream of pamphlets Seabury wrote about the dangers of supporting the revolution. Written anonymously by “A.W. Farmer,” Seabury’s publications protested the actions of the First Continental Congress. After several unsuccessful attempts by colonist soldiers to capture Seabury, he was eventually subdued in 1775 by a militia in Westchester, New York and brought 70 miles to New Haven. The soldiers paraded him through town as a prisoner of war, and, as he was brought to the jail, cannons were fired to herald Seabury’s imprisonment. When he was released six weeks later, Seabury and his family took refuge with British troops in New York. While in hiding, he drew maps of the area to help British army scouts on their reconnaissance missions. Soon after, Seabury was appointed chaplain of the British regiment and received a royal pension for the rest of his life.
By 1784 Seabury had weathered the revolution and returned as the rector of St. Peter’s Church in Westchester, according to a book called, “Samuel Seabury, The First American Bishop,” by Shirley Carter Hughson. In March of that year, the book states, he and about 10 Episcopal priests met in Woodbury, Connecticut to plan how to approach the Church of England to request an ordination for a bishop to serve in the United States. Seabury was chosen by the local clergy to travel to London for what Hughson considered, “more trial than honor,” to secure a consecration from one of the leading bishops of England. After 16 months of effort and no results, Seabury turned to the Scottish church. He was ordained in Aberdeen in November 1784. His return to the United States was announced in New York newspapers when Seabury made a stop in Halifax, Nova Scotia on April 23, 1785. “The Right Reverend Doctor Samuel Seabury, Bishop of the state
of Connecticut (arrived); from whence he would in a very short time embark for New London.” In a nearly parallel time frame to Seabury’s rise in the church hierarchy, the founding of an Episcopal Academy in Connecticut was taking shape. Residents in Cheshire, Wallingford, and Stratford all expressed interest in having the state’s first Episcopal school located in their town. Cheshire was selected, in no small part, due to the promise of £702 (or $1,077 in U.S. dollars) from supporters to pay for about an acre of land and a building. In today’s dollars it would equal about $23,000. Half of the 30 supporters who helped finance the venture fought against the British and are buried at Cheshire’s Hillside Cemetery, about a block away from the Academy. A book written in 1912 by members of the Lady Fenwick Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution notes that the proprietors made financial sacrifices
