Jeremy Belknap (413)

Jeremy Belknap (4 June 1744–20 June 1798) was a clergyman, historian, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1784. Born in Boston, Belknap studied at the Boston Latin School before attending Harvard and graduating in 1762. He managed a few schools before settling in New Hampshire and becoming an ordained minister for the First Congregational Church in Dover (1767). His sermons curiously balanced liberal and conservative perspectives, he avoided controversy, and welcomed Christians of any denomination, all of which often led to his mistaken characterization as a Unitarian. In 1772, Belknap began his major undertaking: composing a history of New Hampshire. To this end, he meticulously collected newspapers and oral accounts from aging survivors of various events. Although he presented transcripts to the Governor in 1774, it took another decade before copies came off the press in Philadelphia. Lacking the funds to have the work printed, and with little support from the state, Belknap continued to write himself into debt, beginning his American Biographical Dictionary in 1779. He resigned from his parish in 1786 and relocated to Federal Street Church in Boston. While in Boston, he founded the Massachusetts Historical Society (1791), published volumes two and three of his History of New Hampshire (1791,1792), the first volume of his American Biography (1794), and anonymously produced The Foresters, an early work of American satire. A moderate in all matters, he saw the American Revolution as disruptive, criticized the violence of the French Revolution, and was a cautious abolitionist. At the end of his life, he suffered three strokes, the third proving fatal. (SHG, EB)