Brewer, Josiah

Brewer, Josiah a Congregational minister and missionary, was born in Tyringham (or Monterey), Berkshire County, Massachusetts, June 1, 1796. After studying at Phillips Academy in Andover, he graduated from Yale College in 1821, and immediately commenced his theological studies at Andover, at the same time acting as missionary one year among the Penobscot Indians in Maine. From 1824 to 1826 was a tutor at Yale College. On May 10, 1826, he was ordained at Springfield, Massachusetts; and in September following resigned his tutorship and embarked for the East, under the direction of the .Boston Female Society for the Promotion of Christianity among the Jews. He spent about two years in laboring in Smyrna and Constantinople, and then returned to the United States. While here he published a volume descriptive of his residence in Turkey. In 1830 he went back to Smyrna, where he remained for eight years as a missionary of the Ladies Greek Association of New Haven, Connecticut. In 1832 he commenced a semi- monthly newspaper, entitled The Friend of Youth. After his final return to America, in 1838, he was for three years chaplain of the Connecticut State- prison, at Wethersfield, and then for a short time agent of the Anti-slavery Society, and editor of an anti-slavery paper in Hartford. In 1844 he opened a Young Ladies' Seminary in New Haven, which was afterwards removed to Middletown, and Which occupied him until 1857. He then took up his residence in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and, after serving for nine years as stated supply of the Congregational Church in the neighboring town of Housatonic, lived in retirement till his death, November 19, 1872. In 1851 he published Patmos and the Seven Churches of Asia. See Obituary Record of Yale College, 1873; Memoirs of American Missionaries.