Bronson, Tillotson, Dd

Bronson, Tillotson, D.D.

a Protestant Episcopal clergyman, was born at Plymouth, Connecticut, in 1762. Under the Reverend John Trumlbull, the Congregational minister of Watertown, he began his preparation for college, teaching a school, meantime, at Waterbury. In 1786 he graduated at Yale College, and was ordained deacon September 21, 1787. The following October he was called to officiate in the churches of Stratford, Vermont, and Hanover, N.H. He returned to Connecticut in 1788, and on February 25 was ordained priest in New London. In October he resigned his charge, and in 1792 went to Boston, supplying the place of Reverend William Montague, rector of Christ Church, during the latter's travels abroad. In 1793 he became rector of the churches at Hebron, Chatham, and Middle Haddam, in Connecticut. Two years thereafter he was called to the rectorship of St. John's Church, Waterbury, where he remained about ten years. Having been appointed to conduct the Churchinan's Magazine, published at New Haven, he resigned his pastorate in 1805, and removed thither. The publishing office of the magazine was removed to New York after two or three years, and his connection therewith accordingly ceased. The Diocesan Convention of Connecticut elected him principal of the academy at Cheshire in the latter part of 1805. The Churchman's Magazine having been revived he had again undertaken to edit it, while at the same time performing his duties at the academy; but his health was now seriously, impaired, and he declined a re-election as a member of the Standing Committee, a position which he had held for the twenty preceding years. He died at Cheshire, September 6, 1826. Very often he had been a delegate to the General Convention; and he was a trustee of the General Theological Seminary and of Washington College. See Sprague, Annals of the Amer. Pulpit, 5:358.