Fisher, Nathaniel

Fisher, Nathaniel a Protestant Episcopal clergyman, was born at Dedham, Massachusetts, July 8, 1742. He graduated from Harvard College in 1763, and soon after the beginning of the revolution was in the service of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, as a schoolmaster at Granville, Nova Scotia. Having crossed the Atlantic for ordination in 1777, he was admitted to orders by the bishop of London, Sept. 25; not long after arrived at Nova Scotia as a missionary to the churches at Annapolis and Granville, and remained there till 1781. In the following year he was invited to the rectorship of St. Peter's Church, Salem, Mass.; but on arriving in that commonwealth he was arrested as a subject of Great Britain, and imprisoned. On taking the oath of fidelity to the new government he was released. His ministry in Salem covered a period of thirty years, until his death, December 20, 1812. Mr. Fisher actively promoted the organization of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Massachusetts, and was secretary of the first convention of the churches of Massachusetts and Rhode Island in 1784. In 1790 he was one of those chosen to frame the constitution for the government of the Protestant Episcopal churches in Massachusetts; elected a member of the first standing committee of the diocese, and was one of the persons appointed to publish the revised Book of Common Prayer. A volume of Mr. Fisher's Sermons, edited by judge Joseph Story, was published after his death. His style of preaching was compact, dignified, and vigorous. See Sprague, Annals of the Amer. Pulpit, 5:328.