Peters, Samuel Andrew, Dd, Lld

Peters, Samuel Andrew, D.D., LL.D.

an eccentric Protestant Episcopal clergyman, was born at Hebron, Conn., November 20, 1735, and passed A.B. in Yale, 1757, when he went to England for ordination. He returned in 1759, and in 1762 took charge of the Church at Hebron, where he continued for many years. During the Revolution, being a Tory, he retired first to Boston, and soon sailed to England, as his imprudence and loyalty to the English cause made him very obnoxious. Of course his royal master rewarded his fidelity by a pension and a grant of confiscated lands. In 1781 he published a general history of Connecticut, which has been called "the most unscrupulous and malicious of lying narratives." Its narrations are independent of time, place, and probability. In 1794 he was chosen bishop of Vermont, but he was never consecrated. After being struck off the pension roll by William Pitt, he returned home in 1805, and spent his years in useless petitions to Congress for lands granted to Jonathan Carver, the Indian traveller. In 1817 he journeyed westward, and in 1818 returned to New York, where he lived in obscurity and poverty until his death, April 19, 1826. He is the "Parson Peter" of Trumbull's M'Fingal. Peters published, A General History of Connecticut, by a Gentleman of the Province (Lond. 1781): — A Letter on the Possibility of Eternal Punishments, etc. (ibid. 1785): — and The History of Rev. Hugh Peters, etc. (ibid. 1807). See Sprague, Annals of the Amer. Pulpit, 5:191.