Abiel Holmes.
(
December 24,
1763 –
June 4,
1837) was an American
Congregational clergyman and historian in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He was the father of
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. and grandfather of
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr..
Biography
Holmes was born in
Woodstock, Connecticut. He was the son of David Holmes and Mehitable Mayhew. He graduated from
Yale College in 1783. In 1784, while ministering in
South Carolina, he was recruited to be the minister at the Congregational Church in
Midway, Georgia. He returned to New England to be ordained in 1785 and once for health reasons between 1786 and 1787, but returned to Midway and remained there until 1791. Holmes married Mary Stiles, the daughter of
Ezra Stiles, the president of Yale. Mr. Stiles was the subject of a laudatory biography penned by Holmes.
In 1792, Rev. Holmes became the minister at
First Church in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1805, he published a history entitled
American Annals. Amid a theological controversy between
Calvinism and
Arminianism, Holmes resigned from the ministry in 1831. He died June 4, 1837.
Family
Holmes married Mary Stiles, daughter of
Ezra Stiles, in 1790 and second to Sarah Wendell. By the second marriage, Abiel was the father of
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.Works
- The Life of Ezra Stiles (1798)
- The History of Cambridge (1801)
