Coming of the American Revolution banner pastiche of images from MHS collections

The Coming of the American Revolution: 1764 to 1776

× The Sugar Act The Stamp Act The Formation of the Sons of Liberty The Townshend Acts Non-consumption and Non-importation The Boston Massacre The Formation of the Committees of Correspondence The Boston Tea Party The Coercive Acts The First Continental Congress Lexington and Concord The Second Continental Congress The Battle of Bunker Hill Washington Takes Command of the Continental Army Declarations of Independence

Biographies

Samuel Seabury

30 November 1729 - 25 February 1796

Samuel Seabury was born in Connecticut to a Congregationalist minister who later converted to Anglicanism. He graduate from Yale College in 1748, but he was not yet old enough to be ordained a priest in the Church of England. In 1752, he sailed to Scotland to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh until his ordination in 1753. Seabury returned to America the following year. As part of his ordination, however, he took an oath of loyalty to the crown and during the Revolution he was a staunch supporter of the king and the Church of England. Shortly after the Boston Tea Party, while serving as a rector in Westchester, New York, Seabury began publishing a series of pamphlets defending the crown. When General William Howe's army took Long Island in September 1776, Seabury served as chaplain to his men. He remained a refugee on Manhattan Island until 1783.

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