Judd, Sylvester

Judd, Sylvester (1813-1853) American Unitarian clergyman and author, was born in Westhampton, Massachusetts, on the 23rd of July 1813. He bore the same name as his father and grandfather; the former (1789-1860) made an especial study of local history of the towns of the Connecticut valley, and wrote a History of Hadley (1863). The son lived in Northampton after his tenth year, was converted in a revival there in 1826, graduated from Yale in 1836, and taught in 1836 at Templeton, Mass., where he first met Unitarians and soon found the solution of his theological difficulties in their views. He entered the Harvard divinity school, from which he graduated in 1840. In the same year he was ordained pastor of the Unitarian church of Augusta, Maine, where he died on the 26th of January 1853. His widest reputation was as the author of Margaret, a Tale of the Real and the Ideal, including Sketches of a place not before described, called Mons Christi (1845; revised 1851), written to exhibit the errors of Calvinistic and all trinitarian theology, and the evils of war, intemperance, capital punishment, the prison system of the time, and the national treatment of the Indians. This story, published anonymously, attracted much attention by its true descriptions of New England life and scenery as well as by its author’s earnest purpose. Richard Edney and the Governor’s Family (1850) is in much the same vein as Margaret. A poem entitled Philo, an Evangeliad (1850) is a versified defence of Unitarianism. He published, besides, The Church, in a Series of Discourses (1854). As a preacher and pastor he urged the desirability of infant baptism. He lectured frequently on international peace and opposed slavery.

See Arethusa Hall, Life and Character of the Rev. Sylvester Judd (Boston, 1857) published anonymously.