Biography

BIOGRAPHY

Andrew Lee

LEE, Andrew, clergyman, born in Lyme, Connecticut, 7 May, 1745; died in Lisbon, Connecticut, 25 August, 1832. He was graduated at Yale in 1766, and, after studying theology for two years, began preaching in 1768, being in that year ordained pastor of the Trinitarian Congregational church at Hanover (now Lisbon), Connecticut. Here he spent his life, discharging his clerical duties until within a twelvemonth of his death. From 1807 till 1823 he was a member of the corporation of Yale college, and in 1809 he received the degree of D. D. from Harvard. Among Dr. Lee’s publications are "An Inquiry whether it be the Duty of Man to be Willing to Suffer Damnation for the Divine Glory" (1786); "The Declensions of Christianity an Argument for its Truth" (1793); and "Sermons on Various Important Subjects" (1803).

Edited Appletons Encyclopedia, Copyright © 2001 VirtualologyTM http://www.famousamericans.net/andrewlee/ Aug 12, 2004 =================================================================== SEVENTH SOCIETY, OR HANOVER. This was incorporated as an ecclesiastical society in 1761. It included a small portion of Canterbury and Windham. A fund of £1400 was raised by subscription for the support of the ministry, and a church of fourteen members gathered May 13, 1766, under the temporary ministry of Rev. Timothy Stone. A house for worship was erected about the same time. Rev. Andrew Lee, the first pastor, was ordained October 26, 1768, and continued in office, fulfilling its duties without special assistance, for sixty-two years. In 1830, the Rev. Barnabas Phinney became his colleague. Dr. Lee died Aug. 25, 1832, aged 87.

Dr. Lee was a man of generous impulses, candid and liberal in sentiment. Mr. Nelson, his friend and neighbor, said of him, "He was made originally on a noble scale, and his faculties were finely developed by carefully and diligent culture." [Footnote: Sprague’s Am. Pulpit, P. 671.] He published a volume of sermons, and various separate discourses, which display vigorous thought and nice discrimination.

He was a son of John Lee, of Lyme, and born in 1745. His mother was Abigail Tully. Though a graduate of Yale College, he received the degree of S.T.D. from Harvard.

[Transcribed from Frances Manwaring Caulkins’s History of Norwich, Connecticut. (1866).] 1843 ANTI-SLAVERY RESOLUTION

2 Jan. 1843: at a meeting of of the church consisting of the pastor [Rev. Joseph Ayer], the two acting deacons and L. P. Rowlands, the following report was accepted:

"Whereas the Christian Church is established to be the light of the the Gospel, it is therefore Resolved, that the church ought to hear decided testimony against all sin, and especially reprove with all tenderness and fidelity those members of the Christian body who punish in open transgression.

Resolved, that the system of Slavery, as it exists in the United States and as tolerated in many churches in our land, is a violation of the letter and spirit of the Gospel - inasmuch as it withholds from almost three million of the human family their personal freedom - denied them generally the memory of education - the privilege and protection of civil institutions - the sacred rights of matrimony and the true reward of their labor - thus reducing and holding them in a state of oppression, ignorance and moral degradation scarcely paralleled in the civilized world.

Resolved, that we feel constrained in a spirit of meekness to reprove and rebuke all professing Christians, ministers, and Churches who tolerate Slavery in word and deed - and that we cannot extend the fellowship of the Gospel to those who continue to enslave their fellow men after the faithful administration of their Christian brethren.

Resolved, that these resolutions be published in the New York Observer and the New England Puritan.

[transcribed from Volume II, pages18-19 of the Hanover Congregational Church Records. FHL Microfilm #5821]

HANOVER PARISH.

Established in 1761-1766.

Messrs. Timothy Stone, Theodore Hinsdale, Panderson Ausin, and others, supplied the preaching, and two of those mentioned received and declined calls to settle as pastors. In 1768, August 31st, the church voted to invite Mr. Andrew Lee to settle as their minister. Mr. Lee on October 1st, 1768, having replied affirmatively, was taken into the church as a member on the 25th of October, 1768, and on the following day was ordained as their pastor, which relation was not dissolved till his death on the 23rd of August, 1832. This long pastorate of Dr. Lee in Hanover extended almost sixty-four years. In a confession of faith of this church on May 2d, 1787, they adopted nearly the same as that of the Newent church, although there had been all along some divergent views in regard to covenants, which were binding in holding persons baptized in infancy on church rolls, etc., etc. Whether Dr. Lee was at first (as some suspected) lax in respect to theology, Rev. Levi Nelson, with good reason, said of him, 1849: "He left behind him, when he had finished his labors, a united orthodox church." http://www.vcnet.com/jfishell/hanover.html Aug. 12, 2004