Rev. Samuel Wait

*** Do not confuse with Samuel T. Wait IV; two different people**

• Married Sarah "Sally" Conant Merriam on June 9, 1818 in Sharon, Norfolk, Massachusetts
• Their children: Ann Eliza Waite Brewer and William Carey Waite
• Baptist minister
• First President of Wake Forest College, 1838-1845
• President of Oxford Female College, 1851-1857
• https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/51526275/samuel-wait
• https://wakespace.lib.wfu.edu/handle/10339/28121
• https://srmp.wfu.edu/to-stand-with-and-for-humanity/the-waits-women...

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• https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/wait-samuel

19 Dec. 1789–28 July 1867
A portrait of Samuel Wait (1789-1867). Image from Wake Forest University.

Samuel Wait, Baptist minister, educator, and college president, was born in White Creek, Washington County, N.Y., the son of Joseph and Martha Wait. During his youth the family moved near Middletown, Vt. A convert of the Second Great Revival, Wait prepared for the ministry and in 1816 accepted a call as minister of the Baptist Church in Sharon, Mass. There he married Sally Merriam of Brandon, Vt.

Believing that he needed additional study, in 1819 he began theological studies with Dr. William Staughton, first in Philadelphia and then at Columbian College (now George Washington University) in Washington, D.C. Due to their limited funds, Mrs. Wait remained in New England until 1822, when Wait was employed as a tutor at Columbian. For reasons that are unclear, he received an M.A. degree from Waterville College, Maine, in 1825. While in Washington, the Waits briefly considered being missionaries to the Orient but were dissuaded by her relatives. Eventually, mismanagement of Columbian's finances by Luther Rice, the school's treasurer and a pioneer Baptist missionary, led indirectly to Wait's subsequent move to North Carolina, which he also considered to be a mission field...

The Waits had two children: Ann Eliza, who married John Brewer, a Wake County merchant; and William Carey, who died in 1831 as an infant. Wait died in Forestville and was buried in Wake Forest. His portrait hangs in Reynolda Hall at Wake Forest University. A few months before Wait's death, a colleague assessed his impact in North Carolina: "You were always a working man. . . . Working men are rare. . . . If for the last 30 years we had had 50 such men as you, N.C. would have been a garden."