Samuel Merrick Phelps

Rev Samuel Merr1ck Phelps b Suffield CT 19 July 1770 m. Eliza Wallace at North Salem NY b 27 Feb 1781 d Lee Centre Ill 29 May 1857. Mr Phelps graduated at Yale 1795 studied divinity and settled in North Salem NY in the Presbyterian Church also installed June 1817 at Ridgefield CT and dismissed Dec 31 1829. He died at Hartford Ct 26 Dec 1841.

Children b North Salem NY:

1. Sarah Marianna b 17 Apr 1803 m Joseph C Lewis
2. Harriett Eliza b 7 June 1807 m Eli Gilbert
3. Samuel Wallace b 10 Sept 1820 m Caroline M Thompson

• The Phelps Family of America, page 310

Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College with Annals of the College History: June 1792-September 1805 (Google eBook) Franklin Bowditch Dexter H. Holt and Company, 1911

http://books.google.com/books?id=JgcbAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA158&dq=%22Lucy+K...

Samuel Merrick Phelps, the only child of Samuel and Lucy (Kent) Phelps, of Suffield, Connecticut, and a nephew of Seth Phelps (Yale 1760), was born in Suffield on July 19, 1770. His mother was probably the youngest daughter of Dudley and Ruth (Woodbridge) Kent, of Suffield.

He entered College in May of the Freshman year, when nearly 22 years old, being then a resident of Springfield, Massachusetts; and left the Class in the spring of the Junior year, but was admitted to his degree in 1831.

After leaving College he studied theology, and supplied the Presbyterian Church in North Salem, Westchester County, New York, for a year or more about 1801; he there married Eliza Wallace, a native of that town.

In the summer of 1804 he began preaching to the Presbyterian Church in Parsippany, Morris County, New Jersey, and was unanimously called to the pastorate there on September 17. He was soon after installed over that church, and continued as pastor until the summer of 1815. He had previously (in January, 1814) asked for a dismission, having learned of some dissatisfaction at his attitude in regard to political questions; but the great preponderance of sentiment in the parish in his favor led him to withdraw for the time his request.

On February 2, 1817, he was called to settle over the Congregational Church in Ridgefield, Connecticut, only six miles distant from his former field of service in North Salem. On his acceptance of the call the Fairfield West Consociation was convened to install him on March 20; but that body, because of a proviso that the relation might be terminated at six months' notice, declined to act, and he was finally installed in June by members of the Westchester (N. Y.) Presbytery.

After a pastorate of twelve and a half years he was dismissed by the Presbytery on December 31, 1829.

In 1835, when he published two volumes, he had recently retired from the active work of the ministry, and was living in his old parish of Parsippany.

He died in Bridgeport, Connecticut, from lung fever, on December 26, 1841, aged 713/2 years.

His children were two daughters and a son. The latter was graduated from the New York University in 1848, and became a clergyman. Mrs. Phelps died at his house, in Lee Centre, Illinois, on May 29, 1857, in her 77th year.

He published:

1. Sermons on Christian Doctrines, Experience, and Practice. New-York, 1835. 12°, pp. 310. [Y. C.

A prefatory notice, dated at Parsippany, March 21, 1835, explains the author's motives in printing the volume. He was then without stated employment. There are twenty-seven sermons in the collection.

2. The Triumphs of Divine Grace, a Poem..—To which are added, Promiscuous Pieces, by Harriette E. Phelps. New-York, 1835. 120, pp. 132. [Y. C.

The poem is in blank verse. The last few pages contain poems by the author's younger daughter.

AUTHORITIES.

C. C. Parker, Historical Sermons ily, i, 186, 308. Pres. Stiles, Literary in Parsippany, 16-17. Phelps Fam- Diary, iii, 451.