This collection of quotes compiled by me originates from Wikipedia:
(bold emphasis mine)
John Adams - was an American statesman and Founding Father who served as the first Vice President (1789–1797) and second President of the United States (1797–1801). He was a lawyer, diplomat, political theorist, and a leader of the movement for American independence from Great Britain……Adams was raised a Congregationalist, since his ancestors were Puritans. According to biographer David McCullough, "as his family and friends knew, Adams was both a devout Christian, and an independent thinker, and he saw no conflict in that."
Alexander Hamilton - was an American statesman and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He was an influential interpreter and promoter of the U.S. Constitution, as well as the founder of the nation's financial system, the Federalist Party, the United States Coast Guard, and The New York Post newspaper. As the first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton was the main author of the economic policies of the George Washington administration. He took the lead in the funding of the states' debts by the Federal government, as well as the establishment of a national bank, a system of tariffs, and friendly trade relations with Britain. His vision included a strong central government led by a vigorous executive branch, a strong commercial economy, with a national bank and support for manufacturing, plus a strong military……As a youth in the West Indies, Hamilton was an orthodox and conventional Presbyterian of the "New Light" evangelical type (as opposed to the "Old Light" Calvinists); he was taught there by a student of John Witherspoon, a moderate of the New School.[207] He wrote two or three hymns, which were published in the local newspaper.[208] Robert Troup, his college roommate, noted that Hamilton was "in the habit of praying on his knees night and morning."
John Jay - was an American statesman, Patriot, diplomat, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, negotiator and signatory of the Treaty of Paris of 1783, second Governor of New York, and the first Chief Justice of the United States (1789–1795). He directed U.S. foreign policy for much of the 1780s and was an important leader of the Federalist Party after the ratification of the United States Constitution in 1788…..Jay was a member of the Church of England, and later of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America after the American Revolution. Since 1785, Jay had been a warden of Trinity Church, New York. As Congress's Secretary for Foreign Affairs, he supported the proposal after the Revolution that the Archbishop of Canterbury approve the ordination of bishops for the Episcopal Church in the United States.
John Witherspoon - was a Scottish-American Presbyterian minister and a Founding Father of the United States.[1] Witherspoon embraced the concepts of Scottish common sense realism, and while president of the College of New Jersey (1768–1794; now Princeton University), became an influential figure in the development of the United States' national character. Politically active, Witherspoon was a delegate from New Jersey to the Second Continental Congress and a signatory to the July 4, 1776, Declaration of Independence. He was the only active clergyman and the only college president to sign the Declaration.[2]Later, he signed the Articles of Confederation and supported ratification of the Constitution. In 1789 he was convening moderator of the First General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.
Robert Treat Paine -was a Massachusetts lawyer and politician, best known as a signer of the Declaration of Independence as a representative of Massachusetts. He served as the state's first attorney general, and served as an associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, the state's highest court….. Robert Treat Paine was a Congregationalist and a devout Christian.
William Williams - was a merchant, and a delegate for Connecticut to the Continental Congress in 1776, and a signatory of the Declaration of Independence. Williams was born in Lebanon, Connecticut, the son of a minister, Tim Solomon Williams, and Mary Porter. He studied theology and achieved law school from Harvard in 1751. He continued preparing for the ministry for a year, but then joined the militia to fight in the French and Indian War……Williams was also pastor of the First Congregational Church in Lebanon, Connecticut.
William Samuel Johnson - was born in Stratford, Connecticut, on October 7, 1727 to Samuel Johnson, a well-known Anglican clergyman and later president of King's (Columbia) College, and Johnson's first wife, Charity Floyd Nicoll. Johnson received his primary education at home. He then graduated from Yale College (see Yale info below) in 1744, going on to receive a master's degree from his alma mater in 1747 (as well as an honorary degree from Harvard the same year). Although Johnson's father urged him to enter the clergy, Johnson decided to pursue a legal career. Self-educated in law he quickly established various business connections. Johnson also held a commission in the Connecticut colonial militia for over 20 years, earning the rank of colonel. He also served in the lower house of the Connecticut legislature years 1761 and 1765.[2] He was also a member of the colonys supreme court years 1772–74. William Samuel Johnson, also attended the Stamp Act Congress in 1765 and served on the committee that addressed the King arguing the right of the colonies to decide tax policies for themselves.
Francis Hopkinson - designed the first official American flag, Continental paper money, and the first U.S. coin. He was an author, a composer, and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence in July 1776, as a delegate from New Jersey. He served in various roles in the early United States government including as a member of the Second Continental Congress and chairman of the Navy Board. He also later served as a federal district judge in Pennsylvania after the ratification of the Federal Constitution….. ..He also played organ at Philadelphia's Christ Church and composed or edited a number of hymns and psalms including: "A Collection of Psalm Tunes with a few Anthems and Hymns Some of them Entirely New, for the Use of the United Churches of Christ Church and St. Peter's Church in Philadelphia" (1763), "A psalm of thanksgiving, Adapted to the Solemnity of Easter: To be performed on Sunday, the 30th of March, 1766, at Christ Church, Philadelphia" (1766), and "The Psalms of David, with the Ten Commandments, Creed, Lord's Prayer, &c. in Metre" (1767). He was buried in Christ Church Burial Ground in Philadelphia.
Robert Morris, Jr. (January 20, 1734 – May 8, 1806) - a Founding Father of the United States, was an English-born American merchant who financed the American Revolution, oversaw the striking of the first coins of the United States,[1] and signed the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, and the United States Constitution. Along with Alexander Hamilton and Albert Gallatin, he is widely regarded as one of the founders of the financial system of the United States.
Morris worshiped in Philadelphia at St. Peter's Church on Pine Street and Christ Church on 2nd Street, both of which were run by his brother-in-law, Bishop William White. Morris remained a constant worshipper and supporter at this Anglican Church for his entire life. Both Morris and White are buried at Christ Church, Philadelphia in the churchyard located at Second and Market.[8] Because of the locations and reputations of Christ Church and St. Peter’s Church in Philadelphia, they served as places of worship for a number of the notable members of the Continental Congress, sometimes including George Washington.
Benjamin Rush (January 4, 1746 – April 19, 1813) was a Founding Father of the United States. Rush was a civic leader in Philadelphia, where he was a physician, politician, social reformer, humanitarian, and educator as well as the founder of Dickinson College. Rush attended the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence.[1] His later self-description there was: "He aimed right."[2][3] He served as Surgeon General of the Continental Army and became a professor of chemistry, medical theory, and clinical practice at the University of Pennsylvania.[4]
Rush advocated Christianity in public life and in education and sometimes compared himself to the prophet Jeremiah.[58] Rush regularly attended Christ Church in Philadelphia and counted William White among his closest friends (and neighbors). Ever the controversialist, Rush became involved in internal disputes over the revised Book of Common Prayer and the splitting of the Episcopal Church from the Church of England, as well as dabbled with Presbyterianism, Methodism (which split from Anglicanism in those years), and Unitarianism.[11]:312[18]:11–12, 16–17, 269–70, 322, 346 In a letter to John Adams, Rush described his religious views as "a compound of the orthodoxy and heterodoxy of most of our Christian churches."[59] Christian Universalists consider him one of their founders, although Rush stopped attending that church after the death of his friend, former Baptist pastor Elhanan Winchester in 1797.[60]
Rush fought for temperance,[11]:379–380 and both public and Sunday schools. He helped found the Bible Society at Philadelphia (now known as the Pennsylvania Bible Society),[61] and promoted the American Sunday School Union.[62] When many public schools stopped using the Bible as a textbook, Rush proposed that the U.S. government require such use, as well as furnish an American Bible to every family at public expense. In 1806, Rush proposed inscribing "The Son of Man Came into the World, Not To Destroy Men's Lives, But To Save Them."[63] above the doors of courthouses and other public buildings. Earlier, on July 16, 1776, Rush had complained to Virginia's Patrick Henry about a provision in that state's constitution of 1776 which forbade clergymen from serving in the legislature.[64]
Rush felt that the United States was the work of God: "I do not believe that the Constitution was the offspring of inspiration, but I am as perfectly satisfied that the Union of the United States in its form and adoption is as much the work of a Divine Providence as any of the miracles recorded in the Old and New Testament".[65]
John Morton - was a farmer, surveyor, and jurist from the Province of Pennsylvania and a Founding Father of the United States. As a delegate to the Continental Congress during the American Revolution, he was a signatory to the Continental Association and the United States Declaration of Independence. Morton provided the swing vote that allowed Pennsylvania to vote in favor of the United States Declaration of Independence. Morton chaired the committee that wrote the Articles of Confederation…..Morton was an active member of the Anglican Church in Chester County.
Thomas McKean (March 19, 1734 – June 24, 1817) was an American lawyer and politician from New Castle, in New Castle County, Delaware and Philadelphia. During the American Revolution he was a delegate to the Continental Congress where he signed the United States Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. McKean served as a President of Congress. He was at various times a member of the Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties. McKean served as President of Delaware, Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, and Governor of Pennsylvania.
Mary Borden was his first wife. They married in 1763, and lived at 22 The Strand in New Castle, Delaware. They had six children: Joseph, Robert, Elizabeth, Letitia, Mary, and Anne. Mary Borden McKean died in 1773 and is buried at Immanuel Episcopal Church in New Castle. Letitia McKean married Dr. George Buchanan and was the mother of CS Admiral Franklin Buchanan.
Sarah Armitage was McKean's second wife. They married in 1774, lived at the northeast corner of 3rd and Pine Streets in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and had four children, Sarah, Thomas, Sophia, and Maria. They were members of the New Castle Presbyterian Church in New Castle and the First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. McKean's daughter Sarah married Spanish diplomat Carlos Martínez de Irujo, 1st Marquis of Casa Irujo; their son, Carlos Martínez de Irujo y McKean, would later become Prime Minister of Spain.
George Washington - For his entire life, Washington was affiliated with the established Anglican Church of Great Britain. It was dis-established in Southern states following the Revolution and reorganized as the Episcopal Church. In 1762 Washington served as a vestryman and as church warden for both Fairfax Parish in Alexandria and Truro Parish, a post he maintained for twenty-two years.
Princeton University - New Light Presbyterians founded the College of New Jersey in 1746 in order to train ministers.[18] The college was the educational and religious capital of Scots-Irish America. In 1754, trustees of the College of New Jersey suggested that, in recognition of Governor Jonathan Belcher's interest, Princeton should be named as Belcher College. Belcher replied: "What a name that would be!"[19] In 1756, the college moved to Princeton, New Jersey. Its home in Princeton was Nassau Hall, named for the royal House of Orange-Nassau of William III of England.
Following the untimely deaths of Princeton's first five presidents, John Witherspoon became president in 1768 and remained in that office until his death in 1794. During his presidency, Witherspoon shifted the college's focus from training ministers to preparing a new generation for leadership in the new American nation. To this end, he tightened academic standards and solicited investment in the college. [20] Witherspoon's presidency constituted a long period of stability for the college, interrupted by the American Revolution and particularly the Battle of Princeton, during which British soldiers briefly occupied Nassau Hall; American forces, led by George Washington, fired cannon on the building to rout them from it.
In 1812, the eighth president the College of New Jersey, Ashbel Green (1812–23), helped establish the Princeton Theological Seminary next door.[21] The plan to extend the theological curriculum met with "enthusiastic approval on the part of the authorities at the College of New Jersey".[22] Today, Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary maintain separate institutions with ties that include services such as cross-registration and mutual library access.
Yale University - Yale traces its beginnings to "An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School", passed by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut on October 9, 1701, while meeting in New Haven. The Act was an effort to create an institution to train ministers and lay leadership for Connecticut. Soon thereafter, a group of ten Congregational ministers, Samuel Andrew, Thomas Buckingham, Israel Chauncy, Samuel Mather (brother of Increase Mather), Rev. James Noyes II (son of James Noyes), James Pierpont, Abraham Pierson, Noadiah Russell, Joseph Webb, and Timothy Woodbridge, all alumni of Harvard, met in the study of Reverend Samuel Russell in Branford, Connecticut, to pool their books to form the school's library.[15] The group, led by James Pierpont, is now known as "The Founders".[16]
Originally known as the "Collegiate School", the institution opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson, today considered the first president of Yale. Pierson lived in Killingworth (now Clinton). The school moved to Saybrook and then Wethersfield. In 1716, it moved to New Haven, Connecticut.
Meanwhile, there was a rift forming at Harvard between its sixth president, Increase Mather, and the rest of the Harvard clergy, whom Mather viewed as increasingly liberal, ecclesiastically lax, and overly broad in Church polity. The feud caused the Mathers to champion the success of the Collegiate School in the hope that it would maintain the Puritan religious orthodoxy in a way that Harvard had not.
Harvard University - Harvard was established in 1636 by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1638, it acquired British North America's first known printing press.[31][32] In 1639, it was named Harvard College after deceased clergyman John Harvard, an alumnus of the University of Cambridge, who had left the school £779 and his scholar's library of some 400 volumes.[33] The charter creating the Harvard Corporation was granted in 1650.
A 1643 publication gave the school's purpose as "to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust";[34] in its early years trained many Puritan ministers.[35] It offered a classic curriculum on the English university model—many leaders in the colony had attended the University of Cambridge—but conformed to the tenets of Puritanism. It was never affiliated with any particular denomination, but many of its earliest graduates went on to become clergymen in Congregational and Unitarian churches.[36]
The New England Primer was the first reading primer designed for the American Colonies. It became the most successful educational textbook published in 17th century colonial United States and it became the foundation of most schooling before the 1790s.
In the 17th century, the schoolbooks in use had been Bibles brought over from England. By 1690, Boston publishers were reprinting the English Protestant Tutor under the title of The New England Primer. The Primer included additional material that made it widely popular with colonial schools until it was supplanted by Noah Webster's Blue Back Speller after 1790.
Many of its selections were drawn from the King James Bible and others were original. It embodied the dominant Puritan attitude and worldview of the day. Among the topics discussed are respect to parental figures, sin, and salvation. Some versions contained the Westminster Shorter Catechism; others contained John Cotton's shorter catechism, known as Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes; and some contained both.
David H. Watters argues that the Primer was built on rote memorization, the Puritans' distrust of uncontrolled speech, and their preoccupation with childhood depravity. By simplifying Calvinist theology the Primer enabled the Puritan child to define the "self" by relating his life to the authority of God and his parents.[2] Emory Elliott argues that the Primer was part of the transformation that turned Puritans away from an angry and wrathful God the Father to the embrace of the gentle and loving Jesus Christ.[3] Both of these notions, of course, reflect modern worldviews and perspectives, and cannot be assumed to speak accurately on behalf of the seventeenth century Puritans.
Noah Webster Jr. (October 16, 1758 – May 28, 1843) was an American lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English-language spelling reformer, political writer, editor, and prolific author. He has been called the "Father of American Scholarship and Education". His blue-backed speller books taught five generations of American children how to spell and read. Webster's name has become synonymous with "dictionary" in the United States, especially the modern Merriam-Webster dictionary that was first published in 1828 as An American Dictionary of the English Language.
Webster in early life was something of a freethinker, but in 1808 he became a convert to Calvinistic orthodoxy, and thereafter became a devout Congregationalist who preached the need to Christianize the nation.[47]
