Person:Asa Burton (1)

As a teenager, Asa Burton moved with his family from Connecticut to be some of the early settlers in Vermont along the Connecticut River. He attended Dartmouth in its early years, graduating in 1777. In 1779, he began his ministry at the newly formed Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, a post he would continue for the remaining fifty-seven years of his life. He had a lifelong active interest in education, training some five or six dozen men for the ministry himself, and was instrumental in establishing the Thetford Academy.

ASA BURTON Was born at Stonington, Conn., August 25, 1752, and was the sixth of the thirteen children of Jacob Burton. His parents removed to Preston, Conn., when he was about one year old. Here his childhood was mostly spent under the ministry of Reverend Doctor Levi Hart. In his fourteenth year his father removed to Norwich. From that time till he was twenty years of age, his work was "to fell trees, c.ut them into logs, and then by hand roll them with levers into heaps to burn them, and help carry logs to make into log fences, as they had no oxen for two or three years." By these severe labors his health was much impaired, and he resolved, if possible, to get an education. This his father opposed but his mother favored. Loading...Loading... of Latin and on his twenty-first birthday he was admitted to Dartmouth College. The same autumn (1772) a malignant fever entered his father's family and his mother, a brother, and two sisters died within a few weeks. His father was so much embarrassed by the expenses of this sickness and the death of his son, whose assistance he had greatly depended on, that he thought it necesary to remove Asa from college, and visited the president of the college for the purpose of procuring his dismission. After a long interview the president persuaded the father to allow him to continue his studies, which the son was only too happy to do. He was a hard student in College. He says of himself: "I pursued my studies with greediness through a college course. I was always inclined to go, as we say, to the bottom of everything. Though I knew not what was meant by first principles in a science, yet I now see lhat it was my desire to trace everything back to first principles. ' ' At college he excelled in mental and moral philosophy, and especially in English composition. After graduation he spent a few months in the study of theology with Doctor Hart of Preston, Conn., and preached occasionally in various towns in Vermont and Connecticut until January, 1779, when he was settled over the church in Thetford, Vt., where he spent the remainder of his life. His success here. was marked in building up from what he regarded as very unpromising material, a large and flourishing church. At the time of his ordination the church numbered only sixteen members, and when he preached his half century sermon in 1859, four hundred and ninety members had been added and three hundred and twenty were still members. His ""Essays," published in 1824, bad a slow sale and their publication proved a pecuniary loss to him. He began taking students in divinity into his family in 1796, and continued doing so until 1816. During this period he had constantly from two to four students under his charge. About sixty young men were prepared for the ministry under his instruction, many of whom became able and successful ministers.

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