Person:Ebenezer Thompson (7)

Dexter's Sketch of the Life of Rev. Ebenezer Thompson

"Ebenezer Thompson, a posthumous son of Joseph and Elizabeth (Smith) Thompson, of West Haven, and grandson of Lieutenant John and Rebekah (Daniel) Thompson, of New Haven, was born in New Haven, June 21, 1712.

He remained in New Haven for some years after graduation, and was here married to Esther, daughter of Thomas and Amy (Smith) Stevens, March 20, 1733-34, and had born here three children,—the latest in July, 1739. On July 7, 1734, he received the communion for the first time in the Church of England in Stratford.

He is next heard of in Simsbury, Connecticut, where he was officiating in 1740 as lay-reader to the resident families of the Church of England.

In the summer of 1743 he went to England for orders, and at the same time the clergy in Connecticut asked that he might be appointed to a mission in Derby and Oxford in that Colony; but as he had a young family to support, the Venerable Society thought fit to give him a better position pecuniarily, in the mission at Scituate, Massachusetts, with an annual allowance of £40. He arrived at Scituate at the close of the year 1743, and remained until his death; as his mission also included the neighboring towns, he was in the habit of holding occasional services in Marshfield, Bridgewater, Plymouth, etc. With the approach of the Revolution his position became uncomfortable, as he remained loyal to the crown. His death occurred, in Scituate, after a long and painful illness, November 28, 1775; the Rev. Dr. Caner, of Boston, reports to the Secretary of the Venerable Society that

'it is said that his death was owing partly to bodily disorder and partly to some uncivil treatment from the rebels in his neighborhood.'

Another clerical neighbor, the Rev. Edward Winslow, of Braintree, writes:

'No clergyman of the Church maintained his character with more dignity and fidelity, and I am persuaded it was in no small degree owing to the difficulties he had to struggle with from the rage of our distracted times, that the Church was deprived of so exemplary a Minister and the Venerable Society of so valuable a Servant and Minister, when to human appearance our hopes seemed to be encouraged of his longer continuance.'

His widow survived until July 27, 1813, when she died, in Scituate, in her 99th year. Of their nine or ten children, but one son survived his father. The youngest daughter married the Rev. William W. Wheeler (Harv. 1755), her father's successor in the rectorship of the church in Scituate.

One of Mr. Thompson's later successors (the Rev. Samuel Cutler) testifies (1848) that he 'is spoken of as a prudent, worthy minister, pleasing and interesting in his conversation and general deportment.'"^[4]

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3} Thompson, in Jacobus, Donald Lines. Families of Ancient New Haven. (Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1974)
   7:1754.

   "Ebenezer (Thompson), b 21 June 1712 (New Haven Vital Records), d 28 Nov 1775 (Scituate, Mass.; B.A. (Yale 1733); Rev."

2. ↑ ^2.0 2.1 Foster, F. Apthorp. Vital Records of Scituate, Massachusetts to the Year 1850. (Boston, Mass: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1909)
   2:450.

   "Thompson, … Ebenezer, Rev. [h. Esther], [died] Nov. 28,1775, in 64th y. (gravestone record, Church Hill Cemetery, Norwell)"

3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3} Rev Ebenezer Thompson, in Find A Grave.
4. ↑ Dexter, Franklin Bowditch. Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College With Annals of the College History. (New York / New Haven: Holt / Yale University Press, 1885-1912)
   1:491-93.