WILLIAM RUSSELL was born in Middletown, Connecticut, November 20, 1690. He was the eldest child of the Rev. Noadiah Russel (Harv. Coll. 1681), the minister of Middletown and one of the first Trustees of this College, by his wife Mary, daughter of the Hon. Giles Hamlin, of Middletown. His younger brother Daniel graduated here in 1724.
He studied theology with his father, and became a tutor in this College in September, 1713. But on the 3d of the following December his father died, and he was soon invited to succeed him ; he retained his tutorship till the close of the College year, and was ordained in Middletown, June 1, 1715,-the officiating clergymen being Timothy Stevens (Harv. Coll. 1687), of Glastonbury, Thomas Buckingham (Harv. Coll. 1690), of Hartford, Stephen Mix (Harv. Coll. 1690), of Wethersfield, and Nathaniel Chauncey (Y. C. 1702), of Durham.
After a peaceful ministry of forty-six years, he died, in Middletown, on the anniversary of his ordination, June 1, 1761, in his 71st year.
He married, August 19, 1719, Mary, eldest daughter of the Rev. James Pierpont (Harv. Coll. 1681), of New Haven, by his third wife, Mary, daughter of the Rev. Samuel Hooker, of Farmington. She was born November 23, 1702, and died July 24, 1740. Their family consisted of four sons and five daughters. Besides the Rev. William Russell (Y. C. 1745) and the Rev. Noadiah Russell (Y. C. 1750), one son and four daughters survived him. Descendants of the name in direct line (five generations in all) have been graduated at the College.
During the vacancy in the headship of the College, caused by the removal of Rector Cutler, Mr. Russell was one of several to whom the position was offered. The Trustees voted, May 21, 1724, that in case Professor Edward Wigglesworth of Harvard College cannot be obtained as Rector, Mr. Russell be desired to accept the place, but no further account of the effort is on record. In September, 1745, he was chosen one of the Fellows of the College, and so continued until his death. His tombstone describes him as “a man of God, eminent for wisdom, prudence, and morality.”
His theological sympathies were with the “Old Lights,” yet Whitefield, who spent a night at his house in 1740, wrote in his Journal: “Mr. Russel I think an Israelite indeed, and one who has been long mourning over the Deadness of Professors. . . . Was much pleased with the Simplicity of my Host, and the Order wherein his children attended on Family Devotions.” -
In 1758, at the time of the controversy caused by the settlement of the Rev. James Dana (Harv. Coll. 1753) in Wallingford, Mr. Russell took a prominent part in the action of the ministers of Hartford and New Haven Counties; and in this connection the Rev. Dr. Trumbull characterizes him as a “gentleman of great respectability, for knowledge, experience, moderation, and for pacific measures on all occasions."
He published:—
The Decay of Love to God in Churches, Offensive and Dangerous, shewed in a Sermon [from Rev. ii, 4] Preach'd before the General Assembly of the Colony of Connecticut, May 14, 1730. N. London, 1731. 16°, pp. ii, 48.
[C. H. S. Harv. Y. C.
AUTHORITIES.
Boyd, Hist. of Winchester, Conn., 291.
Congregational Quarterly, xii, 541.
Field, Statistical Account of Middlesex County, 44; and Centennial Address at Middletown, 56.
Savage, Geneal. Dict., iii, 593.
R. D. Smyth, College Courant, August 15, 1868, 99.
F. F. Starr, M.S. letter, June 2, 1883.
Trumbull, Hist. of Conn., ii, 496.
Whitefield, Continuation of his Journal in New-England (Boston, 1741), 88.
