Author: Cleavland, Benjamin
Biography:
CLEAVLAND, Benjamin (1733-1811: findmypast.com)
Born in Windham CT, he was the son of Benjamin and Ann or Anne Cleveland--a spelling that is found in most of the official records about him (and on his gravestone) but not on his title-pages, which use Cleavland or Cleaveland. He married Mary Elderkin (1735-83) at Windham in 1754 and they went on to have twelve children, most of them born in Horton (now Wolfville), Nova Scotia, where the family emigrated to in 1759. Taking over lands vacated by the Acadians in the Great Expulsion, Cleavland became a farmer, a cabinet-maker, and a deacon in the Horton Baptist Church. After the death of his first wife he returned briefly to New England to marry his second, Sarah Hibbert or Hibbard (1739-1835), in Scotland CT in 1784. He died in Wolfville and is buried with both wives in the Old Burying Ground there. His hymns were first collected and printed by John Trumbull in 1786 in Norwich CT: details of the first edition are on record, but no extant copy has been found. John Sterry of Norwich, who was also a Baptist minister, included some of Cleavland's hymns in an enlarged edition of Joshua Smith's Divine Hymns (1799) later reprinted by Trumbull. (findmypast.com 17 Jan. 2021; findagrave.com 17 Jan. 2021; WorldCat; Henry S. Burrage, Baptist Hymn Writers [1888] 223-5) HJ