Author: Phelps, Samuel Merrick
Biography:
PHELPS, Samuel Merrick (1770-1841: WBIS)
Born in Suffield CT, he was the son of Lucy (Kent) and Samuel Phelps. He attended Yale (Class of 1795) but was already 22 when he entered. He left in his junior year and was not admitted to the degree until 1831. In the meantime he studied for the Presbyterian ministry and served different congregations: first in North Salem NY, where he married Eliza Wallace in 1801; then in Parsippany NJ, Ridgefield CT, and Fairfield CT. (His one other verse publication, a broadside ode for the Fourth of July in 1829, was written at Ridgefield.) The couple had a son and two daughters; the son graduated from NYU in 1848 and became a clergyman in Illinois. In 1829 Phelps was dismissed from his post. He returned to Parsippany and published two books in 1835 in an effort to raise money for the family, one of them his long poem and the other a collection of sermons. One of the endorsements in The Triumph of Divine Grace refers to him as an "aged and useful, and now a needy minister of Jesus Christ." He died from "lung fever" in Bridgeport CT, no doubt at the home of his married daughter Harriette (q.v.). (Dexter; ancestry.com 22 June 2020) HJ
Other Names:
- Samuel M. Phelps