Author: Stearns, Charles
Biography:
STEARNS, Charles (1753-1826: ancestry.com)
The son of Lydia (Mansfield) and Thomas Stearns, born in Leominster MA, he graduated from Harvard in 1773 and studied theology while teaching school and tutoring at Harvard. In 1781 he was ordained pastor of the Unitarian church at Lincoln MA, where he stayed for the rest of his life. In the same year he married Susanna Cowdry of Reading MA; they went on to have twelve children. Besides his work as a respected priest, he was Principal of the Liberal School, a coeducational school in Lincoln founded in 1793; after it closed in 1808, he carried on teaching as a private tutor. For the school he wrote thirty short original plays, Dramatic Dialogues for the Use of Schools (1798). His other publications are occasional sermons and Principles of Religion and Morality (1798, reprinted). In 1810 he was granted a DD from Harvard. He died in Lincoln and is buried in the Town Hill Cemetery. (ancestry.com 19 Oct. 2020; findagrave.com 19 Oct. 2020; Appleton)