Author: Wharton, Charles Henry
Biography:
WHARTON, Charles Henry (1748-1833: ancestry.com)
Most of the biographical information about Wharton, especially regarding his early years, stems from the "Memoir" by George Washington Doane, bishop of New Jersey, attached to his edition of Wharton's posthumous Remains. The son of Jesse and Anne (Bradford) Wharton, he was born in St. Mary's County MD and raised on the family plantation, Notley Hall. The family was Roman Catholic. In 1760 he went to the celebrated Jesuit College at St. Omer in France; when the Jesuits were expelled from France in 1762, the school removed to Bruges. He finished his education in the English college of the Jesuits in Liège and stayed on as a teacher of mathematics. In 1772 he was ordained priest. He was assigned the post of chaplain to the Catholics of Worcester in England. There, during the Revolutionary War, he wrote his Poetical Epistle to George Washington, which was reprinted in England for the benefit of American prisoners of war. In Worcester he began seriously to question his calling and eventually converted to Protestantism. Some time before June 10, 1783, he returned to Maryland. In the following year he published A Letter to the Roman Catholics of the City of Worcester, explaining his decision. (He later wrote A Concise View of the Principal Points of Controversy between the Protestant and Roman Churches [1817].) He became a leader in the Protestant Episcopal church, a prominent member of church committees and councils, founder of the Quarterly Theological Magazine(1813-17), and the longest-serving rector of St. Mary's in Burlington NJ (1798-1833). He was also briefly, in 1801, the President of Columbia College (now University) in New York. He married twice but had no children. His first wife, Mary Weems, died in 1798 and was the subject of his published Elegy. In 1799 he married Ann Kinsey (1771-1834). He died at home and is buried in St. Mary's churchyard. (ancestry.com 27 Jan. 2021; DAB; "Memoir" in Remains [1834]) HJ