Gideon Hawley
Encyclopedia
Gideon Hawley was a missionary
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...

 to the Iroquois
Iroquois
The Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an association of several tribes of indigenous people of North America...

 Indians
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

 in Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

 and on the Susquehanna River
Susquehanna River
The Susquehanna River is a river located in the northeastern United States. At long, it is the longest river on the American east coast that drains into the Atlantic Ocean, and with its watershed it is the 16th largest river in the United States, and the longest river in the continental United...

 in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

.

Biography

He was born in the Stratfield
Bridgeport, Connecticut
Bridgeport is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. Located in Fairfield County, the city had an estimated population of 144,229 at the 2010 United States Census and is the core of the Greater Bridgeport area...

 section of Stratford, now Bridgeport, Connecticut, in New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

 on November 5, 1727. The son of Gideon Hawley and Hannah Bennett who was the daughter of Lieutenant James Bennett. Hawley's mother died at his birth and his father died three years later. He was the grandson of Ephraim and Sarah (Welles) Hawley
Ephraim Hawley House
The Ephraim Hawley House, located in New England, is a Colonial American wooden post-and-beam timber-frame farm house built between 1670 and 1690...

 from Trumbull
Trumbull, Connecticut
Trumbull, a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut in the New England region of the United States, is bordered by the towns of Monroe, Shelton, Stratford, Bridgeport, Fairfield and Easton along Connecticut's Gold Coast. The population was 36,018 according to the 2010 census.Family Circle magazine...

. He was the great grandson of Joseph Hawley (Captain)
Joseph Hawley (Captain)
Joseph Hawley , born in Parwich, Derbyshire, England, was the first of the Hawley name to come to America in 1629. He settled at Stratford, Connecticut in 1650, becoming the town's first town clerk or record keeper, tavern keeper and a shipbuilder.-Surname:The surname of Hawley is one of locality...

, first of the Hawley name to come to America in 1629, and was twice great grandson of Thomas Welles
Thomas Welles
Thomas Welles is the only man in Connecticut's history to hold all four top offices: governor, deputy governor, treasurer, and secretary. In 1639, he was elected as the first treasurer of the Colony of Connecticut, and from 1640–1649 served as the colony's secretary...

 Governor of the Colony of Connecticut. He married Lucy Fessenden, second daughter of Reverend Benjamin Fessenden (Harvard 1718) and Rebecca (Smith) Fessenden, of Sandwich. They had three sons and two daughter's. Lucy died December 25, 1777 at 50. Gideon married again to Mrs. Elizabeth Burchard, widow of Captain David Burchard of Nantucket, on October 7, 1778.

Religious Education

Hawley graduated from Yale
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

 in 1749. He was licensed to preach in May 1750. In 1752, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts
Stockbridge, Massachusetts
Stockbridge is a town in Berkshire County in Western Massachusetts. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 1,947 at the 2010 census...

, he accepted a position with the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians, under the supervision of Jonathan Edwards who was a preacher to the whites and the Housatonic Indians in Stockbridge. Hawley taught Mohawk, Oneida, and Tuscarora Indians there, with Edwards occasionally visiting to give advice.

Missionary to the Indians

In 1753, Hawley accepted a position from the commissioners of Indian affairs to establish a mission among the Six Nations at the town of Oquaga on the Susquehanna, near what is now Windsor, New York
Windsor, New York
Windsor, New York may refer to:* Windsor , New York in Broome County* Windsor , New York, which lies within the Town of WindsorThere is also a town of New Windsor in Orange County, New York....

, in the area where another Yale graduate, Rev. Elihu Spencer
Elihu Spencer
Elihu Spencer was a Yankee clergyman who served as a chaplain during the French and Indian War. During the American Revolution, he was invited to North Carolina by that colony's provincial congress to convince loyalist congregations to join the patriot cause.Spencer was born in East Haddam,...

, had made an unsuccessful attempt at ministry in the late 1740s. Hawley left for the site in 1754. Besides acting as a missionary, Hawley also acted as an interpreter at this post.

French and Indian War

The French and Indian War
French and Indian War
The French and Indian War is the common American name for the war between Great Britain and France in North America from 1754 to 1763. In 1756, the war erupted into the world-wide conflict known as the Seven Years' War and thus came to be regarded as the North American theater of that war...

 did not affect his mission until 1756, when he was forced to leave. He then went to Boston and joined the army as chaplain of Colonel Richard Gridley
Richard Gridley
Richard Gridley was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the son of Richard Gridley and Rebecca Scarborough. He was a soldier and engineer who served for the British Army during the French and Indian Wars and for the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.He married Hannah Deming...

's regiment, and attempted after this campaign to return to the Iroquois
Iroquois
The Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an association of several tribes of indigenous people of North America...

 mission, but the enterprise proved too hazardous. He spent the winter in West Springfield, Massachusetts
West Springfield, Massachusetts
The Town of West Springfield is a city in Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 28,391 at the 2010 census...

 and tried to rejoin his mission in the spring of 1757, but an outbreak of small pox there prevented him from returning. The commissioners of the Society for propagating the gospel appointed him pastor of the Indian tribes at Mashpee, Massachusetts
Mashpee, Massachusetts
Mashpee is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 14,006 as of 2010.For geographic and demographic information on specific parts of the town of Mashpee, please see the articles on Mashpee Neck, Monomoscoy Island, New Seabury, Popponesset, Popponesset Island,...

, where he was installed in April 1758 and remained as a missionary until his death in 1807.

Reverend Timothy Dwight IV

Timothy Dwight IV
Timothy Dwight IV
Timothy Dwight was an American academic and educator, a Congregationalist minister, theologian, and author...

in his Travels in New England and New York, writes about his visit with Hawley on October 2, 1800 and his correspondence with him afterward. Dwight wrote that after dinner he went to Hawley's house to visit and had an interview, "more interesting than words can describe" with Hawley. Dwight had not seen Hawley since he was a young man of eighteen. Dwight writes; "this gentleman was a most intimate friend of my parents. From his youth he had sustained as amiable and unexceptionable a character as can perhaps be found among uninspired men". During this visit in 1800, Gideon's son James was on his death bed. Hawley wrote to Dwight on April, 29, 1801 to tell him of the death of his son James, eight days after his visit. He wrote to Dwight again on September 21, 1802 and both letters are published in Dwight's work, published posthumously in London in 1823.
  • His gravestone reads:

Gideon Hawley 1807

In memory of

Rev Gideon Hawley who was

born at Stratford, Connecticut, Nov 5 O S 1727

graduated at Yale College 1749

ordained in Boston July 31, 1754

a missionary to the Indians at

Onohaguage or the Six Nations

installed at Mashpee April 10, 1758

died Oct'r 3 1807 AEt 80

There the wicked cease from troubling

and the weary are at rest

External links

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