14 Facts About Sylvester Judd

Sylvester Judd was a Unitarian minister and an American novelist.

Sylvester Judd III was born on July 23,1813, in Westhampton, Massachusetts to Sylvester Judd II and Apphia Hall, a daughter of Aaron Hall of Norwich, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, a one-year attendee at Harvard, and later modest justice of the peace.

Sylvester Judd's great-grandfather was Rev Jonathan Judd, a clergyman of Southampton, while his grandfather ran the family store.

Sylvester Judd III studied at Hopkins Academy in Hadley, Massachusetts, where he was president of the Literary Society and delivered the valedictorian address.

Sylvester Judd graduated from Yale College in 1836, and from Harvard Divinity School in 1840.

Sylvester Judd's dissertation was entitled The Uses of Intellectual Philosophy to the Preacher.

Sylvester Judd may have been in the audience on August 31,1837, and heard Emerson's commencement speech to the Phi Beta Kappa Society known as "The American Scholar".

Sylvester Judd was ordained a Unitarian minister on October 1,1840, becoming pastor of a church in Augusta, Maine.

Sylvester Judd was a member of the Maine Peace Society which was anti-war and sought justice through a World Court.

Early in 1841, Sylvester Judd met Jane Elizabeth Williams, the daughter of United States Senator Reuel Williams.

Sylvester Judd's third daughter was born two months after his death.

Sylvester Judd's readings included the poetry of Jones Very, the writings of Thomas Carlyle, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Robert Owen, Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Goethe's Conversations with a Child by Bettina von Arnim, and the writings of the foremost Unitarian ministers of their day, William Ellery Channing and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Sylvester Judd said, 'I'm a priest and converse with the sick and dying.

Sylvester Judd wrote a large number of sermons and religious addresses.