Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Humphrey, Heman

HUMPHREY, Heman, clergyman, b. in West Simsbury, Conn., 26 March, 1779 ; d. in Pittsfield, Mass., 3 April, 1861. He taught to enable him to attend college, and was graduated at Yale in 1805. After studying theology under Timothy Dwight, he was pastor of the Congregational church at Fairfield, Conn.,in 1807-'17,in Pittsfield in 1817-'23,and president of Amherst in 1823-'45. Taking charge of that institution in its infancy, he contributed largely to its growth and prosperity, and impressed upon it much of his own character. He was one of the pioneers of the temperance reform in 1810, preached six sermons on intemperance, and in 1813 drew up a report to the Fairfield association of ministers, which is believed to be the first temperance tract that was published in the United States. Among the most celebrated of his tracts on this subject is his " Parallel between Intemperance and the Slave-Trade," which was also a formidable indictment of slavery. For fifty years he was a constant contributor to periodicals and literary journals. Middlebury gave him the degree of D. D. in 1823. He published " Essays on the Sabbath " (New York, 1830) ; " Tour in France, Great Britain, and Belgium " (1838) ; " Domestic Education " (Amherst, 1840) ; " Letters to a Son in the Ministry " (New York, 1842); "Life and Writings of Prof. Nathan W. Fiske " (1850) ; " Life and Writings of Thomas S. Gallaudet " (1857) ; and " Sketches and History of Revivals" (1859). — His son, Edward Porter, clergyman, b. in Fairfield, Conn., 28 Jan., 1809, was graduated at Amherst in 1828, and at the Andover theological seminary in 1833. He was tutor in Amherst in 1832-'3, ordained to the ministry in 1834, and for the next two years was pastor in Jefferson, Ind., and was called to the 2d Presbyterian church in Louisville, Ky., in 1836. He resigned this charge in 1853 to become professor of ecclesiastical history in the Presbyterian theological seminary in Danville, Ky., and remained there till 1866, when he became pastor of a Presbyterian church in Louisville. Since 1879 he has been pastor emeritus. In 1861 he was associate editor of the " Danville Review." — Another son, James, lawyer, b. in Fairfield, Conn., 9 Oct., 1811; d. in Brooklyn, N. Y., 17 June, 1866, was graduated at Amherst in 1831, studied law, and practised in Louisville, Ky., and afterward in New York city, lie removed to Brooklyn in 1848, was corporation counsel in 1850-'l, and in 1858 was elected to congress as a Republican. He served as a member of the committee on foreign affairs and the select committee on the seceding states. He was defeated for congress in 1860 and in 1862, but was re-elected in 1864, and was chairman of the committee on expenditures in the naval department.