Jesse G. Stearns

The Rev. Jesse George Davis Stearns (1812 to 1882) was the pastor of the Congregational Church in Billerica for twenty-four years, from 1843 to 1867, and for much of that time was also a member of the town's School Committee and the head of its schools. He was born on February 24, 1812, the eldest child of Jesse Stearns and Lucinda Davis of New Ipswich, New Hampshire, where the family lived after 1819 and where his father taught school for 22 years. His grandfather Isaac Stearns, a sergeant in the Revolution, had settled in Ashburnham, and his great-grandfather was the Billerica merchant and legislator Isaac Stearns. Hazen's genealogical register records a family given to the ministry and to missions: his brother Josiah Milton Stearns was a minister in Vermont and New Hampshire, and his sisters Abigail Mary and Lucy Estabrook, both graduates of Mount Holyoke, married missionaries to China.

He graduated from Amherst College in 1836 and from Andover Theological Seminary in 1842; he was principal of Hopkins Academy in Hadley from 1836 to 1838 and a tutor at Amherst from 1839 to 1841. In May 1843 he was ordained pastor of the Congregational Church on Andover Street, the church formed by members who would not follow the First Church into Unitarianism, whose meeting-house had been dedicated in 1830, and on June 27, 1843, he married Lucy Murdock of Rutland, Massachusetts. Henry A. Hazen, who later held the same pulpit, wrote that "the long and faithful pastorate of Mr. Stearns deserves especial recognition," and described him as "a scholar of exceptional diligence and culture, modest and devout, and active in every good word and work." He also kept "a useful private school."

He served on the School Committee in 1853 and 1854, in 1861 and 1862, and from 1864 to 1866, and Hazen says that for a number of years he had charge of the town's schools. The committee's report for 1853-54, signed by Amos Spalding, Stearns and Augustus Mason, closed with a long address to parents on their duty to their children, and the report for 1861-62, which he signed with the Universalist minister George Proctor and Daniel Floyd, brought Colburn's Mental Arithmetic back into the schools, since the Howe School would no longer admit pupils who had not learned it. In 1864 he represented the district in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

He was dismissed from the Billerica pastorate on May 8, 1867, and from 1868 to 1876 he was acting pastor of the church at Clearwater, Minnesota. He then retired from pastoral work and made his home at Zumbrota, Minnesota. In 1877 he published a book of 287 pages, The Meaning and Power of Baptism, which grew out of a sermon and a review he had published earlier. His wife died on October 31, 1881, aged 63, and he died at Zumbrota on November 1, 1882, "a year and a day" later. Hazen, whose history was then in the press, added a tribute: "Not the members of his own spiritual flock only, but those of other folds, and all the citizens of the town, esteemed him," and "Billerica will hold his memory in honor."

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 141, STEARNS 8 (Jesse G. D. Stearns, grandson of Isaac Stearns)
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 271: Congregational Church ministers; Jesse G. D. Stearns ordained 1843, May 29, dismissed 1867, May 8; his long and faithful pastorate
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 305, list of representatives: Rev. Jesse G. D. Stearns, 1864
4. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), In Memoriam: Rev. Jesse G. D. Stearns died at his home in Zumbrota, Minnesota, 1882, Nov. 1; his wife died Oct. 31, 1881
5. Billerica Town Report 1865: paid Rev. J. G. D. Stearns, School Committee, $40.00