Nathaniel Whitman

Born	1785-12-25 East Bridgewater, MA
Died	1869-10-29 Deerfield, MA
Minister of the First Parish
In Office	1814 - 1835

Nathaniel Whitman (1785-1869), fifth minister of Billerica and the last colleague of Henry Cumings, was born in East Bridgewater on December 25, 1785, one of the many children of Deacon John Whitman, a descendant of John Whitman of Weymouth. Two younger brothers, Bernard and Jason, also became Unitarian ministers. His father gave his sons "their time" at sixteen, and Nathaniel earned his way to college by labor, school teaching and loans, with help from his sister Bathsheba. He entered Harvard College in 1805 and graduated in 1809, spent two years at Phillips Academy in Exeter as an assistant instructor while beginning the study of theology with Rev. Joseph Buckminster of Portsmouth, and in 1811 and 1812 was a tutor at Bowdoin College, which later gave him the honorary degree of A.M. He finished his theological studies at Cambridge and in May 1813 was approbated to preach by the Boston Association of ministers.

On November 1, 1813, Billerica voted to invite him to settle as colleague of the aged Dr. Cumings, with $1,000 as a settlement and a salary of $500. He was ordained on January 26, 1814, the fifty-first anniversary of Dr. Cumings's own ordination, before a great assembly: Rev. Ezra Ripley of Concord was moderator of the council, President Kirkland of Harvard offered the introductory prayer, Rev. James Flint preached, Dr. Cumings gave the charge and Rev. Samuel Stearns of Bedford the right hand of fellowship. The old minister received him with great cordiality and the two became warm friends; when Dr. Cumings died in 1823 Whitman preached his funeral sermon and remained sole pastor for twelve years. In May 1814 he married Sarah Holman, daughter of General Silas Holman of Bolton. Their children, born in Billerica, included Henry Cumings Whitman, later a lawyer and judge in Ohio.

Hazen described him as a good preacher and an active pastor. He established a Bible Society, a Peace Society and the first Sunday School in town, and used his influence to improve the common schools. His brother Bernard and sister Bathsheba kept a private school in a hall of the old hotel and in 1820 took charge of the new Billerica Academy, of which Nathaniel was one of the first trustees. His pastorate fell in the years of the Unitarian separation. The church, with substantial unanimity, accepted the liberal views under his lead, and he protested against the efforts to establish another church in town in a printed fast-day sermon. When he was criticized for refusing to exchange pulpits with Universalist ministers, he defended himself in his farewell sermon by quoting the church covenant on "a final Judgment, and of a future state of Retributions."

The town collected Whitman's salary by taxation until 1834, when the usual article in the warrant was passed over and never inserted again; the parish then raised somewhat less than the $700 he had been paid. He stayed a year longer and was dismissed in the spring of 1835. He was installed over the church at Wilton, New Hampshire, on October 5, 1836, and left in 1841, the year his wife died there; his son recalled that his vote as a Whig in 1840 had caused ill feeling in the parish. In 1842 he married Abby Pollard, daughter of Deacon Amory Pollard of Bolton. He preached to the Unitarian society at Calais, Maine, until May 1844, and in July 1844 was installed in his native East Bridgewater, where he stayed until 1852.

His children then persuaded him to retire and bought him a house with a garden at Deerfield, Massachusetts, where he kept up his studies, wrote a sermon most weeks and in his last summer read Plato to his son in the original Greek. He died at Deerfield on October 29, 1869.

Nathaniel Whitman

Nathaniel Whitman

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