Jacob Bailey (author)
Jacob Bailey (16 April 1731 – 26 July 1808) was an author and clergyman of the Church of England, active in New England and Nova Scotia.
Biography
[edit]Bailey was born in Rowley, Massachusetts, and was educated at Harvard College, ranked at the bottom (by social order) of the class of 1755, which notably also included John Adams. He started his career in the ministry as a Congregational preacher in New Hampshire but converted and became an Anglican clergyman in 1760, through his connection with Dr. Silvester Gardiner, a prominent Massachusetts physician, businessman, and landowner. Gardiner, also Anglican, sought a minister to serve the rural parish of Frankfort or Pownalborough (now Dresden, Maine, but then part of Massachusetts), which was part of the lands his business partnership, the Kennebec Proprietors, oversaw. Bailey's congregation was a mix of mainly German Lutheran and French Huguenot immigrants, who were often at odds on matters of religion with the area's Yankee Congregationalists.
Despite continuing friction with the local Congregationalists, Bailey was able to build a church and parsonage in 1770-1771. Hostilities towards Bailey continued, especially when he continued to profess Loyalty to the British Crown, and he moved with his family to Nova Scotia in 1779, after American Patriots twice made attempts on his life.[1][2] He served in the parish of Cornwallis for a period and then moved to Annapolis Royal where he remained for the rest of his life.
In 1780, Rev. Bailey was appointed the Deputy Chaplain to the 84th Regiment.[3]
Poet
[edit]It is through his writings that Bailey's place in Canadian history was assured. His poetry was widely known and his verse satire was considered to be styled like that of the English poet, Samuel Butler.[4]
He wrote a considerable amount of prose as well and much of this can contribute to historians' studies of those times.
"Behold the vaunting hero," Royal Gazette and the Nova-Scotia Advertiser (Halifax), 11 Dec. 1798, and "Observations and conjectures on the antiquities of America," Mass. Hist. Soc., Coll. (Boston), 1st ser., 4 (1795): 100–5. Three of Bailey's poems are printed and discussed in Narrative verse satire in Maritime Canada, 1779–1814, ed. T. B. Vincent (Ottawa, 1978).[1]
Bailey is buried in the Garrison Cemetery (Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia).
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ a b Ross, Julie; Vincent, Thomas (1983). "BAILEY, JACOB". In Halpenny, Francess G (ed.). Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. V (1801–1820) (online ed.). University of Toronto Press. Retrieved 11 July 2015.
- ^ Jasanoff, Maya (2011). Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World. London: Harper Collins. p. 6. ISBN 978-0-00-718008-0.
- ^ Bartlet, William S. (1853). The Frontier Missionary: a memoir of the life of the Rev. Jacob Bailey, A.M. New York: Stanford and Swords. p. 177.
- ^ Sargent, Winthrop (1857). The Loyalist Poetry of the Revolution. Philadelphia. p. 129.
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Further reading
[edit]- Allen, Charles E. (1895). Rev. Jacob Bailey, his character and works. Lincoln County Historical Society.
- Bake, Ray Palmer (January 1929). "The Poetry of Jacob Bailey, Loyalist". The New England Quarterly. 2 (1): 58–92. doi:10.2307/359820. JSTOR 359820.
- Dawson, Taunya J. (May 2014). "Keeping the Loyalists Loyal in Post-Revolutionary Nova Scotia: The Preaching and Writing of Reverend Jacob Bailey". Historical Papers: Canadian Society of Church History: 17–28.
- Leamon, James S. (2012). The Reverend Jacob Bailey, Maine Loyalist: "For God, King, Country, and for Self". University of Massachusetts Press.
- Thompson, Kent (2008). The Man Who Said No: Reading Jacob Bailey, Loyalist. Gaspereau Press.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
- 1731 births
- 1808 deaths
- Canadian Anglican priests
- Converts to Anglicanism from Congregationalism
- Anglican poets
- 18th-century Canadian poets
- Canadian male poets
- Harvard College Loyalists in the American Revolution
- American Loyalists from Massachusetts
- Loyalists who settled Nova Scotia
- People from Rowley, Massachusetts
- Religious leaders from Massachusetts
- People from Dresden, Maine
- Harvard College alumni
- 18th-century Canadian male writers
- 18th-century Canadian writers
- Canadian satirical poets