Rev. Jeremy Belknap (1744 - 1798)
Born and died at Boston (MA).
Historian and Congregational Church minister.
Portrait by Adna Tenney or N. C. Nelson, after original at
Massachusetts Historical Society.
Purchased by the State, date unknown.

Jeremy Belknap's father was a leather dresser and furrier in Boston. His uncle was Mather Byles, one of New England's intellectual leaders. Belknap was baptized by the historian Thomas Prince, another leading figure of 18th century New England.

Belknap was educated by tutors, spent seven years at Boston Latin School, and entered Harvard College in September 1759. His diary for September 1759 says that "a great many bears" were "killed at Cambridge and the neighboring Towns ... and several persons killed by them." He was also annoyed, in 1761, that the President and Fellows of Harvard College forbade the illumination of the College as a way to celebrate the coronation of King George Ill.

After graduation (with the class of Harvard 1762), Belknap's first job was to "keep" Milton School, outside Boston. While at Milton he noted in his diary that the women of the town "breed like Rabbits", but this was not enough to keep Belknap at Milton. In 1764 he moved to Portsmouth (NH), where he "kept the school" and studied theology with Samuel Haven (Harvard College Class of 1749). In 1765 he moved again, to Greenland (NH), where he "kept" school and worried that he had yet to experience a religious conversion and so could not preach. He declined invitations to preach until, on March 12, 1766, "he accepted probation for preaching at Portsmouth."

Belknap had a continuing interest in the education of Native Americans throughout these years. He was very interested in the Indian Charity School "kept" at Lebanon, Connecticut by Eleazar Wheelock, Yale Class of 1733. Belknap declined an invitation to join the teaching staff at Lebanon, but he followed Wheelock's efforts. When Wheelock founded Dartmouth College soon after, Belknap was privately critical of the education given Native Americans at the new college.

January 19, 1767 Belknap accepted a "call to settle" as a colleague for the aged Jonathan Cushing, tenth minister of the First Congregational Church at Dover (NH). On June 15, 1767 Belknap married Ruth Eliot, of Boston (MA), and the couple purchased a large, two-story unpainted house with the help of promissory notes. Jonathan Cushing died an March 25, 1769, and Belknap became the eleventh minister of Dover's First Congregational Church. As a minister Belknap was popular with all classes of people in Dover. He was very social and at ease in conversation, and he was able to illustrate his sermons with observations on the human condition as he saw it around him. The linking of the hereafter with the present interested his congregation, and he was able to expand his congregation.

In 1769 Belknap began seventeen years of service as clerk of the convention of New Hampshire ministers. He did not receive pay for this work, but it necessitated much travel throughout New Hampshire. As Belknap traveled he kept notes, and in 1772 he began to write the History of New Hampshire for which he is justly famous. This history, the first written about New Hampshire, was not received enthusiastically when it was first published (the first volume appeared in 1784; the second in 1791; and the third volume in 1792). A generation went by before a French visitor to America, Alexis de Tocqueville, wrote that Belknap's History and his subsequent works, made Belknap America's best native historian. In his own time the twenty-year minister (1766 - 1786) of Dover's First Congregational Church could not pay his printer's bills, and members of the colonial legislature offered to buy Belknap a new suit of clothes, so ragged was his appearance. The American Revolution also made Belknap's life difficult; in 1775 he was chaplain for American troops at Cambridge (MA), for example, and wartime pay was sporadic for Belknap, as it was for many others in the colonies. He continued to write, and in 1779 began work on an American biographical dictionary. This project put Belknap in touch with men of letters and of governments throughout the colonies, and it helped lead toward the founding of the American Philosophical Society, to which Belknap was elected in 1784. In 1786 Belknap was elected to the new American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and in 1787 he became minister for the Federal Street Church, in Boston (MA). He served in this position 1787 - 1798, and it exposed him and his writings to a wider audience than he had enjoyed in Dover. He died in 1798.

References: Clifford K. Shipton, editor, Sibley's Harvard Graduates, volume 15 (1761 - 1763) [Massachusetts Historical Society, 1970). Belknap's History of New Hampshire (Boston, 1791-2; three volumes: various subsequent editions) is an invaluable source of information about colonial New Hampshire.