The Rev. Dr. Beardsley then read the following biographical account of the four candidates admitted to the diaconate by Bishop Seabury at his first ordination:
Of the candidates ordained in Middletown on the third of August, 1785, COLIN FERGUSON was the only one not of Connecticut. He came from Maryland, and the testimonials recommending him were signed by the Rev. Dr. William Smith, afterwards president of the House of Deputies, and others of that State. He was born in Kent County, and was the son of a Scotsman who emigrated to this country and maintained a respectable character but never rose to affluent circumstances. An opportunity occurred for the youth to accompany a Scottish schoolmaster about to return to Edinburgh, and he gladly availed himself of it and thus obtained a classical education without expense to his father. After several years spent at the University of Edinburgh, he came back to America with a good reputation for scholarship, but it does not appear that he had the ministry in mind so early as this. He found employment as an instructor, and upon the establishment of Washington College, Chestertown, Md., in 1782, he was chosen a professor in it, and held the place until Dr. Smith, the president or principal, returned to Philadelphia, when he was promoted to the headship of the institution. It was under the direction of Dr. Smith that he studied theology, and his ministerial labors were chiefly limited to St. Paul's Parish, Kent County, of which for sometime he had the charge in addition to his college duties. The degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon him shortly after his ordination by the institution with which he was connected, and was a deserved honor on the score of learning. He was a member of the August General Convention of 1789, and signed as one of the delegation from Maryland the "Resolves" of that body which led to the final union and settlement of the Church in all the States.
About the year 1804, the Legislature of Maryland passed enactments which deprived the college of the means of a liberal support, and Dr. Ferguson thereupon resigned his office and "retired to his farm in the vicinity of Georgetown Cross Roads, where he spent the remainder of his life." He died of paralysis on the 10th of March, 1806, in the 55th year of his age.
"As a preacher," says one [Footnote: P. Worth, in Sprague's Annals of the American Episcopal Pulpit, p. 344.] who was his pupil for seven years and had constant opportunities to make observations upon his character, "I cannot say he possessed any remarkable power. His sermons, as specimens of composition, were of a high order, creditable to him as a scholar and a writer, but they were not strongly marked by an evangelical tone. Perhaps I should not do him injustice, if I was to say that his sermons, in this respect, were not very unlike those of the celebrated Dr. Hugh Blair."
I take the names of the candidates in the order in which they lie in the Registry Book of Bishop Seabury—not that this order determines the actual order of ordination, for I am confident it does not.
HENRY VAN DYCK was born in the city of New York in 1744, and was the only son of his parents. He graduated from King's (now Columbia) College in 1761, when the institution was in charge of its first president, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Johnson. After graduating, he studied law and located himself in Stratford, Conn., whither the family had removed and become settled. He married Huldah Lewis of that place, August 9, 1767, and on the sixth day of the ensuing month, he and his wife were admitted as communicants in Christ Church, which was then under the rectorship of Dr. Johnson for the second time, he having resigned the college and returned to Stratford.
It does not appear that he had much success in the legal profession, and he wrote his discouragements to William Samuel Johnson, special colonial agent from Connecticut, then in London, who confided in his integrity and had entrusted him with the collection of some debts that were his due. In his reply, Johnson said: "It gives me concern to find that you have not met with that obliging behaviour from the profession which you expected; those men at the bar have, I believe, most of them experienced the friendly assistance of those who have gone before them, and should not therefore in point of gratitude refuse it to help those who are coming forward and to succeed them, not to mention that it is exceedingly ungenerous and illiberal to endeavour to cramp rising genius, or use any attempts to monopolize a profession which should be ever open to men of merit, and especially those who enter into it in the regular methods of education. You will find, however, that nothing will so effectually overcome any difficulties, prejudices, or inconveniences of this nature as the course you say you are in, and in which therefore you will by all means persevere, of an assiduous, careful attention to your business and an upright, diligent conduct in every branch of your profession. This will secure you in the possession of the business you have, and increase it, enable you to transact it with ease and honor, and by degrees enforce the complaisance at least, if not the esteem, of those who by some slights and little negligences wished to have depressed you, and by that means perhaps secured to themselves a greater proportion of business.
"I sincerely give you and Mrs. Van Dyck joy upon your marriage, and hope you will long, very long, enjoy all the blessings of the connubial state, which I have ever esteemed essential to human happiness. It would have given me an additional pleasure to have known that your father had consented to it, and though it seems he would not, I still hope he may yet see such happy effects of the measure as to approve it and be convinced by its consequences that he ought not to have been so inflexibly averse to it." [Footnote: Ms. Letter, November 23, 1767.]
Mr. Van Dyck continued the practice of law until about the time of the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. He was brought forward as a lay-reader under the auspices of the Rev. Ebenezer Kneeland, successor in the Church at Stratford to the Rev. Dr. Johnson whose granddaughter, Charity, he had married. From the records of the Episcopal Church in the adjoining town of Milford, it appears that at a vestry meeting, held April 17, 1776, after electing wardens and vestrymen, Mr. Kneeland being present, it was "voted that Mr. Henry Van Dyke be desired to read prayers on such Sundays as Dr. Kneeland shall be absent, and that we will see him rewarded for his trouble." This was done with entire unanimity by the advice and consent of Mr. Kneeland. An item in a publication of the time, under date of August, 1779, though incorrect in reporting him as a clergyman, gives evidence that he had ceased to pursue the legal profession: "The Rev. Henry Van Dyke is at Norwalk, and wants to go to Long Island with his family."
After the independence of the colonies had been declared, the full use of the liturgy of the Church of England was no longer tolerated, and for ten years there was seldom any assembling for prayers or preaching or any new choice of officers in the Church at Milford. But in January, 1786, Mr. Van Dyck, being then in Holy Orders, proposed to take the care of the churches in Milford and West Haven, and his proposition was acceded to at a salary of 90 pounds per annum; Milford agreeing to pay two-thirds of it and West Haven the remainder. He removed with his family to Milford in the May following, and the church thought itself happily provided with a "pasture" for life.