Aaron Cleveland

Biography

His father was also named Aaron Cleveland. At the time of Aaron's birth, his father was making a modest living as a publican in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Aaron was born, and was also working in construction. His father would later become a militia captain and a man of some wealth. The son graduated from Harvard in 1735. He was a man of great physical strength and activity, and the best skater, swimmer, and wrestler in the college in his day. In 1739, he was made pastor of the church in Haddam, Connecticut, where his father possessed landed property. In the same year, he also married Susannah, the daughter of Aaron Porter of Medford, Massachusetts.

The preaching of George Whitefield produced a great impression on his mind and led to subsequent changes in his religion. In 1747, he moved to Massachusetts, where he was pastor of South Church in Malden until 1750, when he took an active part in the emigration from New England for the settlement of Nova Scotia. In Halifax in 1750, he established the first Presbyterian church in Canada. The Scottish Calvinists became its directors, overriding the New Englanders, and in 1755 Cleveland went to London, where he received holy orders.

Cleveland returned to America as a missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. During the return voyage the vessel ran aground at Nantucket Shoals, and he lent his muscular aid to the sailors with good results, but a wave inflicted an injury upon his strong frame, from the effects of which he never recovered. He was rector of the church in Newcastle, Delaware, but visiting Philadelphia for medical treatment, when he died under the hospitable roof of his friend, Benjamin Franklin. A tribute to his character appeared in Franklin's newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, on August 18, 1757: