Samuel Ogden

Samuel Ogden (1716–1778) was a priest of Church of England and academic, known as a popular preacher. He held the chair of geology at Cambridge from 1764, but was entirely unqualified in the field. Life Born at Manchester on 28 July 1716, he was the only son of Thomas Ogden (died 1766), a dyer there. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School, and admitted to King's College, Cambridge, as a "poor scholar" in March 1733, but moved in August 1736, to St John's College with the prospect of enjoying a Manchester exhibition. He graduated B.A. in January 1737–8, M.A. 1741, B.D. 1748, and D.D. 1753; was elected a Fellow of St John's College on the Ashton foundation on 25 March 1740, became senior fellow on 22 February 1758, and remained in that position until 1768. He was incorporated at Oxford on 11 July 1758. Ogden gave early support to the poet William Whitehead; who may later have written verse for him. In June 1740 he was ordained deacon by the Bishop of Chester, and was advanced to the priesthood by Richard Reynolds, Bishop of Lincoln, in November 1741. From that date until 1747 he held the perpetual curacy of Coley Chapel of the parish of Halifax, and he was master of Heath Grammar School, Halifax from 1744 until March 1753, when he returned to Cambridge. He retained the perpetual curacy at Elland, in his old parish, until 1762. Ogden was perpetual curate of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Cambridge from 1753, and preached there for about 18 years to crowded congregations, consisting mostly of members of the university. He performed his doctoral exercise for D.D. against John Green before the Duke of Newcastle, Chancellor of the university, who in 1754 conferred on him the vicarage of Damerham in Wiltshire. Finding Ogden free with his opinions, Newcastle gave him no further preferment. In 1764 he was appointed to the Woodwardian Professorship of Geology at Cambridge, and held it until his death in 1778. He resigned the living of Damerham in 1766 in favour of the Rev. Charles Haynes.