Thomas Bradbury Chandler

Thomas Bradbury Chandler (April 26, 1726 – June 17, 1790) was an American priest of the Church of England and author, who removed to England during the American Revolutionary War but returned to his long-time parish in Elizabeth, New Jersey and helped found the Episcopal Church in the United States of America. Early life Son of Capt. William J. Chandler and his wife Jamima Bradbury, Thomas Chandler was born at Woodstock, Connecticut in 1726, into a large family, with brothers William, Lemuel, Theophilus, Jemimah and Samuel and several sisters. He was educated at Yale College, where he joined the Church of England and came under the influence of Samuel Johnson and Timothy Cutler. In 1748, after teaching as discussed below, Chandler received a master's degree from Yale, and graduated alongside Samuel Seabury and future U.S. Senator William Samuel Johnson of New York, with whom he later often corresponded. His classmate's father, Rev. Samuel Johnson became his mentor as a clergyman, and Chandler later wrote a biography of the New York cleric that his own son-in-law published. In 1751, Chandler went to England orders in the Church of England. He received a honorarya Master's degree from Oxford in 1753, and a Doctor of Divinity degree from there in 1767, and a Doctor of Divinity degree from King's College (now Columbia University) in 1767. He married Jane Emott, and had a son, William Chandler, as well as daughters Mary Rickets Chandler, Elizabeth Chandler, Catherine Chandler Dayton, Jane Tongerlon Chandler and Mary Goodin Chandler. The last, his youngest daughter, married missionary priest John Henry Hobart, who, after his father-in-law's death, published his Life of Samuel Johnson, and himself became Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York. Ministry After his initial graduation in 1745, Chandler taught school while studying for the ministry. The Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) appointed him lay reader and catechist in New Jersey, as his mentor the Rev. Samuel Johnson was serving across the river in New York City. In 1747, Chandler succeeded the Rev. Edward Vaughan, who had died, as a mission priest in New Jersey, and made Elizabeth, New Jersey his base. Initially, New Jersey had been populated and governed under two different auspices. The southern portion was initially granted to William Penn and descendants, and was governed through Burlington, New Jersey, and less directly from Philadelphia.