James Taylor Dickinson papers

JAMES TAYLOR DICKINSON, 1806-1884

The James Taylor Dickinson Collection consists of two manuscript boxes of the correspondence and journal of James Taylor Dickinson.

The following account of Mr. Dickinson's life appears in the Yale Obituary Record, June 1885.

James Taylor Dickinson, the eldest child of Horace and Mary Ann (Taylor) Dickinson (both from Western Massachusetts), was born in Lowville, Lewis county, N.Y., October 27, 1806. His parents removed to Canada in 1816, and he entered College from Montreal in 1822.

After graduating he began the study of law in Montreal; but in 1827 he became convinced that he ought to enter the Christian ministry and removed to Andover Theological Seminary; he took last year of his course (1829-30) in the Yale Divinity School.

He was ordained pastor of the Second (Congregational) church in Norwich, Conn., April 4, 1832, and on the 21st of November following married Mary, daughter of Samuel Hikok, of Burlington, Vt., where he had been preaching for some time and had declined a call to settle. She died in Norwich, April 6, 1834, at the age of 19; and on the 20thof August next, he resigned his pastorate that he might fit himself for the work of a foreign missionary. After one year of preparatory studies in medicine, he embarked in July, 1835, for Singapore, in the East Indies, under an appointment from the American Board. Five years passed in the study of the Chinese and Malay languages, and in missionary labor. For four years from 1840 he was employed as a teacher in the Singapore Institution, till the loss of his health obliged him to return home.

In 1845, he settled in Middlefield, Conn., where he married, May 15, Sarah C., daughter of Deacon William Lyman, who survives him. Owing to his shattered health, he lived in seclusion, in the midst of his large and continually replenished library, chiefly occupied in reading and study. He published a few articles in periodicals, and contributed to Appleton's Cyclopedia an account of the Malay language; he also wrote a brief memoir of his brother-in-law, the Reverend George W. Perkins (Y.C. 1824), prefixed to a volume of sermons in 1859. These are the only results in print of his broad culture and accurate scholarship.

He died of paralysis, at his home in Middlefield, July 22, 1884, in his 78th year.

By his last will he added to a fund already established by him for the benefit of the College, which thus amounts to nearly $50,000; about 1,000 volumes of his valuable library were also bequeathed to the College.

The papers were the gift of Mrs. Alfred Howe Terry in 1941.