Frederic Dan Huntington, D.D.

At the beginning of the Civil War our founders called to be our first rector Harvard’s Plummer Professor of Christian Morals, an abolitionist and former Unitarian, who was to become The Rt. Rev. Dr. Frederic Dan Huntington. Before he became Senior Warden in 2004, Michael Shea was commissioned to write something about our early days.  Intrigued by Dr. Huntington’s life, he began to research what became  Emmanuel Church’s First Rector:  Frederic Dan Huntington (1819–1904). Shea summarizes his story of Dr. Huntington’s spiritual journey in this way:

Huntington’s father and mother became Unitarians and were brutally expelled from their Hadley Congregational parish. He became the preeminent Unitarian preacher in Boston and then Harvard’s first (non-denominational) chaplain, but resigned to become an Episcopalian. Called as Emmanuel’s first rector while still a deacon, he made it into a beehive of religious outreach and community service.  He turned down election as bishop of Maine, but after seven years accepted election as bishop of the new diocese of Central New York in Syracuse, where he was widely admired and spent 35 years as an advocate of social justice. His life is well-documented, and [my initial] handout grew into [this] extensive booklet on his fascinating life.

Our rector Pam Werntz has referred to Huntington in many of her sermons, which can be retrieved  by searching huntington in our upper-right search box.  In her 2015 sermon for Trinity Sunday, she speculated:

 I don’t think it was the doctrine of the Trinity that called to him as much as his love of liturgy – and the hymns, no doubt. I like to say that Emmanuel Church has been Episcotarian ever since.

For more about our famous founding father, please see:

1. Biography
   1. Brochure by Michael Shea:  Emmanuel Church’s First Rector:  FDH
   2. Chapter on him in Harriet Allen Robeson’s centennial ECCB: The First One-Hundred Years 
   3. Description of his bust in our Sanctuary
   4. His entry in An Episcopal Dictionary of the Church
   5. His entry on Wikipedia
2. His works
   1. Books in our catalog on Library Thing
   2. Hymnal and hymns:  Our Composers
   3. Memoir & Letters of F.D. Huntington, edited by Arria Sargent Huntington
   4. Sermons in our archives (for access please email:  archivist@EmmanuelBoston.org)
3. Our other webpages concerning him or his views
   1. Clergy Views on Slavery
   2. History:  Our Foundation
   3. Land Use Acknowledgement, which mentions the Huntington family’s holding slaves on their farm in Hadley MA.
   4. Timeline of Emmanuel History’s entries for him: 1860, 1861 & 1869