Thomas Jefferson Sawyer

Sawyer was born at Reading, Windsor County, Vermont, on January 9, 1804. He attended the district school and then a private school kept by a Universalist minister. At 19 he went to Chester Academy, and two years later, he enrolled at Middlebury College, from which he graduated in 1829. He received both a B.A. and M.A. from Middlebury. ==Career==

He then prepared for a ministerial career and, in 1830, took charge of what would become the Orchard Street Universalist Church, a small congregation then located on Grand Street in New York City. He married there Caroline M. Fisher, and they had three children that reached adulthood. In 1852 he returned to his pastorate in New York City, where he remained until 1861. After two years in Clinton, he returned to New York as Editor of the Christian Ambassador. He held this position for three years, then spent three years on a farm in Carteret, New Jersey. When Tufts Divinity School opened in 1869, he was called to take charge of it as Pacard Professor of Theology, its first professor. In 1882 he was formally made Dean. In 1884 his impaired eyesight made him withdraw from active teaching. In 1892 he was made Emeritus. He died on July 24, 1899. ==Honors==

Harvard University awarded him the Doctor of Sacred Theology in 1850, and Tufts made him Doctor of Laws in 1895. Twice he has been elected President of Tufts University, once of Canton Theological School, and once of Lombard University, but all of these he declined. ==References==