Jeremy Belknap

Jeremy Belknap.
Painting by Henry Sargent , 1798. Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Jeremy Belknap (born June 4, 1744 in Boston , Province of Massachusetts Bay ; died June 20, 1798 there ) was an American congregational clergyman and historian. He is particularly known for his three-volume history of the state of New Hampshire (1784–1792), which is considered to be one of the first historiographical works in the USA with scientific claims.

life and work

Belknap came from a family of craftsmen who had lived in Massachusetts for three generations. He attended Harvard College (BA 1762) and then taught for four years as a schoolmaster, but at the same time prepared for the priesthood. From 1767 he was pastor of the Dover Ward in New Hampshire. In 1784 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society and in 1785 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . He stayed in Dover until 1787, when he followed a call from Long Lane Church in Boston , whose pastor he remained until his death in 1798. In 1792 Harvard awarded him the title of Doctor theologiae and made Belknap a curator.

He began work on the history of New Hampshire in the 1770s. The first volume, covering the history of the state from the arrival of the first European explorers to 1715, was published in 1784. The second volume, published in 1791, is the history of New Hampshire up to 1790. The New Hampshire government awarded him a grant of £ 50 to complete volume three, a description of the geography, culture and politics of the state. In 1794–98 he also published a two-volume series with biographical sketches by important Americans. Although Belknap comes from the tradition of Puritan historiography, its History of New-Hampshire, unlike the historiographical works of Edward Johnson , Cotton Mather or Thomas Prince, is not interested in a salvation-historical interpretation of New England history. Belknap understood historiography rather than science and spent a lot of time studying the sources to ensure the accuracy of his information. In order to create a central archive for the storage and research of the written heritage of New England, he and some like-minded people founded the United States' first historical society in 1791, the Massachusetts Historical Society , which still exists today .

Belknap County , founded in 1840, was named after him.

Works

• The History of New Hampshire. Three volumes, Philadelphia 1784–1792:
  • Volume I: Comprehending the events of one complete century from the discovery of the River Pascataqua (1784; digitized version )
  • Volume II: Comprehending the events of seventy-five years, from MDCCXV to MDCCXC (1791; digitized version )
  • Volume III: Containing a geographical description of the state, with sketches of its natural history, productions, improvements, and present state of society and manners, laws, and government (1792; digitalisat )
• (Anonymous) Memoirs of the lives, characters and writings of those two eminently pious and useful ministers of Jesus Christ, Dr. Isaac Watts and Dr. Doddridge. Boston 1793. ( digitized version )
• Dissertations on the character, death & resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the evidence of His gospel: with remarks on some sentiments advanced in a book intitled "The age of reason." Boston 1795. ( digitized version )
• American biography, or, An historical account of those persons who have been distinguished in America as adventurers, statesmen, philosophers, divines, warriors, authors: comprehending a recital of the events connected with their lives and actions. Two volumes, Boston 1794 and 1798 (digital copies: Volume I ; Volume II )

literature

• Sidney Kaplan: The History of New Hampshire: Jeremy Belknap as Literary Craftsman. In: The William and Mary Quarterly . Third Series , Volume 21, Issue 1, January 1964, pp. 18-39.
• George B. Kirsch: Jeremy Belknap. A biography. Arno Press, New York 1982. ISBN 0-405-14112-2
• Russell M. Lawson: The American Plutarch: Jeremy Belknap and the Historian's Dialogue with the Past. Praeger, Westport, CT 1998. ISBN 0-275-96336-5
• Jane Belknap Marcou: Life of Jeremy Belknap, DD, the Historian of New Hampshire. With Selections from his Correspondence and other Writings . Harper and Brothers, New York 1847. ( digitized version )