Chauncey Lee

Chauncey Lee (November 9, 1763 – December 5, 1842) was an American Congregationalist preacher and writer who ministered in churches across New England and New York for nearly 50 years, though he was most associated with the church at Colebrook, Connecticut.

Born in Salisbury, Connecticut in 1763, Lee was a Patriot and Federalist who believed divine providence would guide America's independent destiny. As part of this, he wrote an accountancy book in 1797, which proposed decimalized weights and measures and includes an early sketch of the dollar sign . He also penned a moderately popular poetic rendition of the Book of Job. His prominence extended to delivering the election sermon for Connecticut in 1813. A New Divine in the tradition of Edwards and Emmons, Lee vocally opposed the separation of church and state and dismayed New England's disestablishment in the 1810s. His conservative views were increasingly at odds with the emerging Taylorist movement, and he died without a post in 1842, aged 79.

Early life, education and legal career Chauncey Lee was born in Salisbury, Connecticut, on November 9, 1763. He was the ninth child fathered by the popular preacher Jonathan Lee of Coventry, and the first born to Jonathan's second wife, Love . By contrast, Love's father—Jonathan's father-in-law—was John Graham of Edinburgh, Scotland, an austere preacher in Southbury who served Litchfield County's consociation as registrar. Both he and Jonathan were also pamphleteers who served as chaplains for the colonial troops during the expeditions against Crown Point in the French and Indian War. He studied at Yale four years and, after being nominated by John Cotton Smith, joined the Connecticut Alpha of Phi Beta Kappa in 1784. After graduating with a Master of Arts, Lee joined Smith in reading law under John Canfield, a politician and deacon at Sharon, Connecticut. In 1788, Lee was admitted to the bar of Litchfield County and opened a private practice in Salisbury. On June 3, 1789, Lee was licensed to preach by the ministerial association of Litchfield County and filled for a time ad interim in Salisbury the vacancy left after his father's death the previous year. Lee served there ably and there was a movement to seat him on a permanent basis, but Lee was apparently personally ambivalent. Lee sold the 35 acres of Connecticut land he inherited and preached independently for a while before being ordained as pastor of Sunderland on March 18, 1790. The protracted dispute had discredited both parishes, and Lee resigned after about five years due to the low salary. Lee's proposed notation for the mill, cent, dime, dollar and eagle. The American Accomptant was one of many textbooks after 1792 teaching the new "federal arithmetic" as accountants transitioned from using pounds, shillings and pence to the decimal-based U.S. system. During this itinerant time, Lee began to write. He had already some misgivings about the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1789, namely that it has "not the smallest recognition of the government being of God". However, his first works at Lansingburgh reflected the idea of American exceptionalism. First, he published a pro-Administration oration for the town's 21st Fourth of July celebration, wherein he declared that God had electrified the Patriot cause and independence was "manifest the distinguishing favor and goodness of Heaven", and predicted that by 1847 there would be millions of Americans in fifty states. Also in 1797, Lee wrote a school textbook for arithmetic that was designed to be practical—at that time, mathematics education was predominantly rote and unintuitive. Encouraged by the decimalization of U.S. currency, Lee anticipated Congress would next introduce all-decimal "American weights" and enforce the use of decimal fractions over the "vulgar evil". The failure of both meant The American Accomptant only sold one edition.

Service at Colebrook

On February 12, 1800, Lee succeeded the younger Jonathan Edwards as pastor of the Congregational church in Colebrook, Connecticut, where he would remain for the following twenty-seven years. During this time, he gained repute as an evangelist who employed serious but clear and striking language. He was chosen to deliver the 1813 Connecticut election sermon before the General Assembly, in which he invoked the Lord's Prayer to say, "religion is the only sure foundation of a free and happy government. It is the great palladium of all our natural and social rights ... if God be not in the camp, we have not reason to tremble for the ark".

Lee published most of his works at Colebrook, including a poetic paraphrase of the Book of Job (1806) entitled "The Trial of Virtue" (and compared in style to Milton and Pope), with annotations and commentary. He also rendered aid to the son of his late friend Timothy Todd, the future Massachusetts minister John Todd. In 1823, Lee was made an honorary Doctor of Divinity by Columbia College.

Marlborough and final days Through his career, Lee's views crystallized around the teachings of Nathanael Emmons, and as a conservative Calvinist, he vigorously opposed the "New Haven theology" of Nathaniel William Taylor. Lee believed New England Congregationalism to be imperiled as a result.

On January 31, 1827, Lee resigned from Colebrook "in consequence of representations that he had lost his influence with the young people of the parish." Abigail's only brother was Joshua Stanton Jr., who served as a county judge and representative of Colchester to the Vermont General Assembly. Correspondence between Mr. ——, a member of – College, and the Rev. ——, of —, – (1821) Letters from Aristarchus to Philemon; in which the distinguishing doctrines of the Gospel are discussed, and objections stated and answered (1833)