Elisha Yale

Reverend Elisha Yale (1780 – 1853) was an American clergyman and pastor, first minister of the Congregational church of Gloversville, New York. He founded the Kingsborough Academy, now the Fulton County Historical Society and Museum, and published several works on religion.

Biography

Elisha Yale was born in Lee, Massachusetts, June 15, 1780, to Justus Yale of the Yale family, and Margaret Tracy, a descendant of Lieutenant Thomas Tracy of Norwich, Connecticut.

Yale was the brother of Rev. Calvin Yale of Martinsburg, New York, who married Eliza Robbins, a granddaughter of Mayor Peter Curtis, who was involved with the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill during the American Revolutionary War. His brother was also a graduate from Union College, pastor of the Congregational and Presbyterian church, and the principal of two academies.

Yale relocated as child from Lee, Massachusetts to Lenox in the same state. From 1798 to 1799, he taught in the schools of Richmond and Lenox, and in 1800, left home to pursue studies until 1803 with Rev. Dr. Perkins of West Hartford, Connecticut, grandson of Deacon Joseph Perkins.

In 1829, he received the degree of Doctor of Sacred Theology from Yale College, cofounded by his family in 1701. Rev. Yale was a personal tutor of Hiram Bingham I, who later introduced Christianity to the Hawaiian islands. Another student was Rev. Edward Lounsbery of the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, one of the oldest in the country.

He would preach in Kingsboro for about 56 years and was the first pastor of the Congregetional church there until 1852. Though he was pastor of a Congreational church, he was a Presbyterian, and member of the Presbytery of Albany.

Family

Rev. Yale's cousins were Rev. Cyrus Yale, a minister and pastor from Williams College, abolitionist Barnabas Yale, Rev. Charles Yale of Lenox, Massachusetts, Lucy Tracy Yale, wife of a wealthy manufacturer of axes in Canada, and Eunice Yale, great-grandmother of Chief economist Edward Dana Durand, teacher in economics at Harvard and Stanford. Wellington's son, Elizur Yale Smith, would marry the daughter of Col. Clermont Livingston Best, Annie Livingston Tooker Best of Mrs. Astor's Four Hundred, who was a relative of Gabriel Mead Tooker and Charlotte Tooker Warren, of the Goelet and Vanderbilt families.

They sold land and an estate to William Douglas Sloane and Emily Thorn Vanderbilt, on which they built "Elm Court", and to George Westinghouse, rival of Thomas Edison and builder of "Erskine Park" on the estate. His grandniece, Mary Yale Pitkin, married to landscape architect Charles Eliot of the Eliot Family, son of Charles William Eliot, President of Harvard. His grandnephew was Yale martyr Horace Tracy Pitkin, family member of New York Senator Mortimer Yale Ferris.

His name was commemorated on the historical Church on the Hill, at Lenox, Massachusetts along with Thomas Yale of New Haven, and others.

A large statue of him by sculptor Henry Augustus Lukeman was erected in Gloversville, Kingsboro Historic District, New York.