Thomas Jefferson Sawyer

Thomas Jefferson Sawyer S.T.D. LL.D. (January 9, 1804, Reading - July 24, 1899) was an American Universalist minister and educator.

Early life and education 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. Sawyer was instrumental in organizing the Universalist Historical Society, whose Secretary and Librarian he remained in 1896.

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.