Kirkland, Samuel, 1741 - 1808

Samuel Kirkland was the son of Reverend Daniel Kirtland and Mary Perkins of Norwich, Connecticut.  He was the first White pupil to enter More's Indian Charity School in nearby Lebanon, studying under Eleazar Wheelock.  With the intent of becoming a missionary, Kirkland entered the College of New Jersey in 1762 and graduated in absentia in 1765.

Kirkland first served among the Seneca in 1765.  During this mission, in which he was described as "diligent, courageous, and faithful,"  he was adopted into a prominent Kanadasega family.  He returned to Lebanon the following year and was ordained by Wheelock.  Kirkland next went to the Oneida village of Kanowaroghare. There he married a niece of Wheelock, Jerusha Bingham, and had six children. 

Supported by the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge in Scotland, Kirkland's missionary work was interrupted by the American Revolutionary War, during which time he served as a diplomat to the Continental Congress and the Oneida and Tuscarora tribes and chaplain at Fort Schuyler.

The war had caused serious problems within the Indian communities of upper New York. By 1786, however, Kirkland restored his ministry to them.  He had been a witness to the Treaty of Fort Stanwix two years earlier, and in 1789 he created a census of Iroquois lands, receiving a grant of four thousand acres from both the Oneida Nation and the government of New York.

In 1792 Kirkland brought a number of Iroquois leaders to Philadelphia, where they pledged their fidelity to the United States.  The following year, in the hope of fostering Indian education, he successfully charted the Hamilton-Oneida Academy, which later became Hamilton College.

Samuel Kirkland died from pleurisy at his farmstead in Clinton, New York on February 28, 1898.

ANBO. Portrait of Samuel Kirkland by Augustus Rockwell, Courtesy of Wikipedia.