Frederic Dan Huntington

Frederic (or Frederick) Dan Huntington (May 28, 1819, Hadley, Massachusetts – July 11, 1904, Hadley, Massachusetts) was an American clergyman and the first Protestant Episcopal bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Central New York.

Early Life, Education and career

Frederic Dan, the youngest of the eleven children born to Dan and Elizabeth Huntington, was born in Hadley, Massachusetts on May 28, 1819. He grew up on the family farm "Forty Acres," the home of both his mother and his grandmother, Elizabeth Porter Phelps.

He graduated at Amherst College in 1839 and at the Harvard Divinity School in 1842. In 1843 he married Hannah Sargent, the sister of Epes Sargent. From 1842 to 1855 he was pastor of the South Congregational Church of Boston, and in 1855-1860 as preacher to the university and Plummer professor of Christian Morals at Harvard; he then left the Unitarian Church, with which his father had been connected as a clergyman at Hadley, resigned his professorship and became pastor of the newly established Emmanuel Church of Boston.

Syracuse, New York

Rev. Huntington founded the St. John's School, a military school, in 1869 in Manlius, New York, and was its president until his death in 1904. In the 1920s, St. John's became known as the renowned military school, The Manlius School, today integrated into the Manlius Pebble Hill School.

He had refused the bishopric of the Episcopal Diocese of Maine when, in 1868, he was elected to the Diocese of Central New York. He was consecrated on April 9, 1869, and thereafter lived in Syracuse, New York.

Consecrators

• The Most Reverend Benjamin B. Smith
• The Right Reverend Manton Eastburn
• The Right Reverend Horatio Potter

N.B.: 93rd bishop consecrated in the Episcopal Church.

End of life

Huntington remained throughout his life attached to the family's ancestral farm in Hadley, Massachusetts, in the 1860s purchasing his siblings' shares so that he could inherit the house. He continued to manage it as a working farm, and spent summers there throughout his life. Huntington died in Hadley on July 11, 1904, aged 85.

Publications

His more important publications included:

• Lectures on Human Society (1860)
• Memorials of a Quiet Life (1874)
• The Golden Rule applied to Business and Social Conditions (1892)

From 1845 to 1858 he was the editor of The Monthly Religious Magazine, a Unitarian review.

Legacy

Huntington's ancestral family home, the Porter-Phelps-Huntington House in Hadley, became a historic house museumin the 1940s, and is open seasonally.