John Sylvester John Gardiner

John Sylvester John Gardiner (1765–1830), aka John S. J. Gardiner, was an American Episcopal priest. He was Rector of Trinity Church, Boston, Massachusetts, president of Boston's Anthology Club, and active in the Boston Athenæum.

Born in Wales and in large part educated in England, Gardiner was a pupil of the famous Dr. Samuel Parr. He was for 37 years the best-known and leading Episcopal clergyman of Boston. Trained for the law, he turned to divinity and for 25 years was rector of Trinity Church, Boston. Despite this conservative bent, he was on very amiable sociable terms with his Unitarian brethren. George Ticknor studied Latin and Greek under Gardiner's tutelage.

His only daughter married John Perkins Cushing, a wealthy China opium smuggler, in 1830. The town of Belmont, Massachusetts is named after their estate.

Image gallery

• Illustration from J.S.J. Gardiner's Remarks on the Jacobiniad, 1795

• Illustration from J.S.J. Gardiner's Remarks on the Jacobiniad, 1795

• Monthly Anthology 1805

• Trinity Church, Summer St. (1829 building). Illustration from American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge