John S. J. Gardiner

Portrait of J.S.J. 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.

References

• Josiah Quincy III, The history of the Boston Athenaeum, with biographical notices of its deceased founders. Cambridge, Metcalf and Company, 1851.

Further reading

Works by Gardiner

• "Epistle to Zenas." Exchange Advertiser, June 22, 1786.
• Remarks on the Jacobiniad (1795)
• A sermon delivered before the Humane Society, of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. (1803)
• A sermon preached at Trinity Church, December 9, 1804, on the death of the Right Reverend Samuel Parker, D.D. Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the state of Massachusetts. (1804)
• A sermon preached at Trinity Church in Boston on fast day, April 7, 1808. (1808; Reprinted in The Port Folio, 1808)
• A sermon, preached before the African Society, on the 14th of July 1810: the anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. (1810)
• A discourse, delivered at Trinity Church, Boston, July 23, 1812 on the day of publick fast in Massachusetts, upon the declaration of war against Great-Britain. (1812)
• Life a journey, and man a traveller: A New-Year's sermon, preached at Trinity-Church, on January 4th, 1824, and, by particular desire, delivered again on January 2, 1825. (1825)

Works about Gardiner

• Cyclopaedia of American literature. 1856; p. 534+
• Lewis P. Simpson. A Literary Adventure of the Early Republic: The Anthology Society and the Monthly Anthology. New England Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Jun., 1954), pp. 168–190.

External links

• WorldCat

Image gallery

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  Illustration from J.S.J. Gardiner's Remarks on the Jacobiniad, 1795
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  Illustration from J.S.J. Gardiner's Remarks on the Jacobiniad, 1795
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  Monthly Anthology 1805
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  Trinity Church, Summer St. (1829 building). Illustration from American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge