Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 02.djvu/199

 CHEEVER.

CHENEY.

from 1790 was known as the Boston Latin school. He was the autlior of: Cheever's Latin Accidence. for more than a century a standard text-book. See Biographical Sketch of Ezekiel Chetver, by Henry Barnard (1856). He died in Boston, Mass., Aug. 21, 1708.

CHEEVER, George Barrell, clergyman, was born in Hallowell, Me.. April 17, 1807; son of Nathaniel and Charlotte (Barrell) Cheever. He was graduated at Bowdoin college in the famous class of 182.1, and at Andover theological semi- nary in 1880. In 1832 he was ordained pastor of the Howard street Congregational church of Salem. Mass. On one occasion he remarked in a public speech upon the inadequacy of the Unita- rian faith to produce the higliest excellence in lit- erature. His attack aroused fierce indignation, and he was challenged to a newspaper controversy which resulted in a series of articles in the Salem Register and a Defence of the Orthodoxy of Cadworth. In 1835 he published, in the inter- est of the temperance cause, an allegory called Inquire at Amos Giles's Distillery. It hap- pened that there dwelt in that region a deacon who appropriated to himself the allegorical coat and resorted to the courts on a charge of defama- tion. Mr. Cheever -was twice tried and twice convicted, and then obliged to spend thirty days in the county jail. Upon regaining his freedom he resigned his pastorate and went to Europe, where he spent the following two years and a half, during which time he contributed a series of letters to the New York Observer. Upon his return to America he became pastor of the Allen street Presbyterian church of New Y'ork, and shortly after his installation delivered a course of remarkable lectures on the Pilgrim's Progress, and on the life and times of John Bunyan. which were published in 1844. "When in 1841 the ques- tion of the abolition of capital punishment was agitating the country, he engaged in a series of debates with John L. O'SuUivan, arguing for capital punishment, and scored a victory. Soon after this he became involved in a discussion with Bishop Hughes concerning the reading of the Bible in the public schools, which resulted in his Hierarchiccd Despotism in the Romish Church. In 1846 his admirers organized for him a new church, the " Church of the Puritans" where he remained as pastor until 1870. when he retired from his labors and took up his residence in Englewood, N.J. On retiring from the min- istry he gave his home in New York city to the American missionary society and the American board of commissioners for foreign missions, for their joint use. He bequeatlied to va,rious chari- table so(ieties sums aggregating twenty-two thousand dollars. His published works include: 27ie American Commonplace Book of Prose

(1828): Studies in Poetry (1830); The American Commonplace Book of Poetry (1831); God's Hand in America (1841); Wanderings of a Pilgrim in the Shadoiv of Mont Blanc (1845); Tlie Pilgrim in the Shadoiv of the Jungfrau Alp (1846); A Defence of Capital Punishment (1846); The Journal of the Pilgrims at Ply- month in New England, in 1620 (1848); Wind- ings of the River of the Water of Life (1849); The Hill Difficulty, with other Miscellanies (1849); Voices of Nature to her Foster Child, the Soul of Man (1852); Right of the Bible in our Public Schools (1854); Lectures on Coiv- per (1856); The Potcers of the World to Come (1856); God against Slavery (1857); American Slavery (1860); The Guilt of Slavery, and the Crime of Slaveholding (1860). and Faith, Doubt, and Evidence (1881). He died at Englewood, N.J.. Oct. 1. 1890.

CHEEVER, Henry Theodore, author, was born in Hallowell. Me., Feb. 6. 1814; son of Nathaniel and Charlotte (Barrell) Cheever. He was graduated from Bowdoin college in 1834, and spent two ^ears in Spain, France, and Lousiana as correspondent of the New York Evangelist. On his return he entered the Ban- gor Tbeological seminary and was graduated in 1839. He was cori'espondent of the New Y^ork Evangelist, 1840-'42, in the Sandwich and the South Sea Islands, and on returning home was for a year one of its editors and regular contributors. He was pastor at Jewett City, Conn., and Worcester. Mass., 1844-'58, and agent and secretar}- of the church anti- slavery societ}', 1859-"64. In 1892 Bowdoin college conferred upon him the degree of D.D. His books are principally biography and travel, and include: The Whale and its Captors (1849); The Island World of the Pacific (1851); Memorials of the Life and Trials of Nathaniel Cheever, M.D. (1851); Life in the Sandu-ich Islands (1851); Autobiography and Memorials of Captain Obadiah Congat (1851); Short Yarns for Long Voyages (1855); Waymarks in the Moral War icith Slavery between the Opening of 1S59 and the Close of 1S61 (\m2) ■,- Autobiog- raphy and Memoirs of Ichabod Washburn (1878), and Correspondencies of Faith and Views of Madame Guyon (1885). He edited Colton's Ship and Shore in Madeira, Li.'ibon and the Mediterranean. He died in Worcester, Mass., Feb. 13. 1897.

CHENEY, Benjamin Pierce, expressman, was born in Hillsboro. N. H., Aug. 12, 1815; son of Jesse and Alice (Steele) Cheney. He was edu- cated in the public schools, leaving his studies when ten years old to work in his father's blacksmith shop. In 1831 he became a stage- driver, and in 1836 went to Boston as agent of