Bird, Isaac, 1793-1876

ISAAC BIRD, 1793-1876 (Y.1816)

ISAAC BIRD, son of Isaac and Rhoda (Selleck) Bird, was born in Salisbury, Conn., June 19, 1793.

He spent the year after graduation as a teacher in the academy in West Nottingham, Md., and in Nov., 1817, entered Andover Theol. Seminary. His three years there were passed in close companionship with his classmates, William Goodell and Daniel Temple, the associates of his future missionary life, and the three friends together offered themselves on graduating to the American Board for work among the heathen. Mr. Bird spent two years in the service of the Board in this country, and was ordained, with Mr. Temple, at North Bridgewater, Mass., Oct. 31, 1821. He was married, Nov. 18, 1822, to Ann, daughter of Capt. Wm. Parker, of Dunbarton, N. H., and they embarked the next month with Mr. and Mrs. Goodell for Malta. He passed the succeeding winter in Jerusalem, and, the next 13 years in or near Beirut, Syria. In the summer of 1836 he returned to the United States, on account of the long continued ill-health of his wife, and was for the next two years employed as an agent of the American Board. In Sept., 1839, he began to give instruction in the Theol. Seminary in Gilmanton, N. H., where he remained for six years, during the last part of the time serving as Professor of Sacred Literature. From 1846 to 1869 he conducted a family school in Hartford, Conn., and then removed to Great Barrington, where he died at the residence of his son, June 13, 1876, at the age of 83. His wife survives him. Of their ten children four died in infancy. One son graduated at Dartmouth College in 1844, and another at this College in 1848. The eldest son is a missionary on Mount Lebanon, and the eldest daughter is the wife of Rev. Dr. Van Lennep, so long a missionary in the Turkish Empire.

From Yale College Obituary Record, 1876.

JAMES BIRD, 1826-1901 (Y. 1848)

JAMES BIRD, son of Isaac and Ann (Parker) Bird, was born September 28, 1826, in Beyroot, Syria, where his parents were missionaries of the American Board. Owing to the failure of his mother's health he came to America with his parents when he was nine years old, and entered college from Gilmanton, N. H., where his father was Professor in the Theological Seminary.

Immediately after graduation he joined his father in carrying on the Pavilion Family School for boys in Hartford, Conn. In 1869 he moved to Great Barrington, Mass., and continued the school under the name of Sedgwick Institute. Ten years later he removed to Auburndale, Mass., where he remained eight years, and during a portion of this time received a few young boys into his family and taught them. In 1887 he returned to Great Barrington, and resumed teaching in Sedgwick Institute with his nephew, Edward J. Van Lennep, who was then in charge. Later he was in the real estate and insurance business, and clerk of the district court of southern Berkshire. While on, his way to the court house on the evening of May 17, 1901, he fell from a railroad trestle near his home and was killed. He was in his 75th year. He united with the Center Church in Hartford, Conn., in 1852.

He married, on October 10, 1855, Elise D., eldest daughter of Rev. William Goodell, D.D. (Dartm. 1817), missionary to Turkey. Mrs. Bird died in 1895, and an only daughter at the age of 15 years in 1876. On April 27, 1898, Mr. Bird married Cornelia Helen Pattison, of Great Barrington, who survives him, together with a sister in Great Barrington and a brother, Rev. William Bird (Dartm 1844), who has been for forty-eight years a missionary in Syria. A sister married Rev. Henry J. Van Lennep (Amherst 1837), formerly for thirty years a missionary in Turkey.

From Yale College Obituary Record, 1901.

From the guide to the Isaac Bird papers, 1752-1873, 1812-1873, (Manuscripts and Archives)