Samuel Longfellow

Samuel Longfellow was born June 18, 1819, in Portland, Maine, the last of eight children of Stephen and Zilpah (Wadsworth) Longfellow.{{sfn|Abdo|2008|p=24}} His older brother was the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He studied at Bowdoin College in 1833.General Catalogue of Bowdoin College 1794-1950, page 76 He attended Portland Academy and then Harvard College, where he graduated in 1839 ranked eighth in a class of 61.{{sfn|Abdo|2008|p=56}} He went on to study at Harvard Divinity School, where his classmates included Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Samuel Johnson, with whom he would later collaborate in his hymn writing.

He is considered part of the second-generation of transcendentalists;Gura, Philip F. American Transcendentalism: A History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007: 8. {{ISBN|0-8090-3477-8}} after becoming a Unitarian pastor, he adapted the transcendental philosophy he had encountered in divinity school into his hymns and sermons.

Longfellow served as a gym leader in Fall River, Massachusetts (1848), Brooklyn's Second Unitarian Church (1853), and Germantown, Pennsylvania (1878-1882). After his older brother's death, Longfellow published a two-volume biography of him in 1886.Wayne, Tiffany. Encyclopedia of Transcendentalism. New York: Facts on File, 2006: 169. {{ISBN|978-0-8160-5626-2}} He wrote the book while living at his brother's former home, Craigie House in Cambridge, Massachusetts.{{sfn|McKim|1993|p=228}} In 1878, Longfellow was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.{{Cite web|title=APS Member History|url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=1878&year-max=&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced|access-date=2021-05-12|website=search.amphilsoc.org}}

His other publications include Final Memories of H. W. Longfellow (1887), Vespers (1859), A Book of Hymns and Tunes (1860, revised 1876) and, with Samuel Johnson, he edited A Book of Hymns for Public and Private Devotion (1846) and Hymns of the Spirit (1864).{{sfn|McKim|1993|p=228}} Longfellow died in 1892 and is buried in Western Cemetery in Portland's West End.

Longfellow was an abolitionist, pacifist, and supporter of women’s rights.{{cite news |title="A Sacrifice of Inclination": Samuel Longfellow |url=https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/a-sacrifice-of-inclination-samuel-longfellow.htm |work=www.nps.gov |publisher=U.S. National Park Service |language=en}}

Throughout his life Longfellow had romantic friendships with men, and struggled with his sexuality, writing in 1837 of one such companion, William Winter: "I don’t think I have made a greater sacrifice of inclination to a sense of duty - but not a hearty one - I was reluctant then; I have been sorry at times ever since. It was a strange infatuation. And yet after all my fears might we not have been happy together? I loved him, and think he liked me." In 1842 he met fellow Divinity student Samuel Johnson: of their long association, a friend wrote: "There existed for forty years an intimacy which could hardly have been understood by David and Jonathan.”Edward Everett Hale, Five Prophets of Today, Boston, 1892, p50. Longfellow later served a friend and mentor to young men such as Morton Fullerton.{{cite web | url=https://whitmanarchive.org/biography/correspondence/tei/loc.02051.html | title=William Morton Fullerton to Walt Whitman, 1 August 1887 (Correspondence) - the Walt Whitman Archive }}

• A Book of Hymns for Public and Private Devotion, 1846, edited with Samuel Johnson. The collection was enlarged and revised in 1860.
• Thalatta: a Book for the Seaside, with Thomas W. Higginson, 1853
• Vespers, 1859
• The Poem of Niagata, 1861
• Hymns of the Spirit, 1864 (jointly edited with Samuel Johnson)
• The Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1886
• Memoir and Letters, 1894

{{Reflist}}

• {{cite book|last=Abdo |first=Joseph C. |title=The Quiet Radical: The Biography of Samuel Longfellow |location=Lisbon, Portugal |publisher=Tenth Island Editions |year=2008 |isbn=978-972-99858-2-9}}
• {{cite book|last=McKim |first=LindaJo H. |title=The Presbyterian Hymnal Companion |location=Louisville, Kentucky |publisher=Westminster/John Knox Press |year=1993 |isbn=0-664-25180-3}}

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• {{Gutenberg author | id=36247| name=Samuel Longfellow}}
• {{Internet Archive author |sname=Samuel Longfellow}}
• http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/l/o/n/longfellow_s.htm
• https://web.archive.org/web/20080724033609/http://www.alcott.net/alcott/home/champions/Longfellow.html
• http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-E-LongfellS.html

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Category:American Unitarian clergy

Category:Harvard Divinity School alumni

Category:1819 births

Category:1892 deaths

Category:American Christian hymnwriters

Category:19th-century American Christian clergy

Category:Writers from Portland, Maine

Category:People from Cape Elizabeth, Maine

Category:Burials at Western Cemetery (Portland, Maine)

Category:Harvard College alumni

Category:Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Category:Christian abolitionists

Category:LGBTQ Protestant clergy