Joseph Bellamy

Joseph Bellamy (20 February 1719 – 6 March 1790) was an American Congregationalist pastor and a leading preacher, author, educator and theologian in New England in the second half of the 18th century.

[1] A proponent of education for both clergy and laity, for a half century out of his rural Bethlehem, Connecticut church he trained fifty ministers, and founded what was possibly the first American Sabbath or Sunday school.

[2] Born in Cheshire, Connecticut as the son of Matthew Bellamy and his wife Sarah Wood, he graduated from Yale in 1735 and studied theology for a time under Jonathan Edwards in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Despite the fact that with the exception of the period of the Great Awakening, when he preached as an itinerant in several neighboring colonies, his active labors were confined to his own parish, his influence on the religious thought of his time in America was probably surpassed only by that of his old friend and teacher Jonathan Edwards.

[4] This influence was due not only to his publications, but also to the school or classes for the training of clergymen which he conducted for many years at his home and from which went forth scores of preachers to every part of New England and the middle colonies.