[1] His father, also Samuel Seabury (1706–1764), was originally a Congregationalist minister in Groton but was ordained deacon and priest in the Church of England in 1730.

Seabury, the father, was a rector in New London, Connecticut, from 1732 to 1743, and of St George's, Hempstead, New York on Long Island from 1743 until his death.

[7] Seabury's journal notes that Nell worked in the parsonage house at St. James's Episcopal Church in New London, where he and his daughter Maria lived.

[8] Seabury was one of the signatories of the White Plains Protest of April 1775 against all unlawful congresses and committees and, in many other ways, he proved himself a devoted Loyalist.

At the same time, he claimed authorship of a letter entitled "An Alarm to the Legislature of the Province of New York" (1775), not signed by the Westchester farmer, which discussed the power of what he viewed as the only legal political body in the colony.

He was prevented from carrying out his ministry; after some time in Long Island, he took refuge in New York City where he was appointed chaplain to the King's American Regiment in 1778.

He then turned to the Scottish Episcopal Church, although he had also approached the surviving non-juring bishops in England, William Cartwright of Shrewsbury and Kenrick Price of Manchester.

[11] Seabury was consecrated in Aberdeen on November 14, 1784, on the condition that he study the Scottish rite of Holy Communion and work for its adoption, rather than that of the 1662 English prayer book.

The consecration took place in Skinner's house in Longacre, approximately 500 metres from the present St Andrew's Cathedral, Aberdeen.

The chair on which Kilgour sat to perform the consecration is preserved in Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Keith, Moray.

Seabury's consecration by the non-juring Scots caused alarm in the British government who feared an entirely Jacobite church in the United States, and Parliament was persuaded to make provision for the ordination of foreign bishops.

Seabury said of Christ Church, Middletown, "Long may this birthplace be remembered, and may the number of faithful stewards who follow this succession increase and multiply till time shall be no more."

His "Communion Office," published in New London in 1786, was based on the Scottish Liturgy of 1764 rather than the 1662 Book of Common Prayer in use in the Church of England.

Such sacrificial language as remained was placed at the end of the service in an optional Prayer of Oblation at which point the congregation made a self-offering beseeching God "to accept our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving."

[13] The restoration of the full Eucharistic Prayer taken from the Scottish Rite included the words, "which we now offer unto thee," after "with these thy holy gifts."

[15] Seabury also argued for the restoration of another ancient custom, the weekly celebration of Holy Communion on Sunday rather than the infrequent observance that became customary in most Protestant churches after the Reformation.

In "An Earnest Persuasive to Frequent Communion", published in 1789 in New Haven, he wrote that "when I consider its importance, both on account of the positive command of Christ, and of the many and great benefits we receive from it, I cannot but regret that it does not make a part of every Sunday's solemnity."

Seabury's "Farmer's Letters" rank him as the most vigorous American loyalist controversialist and, along with his prayers and devotional writings, one of the greatest masters of style of his period.

On September 12, 1849, the relics of Samuel Seabury were translated to the Church of St. James the Great in New London, Connecticut, and buried under the chancel.

The Colonial Church Chronicle and Missionary Journal wrote about the service: "The venerable relics consisted of the entire skeleton of the departed Prelate, from which every other portion of the body had disappeared.

The sight of such a sacred memorial deeply affected the little circle of spectators who beheld in silence, and with heads instinctively uncovered.

A company of brethren in the Priesthood were standing together over the dust of him to whom they felt in common the obligations of children, and the deeper reverence of spiritual sons for a patriarch of the Church, and a sore-tried confessor of the truth of God.