Individual Details

Event

Rev. Jeremiah Leaming attended Yale College (1745)

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While an undergraduate he declared for Episcopacy, and under the direction of the Rev. Dr. Samuel Johnson acted as lay-reader to the churchmen of Nor walk, Connecticut, for two years from December, 1745, having been first admitted as a communicant by Dr. Johnson at Stratford on Christmas Day in that year. At the expiration of that time, he was sent to England, on Dr. Johnson's recommendation, at the expense of Trinity Church, Newport, Rhode Island, to obtain orders, that he might thus be qualified to accept an appointment as master of the charity-school attached to that church and as assistant to the rector, the Rev. James Honyman.

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He was ordained deacon, on the 5th of June, 1748, by Bishop Gilbert, of Llandaff, and priest, June 19, 1748, by Bishop Hoadly, then of Winchester. In September he returned to America, and assumed the desired position.

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July 2, 1750, Mr. Learning received a temporary appointment as minister of the church, and so officiated until the arrival of the next incumbent, in May, 1754. He continued to perform the duties of his original office (with an annual stipend of ^20 from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel), until the autumn of 1758, when, with the approval of the Propagation Society, he became the minister of the church in Norwalk, where he had formerly served as reader. In this parish he remained for nearly twenty-one years, acting also for the earlier part of the time as the missionary to Ridgefield, sixteen miles distant. During this period he appeared in print repeatedly in defence of church principles, and as the Revolution approached was identified with the loyalist party.

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received the honorary degree of Master of Arts being conferred upon him by King's College, now Columbia University

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as the Revolution approached was identified with the loyalist party. In 1776 he was taken from his bed in an inclement wintry night, and lodged in the county jail as a tory, with the consequence of a severe cold, which settled in his hip, and made him a cripple for the rest of his life.
when the place was burned by the British under Governor Tryon. Then, he says, "his church and a great part of his parish were laid in ashes, and he lost everything he had, his furniture, books and papers, and even his clothing, except what he had on." He estimated his loss at twelve or thirteen hundred pounds sterling, which induced him to go to New York to procure, if possible, some restitution.

Event

In March, 1783, a majority of the clergy met at the house of the Rev. John Rutgers Marshall of Woodbury, and made choice of two persons to go to England to be consecrated as bishops if possible. The choice fell upon Rev. Jeremiah Leaming and Rev. Samuel Seabury. The secretary of the clery was sent to New York to confer with the clery there and request there concurrence. "Rev. Jeremiah Leaming, to whom the appointment was first offered, shrank at his time of life, and with his infirmities, from undertaking responsibilities and burdens so great." Had not age and infirmitied prevented, he would have been the first Episcopal Bishop of CT and had the position of the first of the bishops of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America.

Death

He is buried in the old church yard, where his monument bears the following inscription - "Here rests the body of Rev. Jeremiah Leaming, D.D., long a faithful minister of the Gospel in the Episcopal Church. Well instructed in his holy office, unremitting in his labors, charitable, patient, and of primitive meekness. His public discours es forcibly enunciated the faith illustrated by his practice. He departed hence September 15, 1804."