Reverend Samuel Kirkland

Kirkland spent most of his life amongst the Oneida people and founded what became Hamilton College.

Portrait by Augustus Rockwell

Quick Facts

Significance:

Samuel Kirkland was a missionary who's friendship with the Oneida people led them to side with the American cause during the Revolution. He was the founder of Hamilton College.

Place of Birth:

Norwich, CT

Date of Birth:

December 1, 1741

Place of Death:

Clinton, NY

Date of Death:

February 28, 1808

Place of Burial:

Hamilton College, Clinton, NY

Cemetery Name:

Hamilton College Cemetery

Samuel Kirkland was one of twelve children raised in an impoverished family of a Congregational clergyman. He was born on the first of December 1741 and spent his youth in various parts of Connecticut and appears to have been strongly influenced by his father’s calling.

Daniel Kirtland (Samuel spelled his surname differently than his father) had graduated from Yale and went on to study theology. He imparted in his son an understanding of the importance of education and enrolled Samuel in More’s Indian Charity School which was run by Eleazer Wheelock (who later was the founder of Dartmouth College).

Kirkland was strongly influenced in his training by the “New Light” reform movement, inner personal religion and in the religious and social welfare of the local natives. While at Wheelock’s Samuel met and studied with Samson Occum, a native Mohegan who went on to work as a missionary among the Stockbridge and Oneida peoples. In 1761 he met and traveled with another student, Joseph Brant. Brant was a Mohawk with close ties to the household of Sir William Johnson, British Indian Agent and powerful political force in the newly settled Mohawk Valley. Upon reaching the limit of this studies with Wheelock, Samuel enrolled as a sophomore at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton). He left part way through his senior year but was awarded his degree in 1765. He left his studies to pursue missionary work among the Haudenosaunee, originally planning on Christianizing the Senecas but eventually settling among the Oneida for the rest of his life.

Shortly after the French & Indian War, Kirkland served as a secretary for the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, translating for the natives and copying the treaty document. He developed a fluent knowledge of native languages and served for many years as an intermediary between the European settlers and the Haudenosaunee peoples. Partly because of his friendship with Brant, and through the work he did translating the Bible into Haudenosaunee, and because of his usefulness in communicating with the Oneida, Kirkland was received kindly and assisted by Sir William Johnson in the years between the French & Indian War and on the eve of the American Revolution.

Kirkland periodically traveled back to his original bases in Connecticut and Massachusetts and interacted with many folks involved with Wheelock and his school. One of Wheelock’s nieces caught his fancy and in September 1769,  Samuel and Jerusha Bingham were united in marriage.

Joined her husband on the frontier. She waited at Nicholas Herkimer’s home while Samuel expanded his cabin from a structure of 12”x12” to 16”x16”. Jerusha moved into this home with Samuel in December at the Oneida village of Kanawarohare. In August of 1770, Jerusha returned to Herkimer’s home to give birth to twin boys. Herkimer presented her with a bill for expenses during her stay! Then in 1772, with the approach of another child, Jerusha returned to Stockbridge Massachusetts to deliver a daughter, who died shortly after birth. Jerusha decided to stay on a farm which the family purchased, and until the end of the Revolution, Samuel made frequent trips from Oneida lands to visit the family in Stockbridge, MA.

During his journeys to Massachusetts and Connecticut, Kirkland sometimes traveled with Samson Occum and Occum’s brother-in-law David Fowler (another of Wheelock’s missionaries). In January of 1771, they made the 15-mile trek to Fort Stanwix to obtain other provisions:
“Thursday Jan. 3, 1771. At 3 o’clock in the morning set with two Indians for Fort Stanwix for. Provision, having neither bread nor flour. It rain’d & hailed for most of the day and violently in the Evening. [1]
This journal entry leads to the inference that there was a sutler at the deteriorating fort and that the sutler was supplying food and materials to the local inhabitants. Kirkland’s account that he preached at the fort in 1774 indicates it was a hub for the few settlers along the frontier and the natives he was trying to Christianize.

Kirkland was an active missionary to the Oneida during the eight years from the Boundary Line Treaty of 1768 (1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix) to his appointment as chaplain to the garrison at the fort, renamed “Fort Schuyler” in 1776. He taught the natives to sing, to read the Bible and liturgical works, and worked hard to assist in their lives, often acting as advocate in dealings with the encroaching European settlers. He lived just over the boundary line that separated native territory from the land now open to settlement by the Dutch, Germans, English, and Irish settlers of the Mohawk Valley. He stayed for many years and became an influential figure, the spiritual advisor of respected Oneida Chief Skenandoa.

Kirkland witnessed the native’s struggle for neutrality, then the alignment of allegiances by both the natives and European settlers as war began at Lexington and Concord in April of 1775. Because of his ties to the Congregational and Presbyterian Congregations and their roots in Boston and other parts of New England, Kirkland allied with the “Bostonians” who advocated armed conflict with the English Crown and eventual American independence. A letter in his collection vividly shows the state of mind of some of the Haudenosaunee in the western end of the confederacy and their animosity towards the Bostonians fighting for independence.

Kirkland witnessed the rebuilding of Fort Stanwix by the Continental Army now occupying it and mentioned it in a letter to Jerusha how hard the soldiers worked on the reconstruction in September of 1776:
“On the whole, I find things here more agreeable than I expected – the hard duty and variety of business that the soldiers are called to, render it inconvenient for public prayer, save once a day – a number are employed continually as scouts – another part for guards, the rest constantly at work. The Fort (which is now called (Fort Schuyler) is almost finished. The scouts which return from Oswego last evening say no troops are yet arrived there, but are daily expected.” [2]

Kirkland’s whereabouts are unknown during the crucial summer of 1777. He is not mentioned as being at Fort Schuyler, nor are their any letters in his manuscript collection from May of 1777 to the winter of 1778. Perhaps his work was of such a sensitive nature that nothing was recorded. Perhaps he was home visiting and protecting his family during this crucial time. It is possible that he was hiding from death threats against him made by the British loyalists in the Mohawk Valley and the Cayuga, Seneca, and Mohawk.

Kirkland’s correspondence picks up as he fulfilled his duties as chaplain and interpreter during the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign in the summer of 1779. His letters to his wife provide a first-hand glimpse of what life was like for the frontier military men and the depredations they had to endure.

Kirkland was very much a part of the translation and transcription of the Fort Stanwix Treaty of 1784. He remained active as an advocate for the Oneida after the war. He helped to secure for them recompense for houses and materials lost in raids by Brant, John Johnson (William’s son), and Butler’s Rangers. In 1793, he realized a life-long dream to begin his own school for educating the natives when General Von Steuben laid the cornerstone for the newly founded Hamilton-Oneida Academy (chartered as Hamilton College in 1812. He remained among the Oneida until his death in 1808, preaching, teaching, and working as their minister and confidant.  It is a testament to Kirkland’s character that when his dear Oneida friend Chief Skenandoa passed several years later he asked to be laid to rest by his side on the campus of Hamilton College.

Image below of Reverend Samuel Kirkland's tombstone in the Hamilton College Cemetery. The large pillar on the the right of it is the tombstone of his dear friend Skenandoa.

Selected Sources:
[1] Pilkington, Walter, ed. The Journals of Samuel Kirkland, Hamilton College, 1980.
[2] Letter 69A Sept. 15, 1776, Kirkland Collection, Hamilton College Archives Collections.

Special thanks to park VIP R. Allers for his research.

Duration:

3 minutes, 17 seconds

The Reverend Samuel Kirkland was a Presbyterian minister with close ties to the fort and to its closest neighbors the Oneidas. He played a crucial role in maintaining alliances between the Oneidas and Americans and made some lifelong friends in the process.