Report of Commemorative Services with the Sermons and Addresses at the Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885.

In 1784, Samuel Seabury became the first bishop of the independent American Episcopal Church, consecrated in Scotland because English bishops refused to lay hands on an American citizen after the Revolution. This volume preserves the sermons, addresses, and commemorative services from the centenary celebration of his election, held between 1883 and 1885 under Bishop Williams' direction. The documents capture how Victorian-era clergy reflected on Seabury's struggle to establish a church in post-war Connecticut, his consecration abroad, and the fragile beginnings of American Anglicanism. These are not nostalgic exercises, they are passionate arguments about what Seabury's legacy meant for a church that had by then become thoroughly American. For historians of American religion, scholars of Anglicanism, and anyone curious about the messy, contested origins of religious independence in the United States, this collection offers vivid primary source material on how a generation far from the Revolution understood its own inheritance.