Nathaniel Howe
American minister (1764–1837)
Reverend Nathaniel Howe (October 6, 1764 – February 15, 1837) was a Protestant Christian minister at the First Congregational church of Hopkinton, Massachusetts from 1791 until his death.
He is best known for a sermon delivered there in 1815 (the town's 100th anniversary) called the "Century Sermon" that was published and re-printed extensively worldwide. His name is spelt 'Nathanael' in all his works but his biography in Annals of the American Pulpit spells his name 'Nathaniel' and this has become generally accepted.
Life
Nathanael Howe was born in Linebrook parish, in Ipswich, Massachusetts, on October 6, 1764. He was the third son of Captain Abraham and Lucy (Appleton) Howe.
In January, 1791, he began to preach at Hopkinton as a candidate; and in May following, received a unanimous call from the church to settle as its pastor. The citizens of the town desired, however, that he should admit children to baptism whose parents were in the "half-way-covenant"; but finding him opposed to it, they finally united in the call of the church, and he was settled as minister for life, October 5, 1791, with a salary of $70.
He was married, about three months after his settlement, to Olive, daughter of Col. John Jones of Hopkinton. She died December 10, 1843.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 22, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6969686. VIAF identifies the subject as 49082162. The Library of Congress control number is nr91015824. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1764, 1837, 1791 and 1815.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nathaniel Howe” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.