Rev. Edward Bulkeley

Bef 1614 - 1696  (> 81 years)

• Name	Edward Bulkeley  [1]
  Prefix	Rev.
  Birth	Bef 12 Jun 1614  [2, 3]
  Baptism	12 Jun 1614	Odell, Bedfordshire, England   [2, 3]
  Gender	Male
  Death	2 Jan 1696	Chelmsford, Middlesex, Massachusetts   [2, 3]
  Burial	Concord, Middlesex, Massachusetts   [2, 3]
  Person ID	I20988	Ancestry of PNH, TNH, and others
  Last Modified	3 Apr 2021

  
  

  Father	Rev. Peter Bulkeley,   b. 31 Jan 1583, Odell, Bedfordshire, England d. 9 Mar 1659, Concord, Middlesex, Massachusetts (Age 76 years)
  Mother	Jane Allen,   b. Bef 13 Jan 1588   d. Bef 8 Dec 1626 (Age < 38 years)
  Marriage	12 Apr 1613	Goldington, Bedfordshire, England   [2]
  Family ID	F12484	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Lucian   d. Aft 28 Jan 1679
  Children	1. Peter Bulkeley,   b. 3 Jan 1641, Concord, Middlesex, Massachusetts d. 24 May 1688, Concord, Middlesex, Massachusetts (Age 47 years)   2. Elizabeth Bulkeley,   b. Abt 1638   d. 4 Sep 1693, Reading, Middlesex, Massachusetts (Age ~ 55 years)
  Family ID	F12485	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	3 Apr 2021

  
  

• Notes

  Arriving in 1634, he was the first of the extensive Bulkeley family to come to New England. Matriculated pensioner from St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, Easter 1629, he studied with the Rev. Cotton in New England while boarding at his house. He was ordained in Marshfield in 1643. After fifteen years as the minister there, he was installed as his father's successor at Concord in 1659, and remained there for 53 years. He is said to have been disabled in some manner ("lame and of a feeble constitution"). Of his preaching style, Grindall Reynolds had this to say in 1896: One production of Mr. Bulkeley has escaped the tooth of time, -- his sermon delivered after the return of Captain Thomas Wheeler from Brookfield fight. It was a time to stir a man's soul. The whole Colony was convulsed. Every frontier settlement and every lonely farmhouse was in peril. Two of his parishioners had been slain. Two more came home so shattered that they lingered only a few months. The lot of these might any hour be the lot of his hearers. You read the sermon through from text to conclusion. There is not one throb of pathos in it. You cannot find an eloquent line, hardly an impressive sentence. It is a maze of Inquisitions and Instructions, of Applications and Uses, of Doctrines and Reasons, of Motives and Improvements, wherein the mind wanders and is lost. How could a tender human heart help breaking through the meshes of formality? And how was it possible for men, of rude speech possibly, but of strong and hot sympathies, to admire or approve such stiff and measured utterance? With so little to guide it is not possible to speak confidently. Still this is certain. The younger Bulkeley has not left behind the impression of power which his father did. Apparently he had not his vigorous personality, his culture, or his great heart. Mather calls him "the worthy son" of a worthy sire. Clearly he was that. An honest, faithful, and devout man. But with all his real excellence one who did not rise much above mediocrity. [From A Collection of Historical and Other Papers, Concord, Massachusetts, 1896.]

  
  

• Sources

  [S1409] Stone-Gregg Genealogy: The Ancestors and Descendants of Galen Luther Stone and His Wife Carrie Morton Gregg by Alicia Crane Williams. Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1987. [S317] The Bulkeley Genealogy by Donald Lines Jacobus. New Haven, Connecticut: 1933. [S756] Early New England Families Study Project: Accounts of New England Families from 1641 to 1700 by Alicia Crane Williams. Online database, New England Historic Genealogical Society.