Horatio Southgate papers

Horatio Southgate, 1812-1894

Southgate, Horatio, P.E. Bishop, b. in Portland, Me., 5 July 1812. He was graduated at Bowdoin in 1832, and then went to the Andover theological seminary, intending to enter the ministry. Two years later he applied for orders in the Episcopal church, and was confirmed in October 1834. He was ordained deacon in Trinity church, Boston, Mass., 12 July 1835, by Bishop Griswold, and soon afterward was appointed by the foreign committee of the board of missions to make an investigation of the state of Mohammedanism in Turkey and Persia. He sailed from New York in April 1836 and was occupied for five years in this field of research. On his returning to the United States he was ordained priest by St. Paul's chapel, New York city, 3 Oct 1839, by Bishop Benjamin T. Onderdonk. He was appointed missionary to Constantinople in 1840 and served for four years in that capacity, during which time he made a tour through Mesopotamia. The Episcopal church having resolved henceforth to send bishops into the foreign missionary field, Dr. Southgate was consecrated bishop for the dominions and depndencies of the sultan of Turkey, in St. Peter's church, Philadelphia, Pa., 26 Oct 1844.

In the following year he returned to Constantinople, and was occupied in the duties of his office until 1849. He then came back to the United States and offered his resignation, which was accepted by the house of bishops in October 1850. He received the degree of S.T.D. From Columbia in 1845 and the same from Trinity in 1846. He was elected bishop of California in 1850 and of Hayti in 1870, but declined. In 1851 he went to Portland, Me. and organized St. Luke's parish, now the cathedral church of the diocese. The following year he accepted the rectorship of the Church of the Avent, Boston, which he held until the close of 1858. In the autumn of 1859 he became rector of Zion church, New York city, and discharged the duties of that post for thirteen years, resigning in September 1872.

Since that date he has lived in retirement in Ravenswood, N.Y. Bishop Southgate's chief publications are Narrative of a Tour through Armenia, Kurdistan, Persia and Mesopotamia (2 vols,, New York, 1840); Narrative of a Visit to the Syrian (Jacobite) Church of Mesopotamia (1844); A Treatise on the Antiquity, Doctrine, Ministry and Worship of the Anglican Church in Green (Constantinople, 1849); Practical Directions for the Observence of Lent (New York, 1850); The War in the East (1855); Parochial Sermons (1859); and The Cross above the Crescent, a Romance of Constantinople (Philadelphia, 1877). He has also contributed freely to church and other literature in magaznies and reviews.

Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, V, 613-14.

For more information, see Kenneth Walter Cameron, "The Manuscripts of Horatio Southgate...A Discovery," American Church Monthly, XLII (1937), 155-73, a copy of which is in Box 1, Folder 1 of the papers.