Hillard Family Papers

ELIAS BREWSTER HILLARD, 1825-1895

ELIAS BREWSTER HILLARD, son of Captain Moses and Martha (Brewster) Hillard, of Preston, Connecticut, was born in that town on September 6, 1825. His father, Moses Hillard, 1780-1837 was a sailor, ship's captain, farmer, and tax collector. During Elias's College course his residence was in Norwich, Connecticut.

After graduation he was for two years principal of the Lewis Academy in Southington, Conn., and a little later entered the Yale Divinity School. In 1852 he removed to the Andover Theological Seminary, where he finished the course in July, 1854. On March 15, 1855, he was ordained as pastor of the Congregational Church in Hadlyme, Connecticut, and on September 10th married Julia, daughter of Judge Frederick Whittlesey (Yale College 1822), of Cleveland, Ohio. He was dismissed from his pastorate on April 15, 1860, and on May 16 was installed over the Congregational Church in Kensington Society, in the township of Berlin, Connecticut. He left this post on March 2, 1867, and was settled two months later over the Congregational Church in South Glastonbury, Connecticut, where he remained until November, 1869. Thence he went to Plymouth, Connecticut, where during a pastorate of twenty years he came into special prominence throughout the State as a leader in movements of temperance reform. His last pastorate (1889-1893) was in Conway, Massachusetts, and the closing months of his life were spent in Farmington, Connecticut, where he died on March 1, 1895, in his 70th year, of heart failure, following pneumonia. His wife survived him, with five daughters and two sons.

From Yale University Obituary Record, 1890-1900, p. 303.