Samuel Danforth

Who was Samuel Danforth?

Samuel Danforth was a Puritan minister, preacher, poet, and astronomer, and an associate of the Rev. John Eliot of Roxbury, Massachusetts, known as the “Apostle to the Indians.”

He was born October 17, 1626, in Framlingham, Suffolk, England, the sixth of seven children of Nicholas Danforth and Elizabeth Symmes Danforth. Six surviving children— Elizabeth, Anna, Thomas, Lydia, Samuel, and Jonathan —emigrated with their father to Massachusetts in 1634. After their father died in 1639, Samuel lived with Thomas Shepard, pastor of the church in Cambridge, and later attended Harvard College, where he graduated in 1643 and remained as a tutor until 1650. His studies included astronomy, and during this time he published three almanacs, which are the earliest surviving American examples of the form. A fourth is also attributed to him, although the single surviving copy is missing the first several pages and any attribution. These almanacs included his own original poetry, and are among the earliest examples of secular verse published in New England. They also contained—in addition to celestial tables, tide tables, calendars, and dates of court sessions—brief chronologies of significant events in New England's history. In 1650 he became pastor at Roxbury, where Rev. John Eliot was Teaching Elder, and was ordained on September 24, 1650. In 1651, he married Mary Wilson, daughter of the Rev. John Wilson of Boston, with whom he had twelve children in 24 years. He died November 19, 1674.