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Excerpted from
The Phelps Family of America and
Their English Ancestors, (Save
$201 by ordering through us.) Two volumes.
By Judge Oliver Seymour Phelps and Andrew T. Servin. (Eagle Publishing Company
of Pittsfield, Mass., 1899)
Reverend Elnathan Phelps was born about 1734 in Northampton,
MA. In 1757 he arried his second cousin, Eleanor Bridgman, the
granddaughter of Nathaniel Phelps, Jr., the brother of Elnathan's
grandfather, William. Elnathan, at the age of 21 years, served
in the Fourth French and Indian War, in 1755, from September
15 to December 10, in the company by Captain William Lyman and
was wounded in the sanguinary engagement. In the Revolutionary
War, he served as a private in Captain John Strong's Company,
Colonel John Brown's (Berkshire Co.), regiment; entered service
June 30, 1777; discharged July 26, 1777; service 26 days, in
northern department; also, list of men who marched from Pittsfield
to Port Ann, June 30, 1777, under the command of Captain John
Strong, and were dismissed July 26, 1777; service 3 weeks, 5
days; also, Lieutenant James Hubbard's Co., Lieutenant Colonel
David Rossiter's detachment of militia; entered service, August
17; discharged August 22, 1777; service 4 days, Company marched
on an alarm at Bennington, VT. His name is on the Honor Rolls
of the U.S., D.A.R.
Reverend Phelps was a Baptist preacher and organizer of churches
in Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York.
In 1761, after his brother, William, settled there, and after
the births of their first two children, Elnathan and Eleanor
moved to Pittsfield, MA where seven more children were born and
where Eleanor died, on or shortly after, May 2, 1774, when the
ninth child Eleanor Phelps, was born. He, William, and six others,
one of whom, also, was a Phelps, were the founders of the First
Church of Pittsfield, September 7, 1764, referred to in the Pittsfield
records in 1781. He served on a committee of five to examine
into the sect of Shakers who were exceeding the bounds of Baptist
toleration. Soon thereafter, he began preaching and, at the same
time, organizing Baptist churches. In 1776, he married Mrs. Sarah
Elenthorp, widow of Jacob, who was born in Boston in 1743. They
had three children, all of whom where born in Pittsfield, MA.
In 1788, he removed to Orwell, VT and was the first Baptist
preacher in that state. He was also the organizer of several
congregations in various parts of Vermont, and at least one in
New York state. Elnathan died in 1813, aged 79 years, at Pownal,
VT, while on his way to Pittsfield, MA, to visit a son residing
there. Grandmother Eleanor Phelps was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts
in May 1774, and moved to Orwell early in life with her father,
Rev. Elnathan Phelps.
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