Hugh Nesbitt Wilson

Hugh Nesbitt Wilson

a Presbyterian minister, was born at Elizabeth, N. J., May 7, 1813. He early felt the power of religion and united: with the Second Presbyterian Church of Elizabeth at about fifteen years of age. He graduated at the College of New Jersey in the class of 1830, and, after teaching for a short time in Trenton, N.J., entered Princeton Theological Seminary, where, after taking a full course of study, he graduated in 1834. During the years 1833-35, he held the place of tutor in the college. As an instructor, he was faithful, thorough, and able. His manners were gentle, winning, and most agreeable and he always commanded the unbounded respect as well as the affection of the students. He was licensed by the Presbytery of Elizabethtown, April 23, 1835, and ordained as an evangelist by the same presbytery Oct. 7, in the same year. His first field of labor was on Long Island, where he began to supply the Church at Southampton in September, 1835, but soon after he received and accepted a call to become its pastor, and was installed June 29, 1836.

Here he had a long, useful, and happy pastorate of nearly sixteen years. His labors were largely blessed in. gathering many souls into the Church, and he enjoyed the unbounded love of an attached people. For reasons connected with his health he resigned his charge April 13, 1852, and was immediately afterwards settled at Hackettstown, N. J. There he was installed June 23, 1852, and labored six years with great acceptance but having received a call to the Second Reformed (Dutch) Church of New Brunswick, N. J., he resigned his charge at Hackettstown May 1, 1858, and was installed at New Brunswick May 27, in the same year. After laboring at the latter place four years, he resigned this charge in May, 1862. It is not often that a minister is invited back in later life to serve the congregation, which enjoyed his first ministrations. This happened to Dr. Wilson. After leaving New Brunswick, he was invited to supply for a time the Church at Southampton, which he began to do in August, 1863. In the next year he received a regular call, and was again installed as pastor on Sept. 25, 1864. But, after three years, his health, which had for a long time been far from strong, hopelessly failed, and he resigned May 1, 1867, and in June of the same; year he removed to Germantown, near Philadelphia. Here, in an extremely infirm and disabled condition, but patient and trustful, he continued to reside until his death, which occurred June 4, 1878. Dr. Wilson was a director in Princeton Seminary from 1851 until he resigned in 1858, on entering another denomination. He was, in the truest sense of the word, a Christian gentleman; was a fine classical scholar and a man of extensive reading. As a preacher, he was earnest, affectionate, instructive, and popular. The blessing of God attended his labors in every place where he was settled. See Corwin, Manual of the Ref. Church, s.v. (W. P.S.)