Burgess Allison
Burgess Allison [1]
a Baptist minister and successful teacher, was born at Bordentown, N. J., Aug. 17, 1753, and died at Washington Feb. 20, 1827. At the age of sixteen he was baptized, and immediately began to preach. Desirous of classical and theological education, he placed himself, in 1774, under the instruction of Dr. Samuel Jones, of Lower Dublin, near Philadelphia. In 1777 he studied a short time at Rhode Island College, and on his return became pastor of the feeble congregation at Bordentown. Receiving but little compensation, he opened a classical boarding-school, which attained great reputation. Mr. Allison retired from this post in 1796 for a few years, which time he devoted to various inventions, and especially to the improvement of the steam-engine and its application to navigation. Resuming his school in 1801, he afterward reaccepted the pastorship, but was soon compelled by ill health to relinquish his labors. In 1816 he was elected chaplain to the House of Representatives, and was afterward appointed chaplain at the Navy Yard in Washington, in which office he died. Dr. Allison was offered, at different times, the presidency of three colleges, all of which he declined. He was a man of great mechanical and artistic genius, and was for a long time one of the secretaries of the American Philosophical Society. He kept up a large foreign correspondence, and wrote much for the periodicals of the day. — Sprague, Annals, 6, 121.
