James Roosevelt Bayley - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

James Roosevelt Bayley was born in New York City, to Guy Carlton and Grace (née Roosevelt) Bayley. His father was the son of Dr. Richard Bayley, a professor at Columbia College who created New York's quarantine system, and the brother of Elizabeth Ann Seton, who became the first American-born saint in 1975. His mother was the daughter of James Roosevelt, after whom Bayley was named. The eldest of four children, he had two brothers, Carlton and William, and a sister, Maria Eliza. He was also distant cousins of two U.S. Presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Bayley received his early education at the Mount Pleasant Classical Institute in Amherst, Massachusetts. He once considered a career on the sea, hoping to become a midshipman in the U.S. Navy, but later abandoned these plans. He attended Washington College in Hartford, Connecticut, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1835. Raised as a Protestant, he decided to enter the Episcopalian ministry and studied under Rev. Samuel Farmar Jarvis in Middletown.

He was ordained a priest on February 14, 1840. He then served as rector of St. Andrew's Church in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City.

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