Jonathan Fisher - Biographical Information

Biographical Information

Jonathan Fisher was born in New Braintree, Massachusetts in 1768 and reared in the home of his uncle a minister, because his father, a Revolutionary War soldier had died. As a young man he considered becoming a blacksmith, cabinet maker or clockmaker, but his intellectual gifts were evident and his family was able to send him to Harvard in 1788. He studied liberal arts and divinity, supporting himself by waiting on other students in the dining hall. During this time he developed a curious shorthand or code in which his notes were kept.

He came to Blue Hill Maine in 1796 as the first settled pastor of the Congregational Church. By November 2, 1797, his original house was completed by the work of his own hands, aided by those of his parishioners. The first house, which was in use for 100 years, was unfortunately torn down by a Fisher descendant in 1896. It formed the shell of the present house which was begun in 1814, again largely by the parson himself. His skill and taste as a builder and designer are evident in its rooms.

The Reverend Jonathan Fisher, Master of Arts, a degree and title in which he took much pride, was a most unusual and remarkably gifted man. When at the close of the 18th century he came to Blue Hill, then a frontier village 'in a wilderness", he was seemingly leaving behind him all those intellectual and artistic pursuits and resources in which he delighted. Yet, instead of leaving these in the "Seat of the Muses", which was his name for Harvard College and Cambridge, he transported them to his lonely, far-flung parish, and with no little success, grafted many of them upon the people, and upon the pioneer institutions of his new charge.

A student of languages all his life, he did not neglect his Hebrew, his Latin, or his Greek. In his study on the right entrance to his house, he read his Hebrew Bible at five o'clock each morning, in winter by the light of his "blazing logs"; his Latin and Greek he taught to four or five young men, who usually boarded with him and his own large family. Devoted to drawing and painting, he somehow managed to pursue these arts even in Blue Hill.

Industrious almost beyond belief, and possessed of an unflagging physical vitality, he relieved his omnipresent poverty and increased the few hundred dollars of his meager salary by farming his own acres, concocting medical remedies, braiding numberless straw hats, sawing out buttons from the bones of farm animals, and even of dead household pets, painting names on vessels or painting sleighs (at $2.50) each, making pumps, chairs, chests, hair-combs, tables, bureaus, bedsteads, cradles, even drumsticks for the local militia (at 25 cents a pair), and by repairing much of the shaky furniture in Blue Hill. And, with all these labors, he found time to write many poems, and several books!

Nor were his activities confined to his parish. Although he nurtured its library, was the power behind its Academy, founded in 1803 (in which he encouraged "the fine arts" as well as the study of classics and mathematics), and watched over the minds as well as the souls of its people, he went on long missionary journeys, was an active Trustee of the Bangor Theological Seminary (and an untiring beggar for its needs as well!). He was an ardent speaker and writer in the cause of bettering the lot of the Negroes and sponsored from its beginning the American Society for the Colonization of Liberia.

Through these and other labors both and home added immeasurably to the cultural dignity of this village for more than half a century. Blue Hill still respects and honors him.

Mary Ellen Chase, JONATHAN FISHER: MAINE PARSON 1768 - 1847