ii. 666-687).
DEXTER, HENRY MARTYN (1821-1890), American clergyman and author, was
born in Plympton, Massachusetts, on the 13th of August 1821. He
graduated at Yale in 1840 and at the Andover Theological Seminary in
1844; was pastor of a Congregational church in Manchester, New
Hampshire, in 1844-1849, and of the Berkeley Street Congregational
church, Boston, in 1849-1867; was an editor of the _Congregationalist_
in 1851-1866, of the _Congregational Quarterly_ in 1859-1866, and of the
_Congregationalist_, with which the _Recorder_ was merged, from 1867
until his death in New Bedford, Mass., on the 13th of November 1890. He
was an authority on the history of Congregationalism and was lecturer on
that subject at the Andover Theological Seminary in 1877-1879; he left
his fine library on the Puritans in America to Yale University. Among
his works are: _Congregationalism, What it is, Whence it is, How it
works, Why it is better than any other Form of Church Government, and
its consequent Demands_ (1865), _The Church Polity of the Puritans the
Polity of the New Testament_ (1870), _As to Roger Williams and His
"Banishment" from the Massachusetts Colony_ (1876), _Congregationalism
of the Last Three Hundred Years, as seen in its Literature_ (1880), his
most important work, _A Handbook of Congregationalism_ (1880), _The True
Story of John Smyth, the "Se-Baptist"_ (1881), _Common Sense as to
Woman Suffrage_ (1885), and many reprints of pamphlets bearing on early
church history in New England, especially Baptist controversies. His
_The England and Holland of the Pilgrims_ was completed by his son,
Morton Dexter (b. 1846), and published in 1905.
DEXTER, TIMOTHY (1747-1806), American merchant, remarkable for his
eccentricities, was born at Malden, Massachusetts, on the 22nd of
February 1747. He acquired considerable wealth by buying up quantities
of the depreciated continental currency, which was ultimately redeemed
by the Federal government at par. He assumed the title of Lord Dexter
and built extraordinary houses at Newburyport, Mass., and Chester, New
Hampshire. He maintained a poet laureate and collected inferior
pictures, besides erecting in one of his gardens some forty colossal
statues carved in wood to represent famous men. A statue of himself was
included in the collection, and had for an inscription "I am the first
in the East, the first in the West, and the greatest philosopher in the
Western World." He wrote a book
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