Gideon Hawley

Gideon Hawley (1727–1807) was a missionary to the Iroquois Indians in Massachusetts and on the Susquehanna River in New York.

He was born in the Stratfield section of Stratford, now Bridgeport, Connecticut, in New England on November 5, 1727. The son of Gideon Hawley and Hannah Bennett who was the daughter of Lieutenant James Bennett. Hawley's mother died at his birth and his father died three years later. He was the grandson of Ephraim and Sarah (Welles) Hawley from Trumbull. He was the great grandson of Joseph Hawley (Captain), first of the Hawley name to come to America in 1629, and was twice great grandson of Thomas Welles Governor of the Colony of Connecticut. He married Lucy Fessenden, second daughter of Reverend Benjamin Fessenden (Harvard 1718) and Rebecca (Smith) Fessenden, of Sandwich. They had three sons and two daughters. Lucy died December 25, 1777 at 50. Gideon married again to Mrs. Elizabeth Burchard, widow of Captain David Burchard of Nantucket, on October 7, 1778.

Hawley graduated from Yale in 1749. He was licensed to preach in May 1750. In 1752, in , he accepted a position with the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians, under the supervision of Jonathan Edwards who was a preacher to the whites and the Housatonic Indians in Stockbridge. Hawley taught Mohawk, Oneida, and Tuscarora Indians there, with Edwards occasionally visiting to give advice.

In 1753, Hawley accepted a position from the commissioners of Indian affairs to establish a mission among the Six Nations at the town of Oquaga on the Susquehanna, near what is now Windsor, New York, in the area where another Yale graduate, Rev. Elihu Spencer, had made an unsuccessful attempt at ministry in the late 1740s. Hawley left for the site in 1754. Besides acting as a missionary, Hawley also acted as an interpreter at this post.

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