Henry James, Sr.

Henry James Sr. (June 3, 1811 in Albany, New York – December 18, 1882 in Boston, Massachusetts) was an American theologian and adherent of Swedenborgianism, also known for being the father of the philosopher William James, novelist Henry James, and diarist Alice James.

Henry James Sr. was the son of William James (1771–1832), who emigrated from Bailieborough, County Cavan, Ireland to the United States around 1789, and who amassed a fortune of about $1.2 million from business dealings in upstate New York State, primarily in Albany real estate and money lending. The building of the Erie Canal was another factor in the James family's prosperity.

Henry James Sr. was one of twelve children. At the age of thirteen, he was severely burned trying to stamp out a fire in a barn, and lost a leg to amputation. The three years he was bedridden reinforced his studious disposition. He entered Union College in 1828 and graduated in 1830. His father, a stern Presbyterian, disapproved of his religious ideas, but when the patriarch's will was broken he became an independently wealthy man. He studied at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1835 to 1837 to prepare for the ministry, but found himself disconcerted by "enormous difficulties which inhered in its philosophy," and abandoned the idea of becoming a minister.

James then went to England for about a year, and returned in 1838 to New York, where he prepared an edition of Robert Sandeman's Letters on Theron and Aspasio, which has been called the principal literary document of a Scottish sect that opposed the Presbyterian Church. In his preface to Sandeman's work, he called it a far more faithful exhibition of Gospel truth than any other work. What specifically interested Henry James Sr. was its radically egalitarian message. Sandeman wrote: In fine, the whole New Testament speaks aloud, that as to the matter of acceptance with God, there is no difference betwixt one man and another; — no difference betwixt the best accomplished gentleman, and the most infamous scoundrel; — no difference betwixt the most virtuous lady and the vilest prostitute...

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