John Brackenridge (clergyman)

John Brackenridge (c. 1772 – May 2, 1844) was a Presbyterian minister who served as Chaplain of the United States House of Representatives (from 1822 to 1823) and Chaplain of the United States Senate (from 1811 to 1814).

Brackenridge was born in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, the son of Scots-Irish Presbyterians Robert and Margaret (née Douglas) Brackenridge. Thereafter the family moved to the Juniata Valley, Hopewell, now Penn Township in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania. In 1779 in what came to be known as the “Brackenridge Massacre”, his father and an older sister named Nancy were killed during an Indian raid. John and his brother James escaped death because they had been in the wilds hunting for a lost horse, but each was given to other families to be raised. The family who took John moved almost at once to the part of Virginia which became Washington D.C. and it was not until 1839, that an overheard conversation resulted in the two brothers being reunited after 60 years time.

Brackenridge’s formal education included studies at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Brackenridge was ordained by the Presbytery of Baltimore in 1795 and thereafter, he was charged to serve in the new federal capital at Washington, D.C. The initial congregation he served was known as St. Andrew’s Church.

John Brackenridge has the distinction of having been the first pastor of the Presbyterian Church to serve in the new Federal City of Washington, D.C.

Brackenridge was sent by the Presbytery of Baltimore to serve as a missionary in the area around the navy yard in Washington D.C., a post he filled between 1811 and 1819, forming what became the First Presbyterian Church of Washington D.C. That congregation’s building was left intact when the hill on which the Capitol stands was created using fill. So the foundation of the Capitol is, literally, First Presbyterian Church of Washington, D.C.

While serving there, Brackenridge was elected to serve as Chaplain of the Senate, and held that position from 1811 to 1814. Brackenridge was one of fourteen Presbyterian ministers to serve as Chaplain of the Senate to date^[update]. A sermon he preached in the House chambers in mid-summer 1814 accurately predicted that the British would reach and burn the federal buildings in the new capital city.

...
Wikipedia