Samuel Phillips Payson

Phillips Payson (January 18, 1736 – January 11, 1801) was an American Congregationalist minister who was the pastor for the town of Chelsea, Massachusetts from 1757 until his death.

Payson is not the same man as Captain Samuel Payson who also fought during the Battle of Lexington. (Capt. Payson thereafter sold his farm to loan the money to his town to fund the revolution.)

He was born in Walpole, the son of Rev. Phillips Payson Sr. (1704–1778) and Anne Swift (1706–1756). The Payson family originated from Nazeing, England, first settling in the Massachusetts Bay Colony as early as 1635. Payson graduated from Harvard in 1754. He was ordained three years later. He married Elizabeth Stone (1735–1800), daughter of Rev. James Stone and Elizabeth Swift. Payson was a charter member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1780).

Due to the policies of the British Empire, the free people of the Province of Massachusetts Bay were being reduced under a despotism that denied the authority of their elected representatives to govern. Instead a military government based in Boston had been granted absolute power.

Payson was the minister of a Protestant congregation in Chelsea, when he spoke an Election Sermon in support of the American Revolution and its goals of religious and civil liberty. He advocated a break from political tradition by emphasizing the new start of society in New England with statements (based on Galatians 4:26, 31) such as, "Recollecting our pious ancestors, the first settlers of the country, – nor shall we look for ancestry beyond that period, – and we may say in the most literal sense, we are children not of the bond woman, but of the free."

Rev. Dr. Payson and his congregants thereafter freely elected to support and protect their liberties, and formed an armed party to protect their parish. During the Battles of Lexington and Concord, their militia engaged British troops at Menotomy: