William Buell Sprague

William Buell Sprague (1795 to 1876) lived during an era of significant growth for the American church and republic. As an American Congregational and Presbyterian clergyman, Sprague spent his life preserving the history of his peers and predecessors. He is remembered as a dedicated pastor, a prolific writer of biographies and sermons, and one of the nation's most active historical collectors.

A Life of Ministry and Study

Sprague's intellectual outlook was formed by some of the most prominent theological minds of his day. He studied at Yale under Timothy Dwight IV, graduating in 1815, before continuing his education at the Princeton Theological Seminary under Dr. Archibald Alexander and Samuel Miller. In 1819, he became the assistant to the Reverend Joseph Lathrop at a Congregational church in West Springfield, Massachusetts. When Lathrop died the following year, Sprague stepped into the role of senior minister, serving there for nine years. He then accepted a call to pastorship at the Second Presbyterian Church in Albany, New York, where he ministered for forty years.

Preserving American History

Sprague is best known for his massive literary achievement, the nine-volume Annals of the American Pulpit, published between 1857 and 1869. This work served as a comprehensive biographical dictionary of leading American Protestant Christian ministers who died before 1850, capturing the lives of Trinitarian Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, and Unitarian figures. Alongside his writings, which included more than 150 published pamphlets of sermons and biographies of Timothy Dwight and Jedidiah Morse, Sprague was a passionate collector of historical documents. By February of 1833, he became the first person to gather a complete set of autographs from the signers of the United States Declaration of Independence. His collection eventually grew to nearly 100,000 signatures, including those of presidents, Revolutionary War officers, and figures of the Reformation, making him the foremost American philographer of his time.

After retiring from his Albany pulpit in 1870, Sprague spent his final years in Flushing, New York, before his death in 1876. His life was defined by active, continuous effort, as seen in his massive archival collections and his hundreds of written works. He did not wait for history to preserve itself, nor did he wait for perfect conditions to begin his massive undertakings. This active spirit is reflected in his famous advice to action: "Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking." His words and his exhaustive historical records remain a clear example of how individual diligence can shape our understanding of the past.