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Notes for REV. CHARLES HENRY WHARTON:
American Biographical Notes
W
The Chicago Historical Society
page 420
WHARTON, REV. CHARLES HENRY, d. at Burlington, N. J., July, 1833, a. 86 years.
Wharton, Charles Henry, educator, was born at "Notley Hill," St. Mary's county, Md., June 5, 1748. He attended the Jesuits' college, St. Omer's, England, 1760-72; was ordained to the Roman Catholic priesthood in September, 1772, and in 1783, when he was chaplain to the Roman Catholics in Worcester, England, he returned to America, and in May, 1784, adopted the views of the Established Church of England, and was rector of Immanuel church, New Castle, 1784-98. He was a delegate to the general convention that drafted an ecclesiastical constitution for the Protestant Episcopal church in the United States of America in 1785, and a member of the committee to draft the constitution and of the committee to make the Book of Common Prayer conform to the government of the new republic. In 1798 he was made rector of St. Mary's church, Burlington, N.J., and in 1801 elected president of Columbia college, N.Y., which office he held during the commencement of that year, after which he resigned and resumed the rectorship of St. Mary's, Burlington. He was president of the standing committee of the diocese and a deputy to the general convention continuously during his lifetime; was a member of the American Philosophical society, 1786-1833, and at the time of his death was the senior presbyter of the Protestant Episcopal church in the United States. He was co-editor with the Rev. Dr. Abercrombie of the Quarterly Theological Magazine and Religious Repository, 1813-14, and is the author of a poetical epistle to Gen. George Washington, published for the benefit of American prisoners in England (1779); Letter to the Roman Catholics of Worcester (1784); Reply to Bishop Carroll's Address to the Roman Catholics of the United Stales (1785); Inquiry into the Proofs of the Divinity of Christ (1796); Concise View of the Principal Points of Controversy between the Protestant and Roman Churches (1817). Bishop George W. Doane published "Remains and Memoir of the Rev. Charles H. Wharton" (2 vols., 1834). He died in Burlington, N.J., July 22, 1833.
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