Samuel Willard

Samuel Willard (January 31, 1640 – September 12, 1707) was a New England Puritan clergyman. He was born in Concord, Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard College in 1659, and was minister at Groton from 1663 to 1676, before being driven out by the Indians during King Philip's War. Willard was pastor of the Third Church, Boston, from 1678 until his death. He opposed the Salem witch trials and was acting president of Harvard University from 1701. He published many sermons; the folio volume, A Compleat Body of Divinity, was published posthumously in 1726. Early life Willard's parents were Major Simon Willard and Mary Sharpe, who had emigrated from England to New England in 1634, settling first in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1635, with Rev. Peter Bulkeley, they established the town of Concord, where Samuel was born the sixth child and second son. After the death of his mother, his father remarried twice, and Samuel was one of seventeen children born to the family. At the age of fifteen, Willard entered Harvard College in 1655, graduating in 1659, and was the only member of his class to receive an M.A. Ministry in Groton In 1663, Willard began preaching in Groton, then at the very frontier of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The town's first minister, John Miller, had become ill and, when he died, the congregation asked Willard to stay, and he was officially ordained by them in 1664.