asked him “to employ himself wholly in the school” He seems at first
to have declined a formal appointment because they tendered it again
a few months later with the request that he “remove to Hamilton, that
he may more fully perform the duties of his office” and with permis
sion for him to supplement his income by supplying in churches on
Sundays. This time he accepted.
Born in 1777 in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he grew up,
Kendrick was the eldest son of a family of nine children. His advanced
education, gained in less than two years once he had decided to
become a preacher, came from resident pastors at Hanover, and
Thetford, Vermont, and Franklin and Boston in Massachusetts. The
best known of the group, perhaps, was Dr. Nathaniel Emmons of
Franklin, who had trained more young ministers than any of his
brother preachers. An arch-Calvinist with a keen analytical mind, he
was shrewd in introducing his students to the pitfalls of rationalism
which he required them to investigate in his well-stocked library and
discuss in written essays. Though Kendrick spent less than three
months with him the unmistakable influence of his teacher was
strengthened by many subsequent conferences. Kendrick next went to
live with Dr. Thomas Baldwin, eminent pastor of the Second Baptist
Church of Boston, who, with Dr. Samuel Stillman of the First Baptist
Church, gave him valuable contacts and instruction.
Kendrick’s interest and qualifications for teaching theology first
appeared shortly before the Education Society was founded when he
took the lead in organizing and conducting a “consociation” of young
ministers of the vicinity for the study of that subject. At their bi-
monthly sessions they read and discussed essays on doctrine which
they had written.
was a member of the group.
No teacher at the Seminary in its first years made so strong an
impression on the students as Kendrick. His “gigantic power, both
mental and physical,” his stature of nearly six and a half feet, and his
serious dignity combined with easy graceful manners and gentle
kindness they always remembered. A portrait of him, painted about
1840, emphasizes his high forehead, sharp eyes, long features, and
solemn expression. A slow, profound, and solitary thinker, he seldom
gave vent to his ideas but when he did, it was in deliberate and