The Humphreys family in America - citizen hylbom blog

New York City. Firm of BuUard & Co., leather merchants, 14 Ferry St., N. Y.
Res. (1884) 128 W. 2ist Street, New York City. Child:
4215. i. Ludlow Henderson'; deceased; lived two days.
4216. III. Alfred Skelton,^ b. in 1850; d. in 1852, be. 2 years.
FAMILY 398.
4217. Rev. Zephaniah Moore' Humphrey, d. d., [2742] (Rev. Neman, d. d.^,
Solomon,'' Solomon, i Jonaihan,^ Lieut. Samuel,- Michael^) was born in Amherst, Mass., 30 Aug.,
1824, the year succeeding that in which his father entered upon his important duties as president
of the college located in that town. He married 20 Apr., 1853, Harriette L. Sykes, of Westfield, N. Y.
Dr. Humphrey graduated at Amherst College, under the presidency of his father, in 1S43,
and then spent some two years in teaching, that being the regimen prescribed by the president
for all his sons, and recommended for all young men. He then became a tutor in Amherst
College, from whence he entered Andover Theological Seminary and graduated there in 1S49.
Dr. Humphrey wisely chose what was then "the West" as his field of future labor, and in 1850
became pastor of the church in Racine, Wis. In 1856 he was invited and became the pastor of
a more important church in Milwaukee, where he labored till 1859, when he was called to a still
more important pastorate in the First Presbyterian Church in Chicago, then, as now, one of the
leading congregations of that denomination in the Northwest. Here he labored with much accept-
ance, and with a steadily widening influence, until 1868, when he deemed it wise to seek a
change of climate and the stimulus of new associations and labors, by accepting a call to the
Calvary Church of Philadelphia, an influential position, which he filled most worthily until he was
elected, in May, 1875, by the unanimous and cordial vote of the Board of Trustees, to the Pro-
fessorship of Ecclesiastical History and Church Polity in Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati,
Ohio; and in the following September he was transferred from the pastorate of the Calvary Church
to this new position. His formal inauguration occurred October 27th, when he delivered an able
and suggestive inaugural on "History as a Record of Thought." In 1S71 he was Moderator of
the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church.
"To- his work he brought, if not that complete furnishing which a life-long devotion to
the special study of church history would have supplied, a general knowledge both of history and
of related subjects, a practical acquaintance with life and aff"airs, a large and pure sagacity, a
philosophic wisdom, and a high faith in the sovereign and beneficent purpose of God as regulating
all human events, which together constituted a very rare preparation for the service to which the
remamder of his days were to be given. With great care and conscientiousness he took up his
particular duties, prosecuting each inquiry diligently, carefully summing up the results Ol every
fresh investigation, increasing steadily both in the amount of his instruction and m his capacity
to stimulate and enrich the minds committed to his training, and so justilying more and more,
even to the end, the wisdom of his election to that somewhat difficult post of service."
"His general mfluence over the students, as exerted in various ways, and especially as
realized through his religious ministrations, was in a high degree effective, hallowing, elevated.
They saw in him a man whose natural gifts the grace of God had sanctified, and in whom the
glow of a holy purpose was always apparent—a man who was true to himself, and true always
to Christ, and who, by the necessities of the case, was ever a bright example, deterrmg from
evil, inspiring toward all good."*
" Dr. Humphrey was a man who presented in a striking degree, in his character and hie.
the uncommon combination of gentleness and force. To a character possessing great natural
• I'loiH the funeral uddri-ss by Kcv. E, V. WonU, D. U., oi Lane Theological Seminary, dclivereJ Nov. i6, 1881.
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