The New International Encyclopædia/Dexter, Henry Martyn

​Dex′ter, Henry Martyn (1821–90). An American clergyman and historian. He was born in Plympton, Mass.; graduated at Yale in 1840, and at the Andover Theological Seminary in 1844; and was pastor of a Congregational church at Manchester, N. H., from 1844 to 1849, and of the Berkeley Street Congregational Church in Boston from 1849 until 1867. He edited the Congregationalist from 1851 to 1866, the Congregational Quarterly from 1859 to 1866, and in 1867 became editor-in-chief of the Recorder, in which the Congregationalist had been merged. He held a pastorate at Dorchester, Mass., from 1869 to 1871, and from 1877 to 1880 delivered annual courses of lectures on Congregationalism at the Andover Theological Seminary. He devoted much of his time to the study of the history of the Congregational Church and of the ecclesiastical history of New England, and wrote several valuable works on these subjects. Among his publications are: The Voice of the Bible and the Verdict of Reason (1858); Congregationalism: What it is, Whence it is, How it Works, Why it is Better than Any Other Form of Church Government, and its Consequent Demands (1865), which passed into many editions; The Church Polity of the Pilgrims the Polity of the New Testament (1870); Roger Williams and His Banishment from the Massachusetts Colony (1876); The Congregationalism of the Last Three Hundred Years, with a Bibliographical Appendix (of 7250 titles) (1881)—his most valuable work; A Handbook of Congregationalism (1880); The True Story of John Smyth, the Se-Baptist (1881); Common Sense as to Woman Suffrage (1885); and Early English Exiles in Amsterdam (1890). He also edited Church’s Eastern Expeditions and Entertaining Passages Relating to King Philip’s War, and Mourt’s Relation; and left in MSS. A Bibliography of the Church Struggle in England During the Sixteenth Century and the Pre-History of Plymouth Colony, with the English and Dutch Life of the Plymouth Men.