Class of 1837
ERASTUS WENTWORTH

Among our earlier alumni there have been few of more varied attainments, or of more striking personality, than the late DR. WENTWORTH. His work was done in widely different departments, —as teacher, college, president, preacher, missionary, editor,—but he carried into all these departments something of the versatile brilliancy, intensity, and peculiar individual force that belongs only to genius.

Dr. Wentworth was born in Stonington, Conn., August 5, 1813.  After leaving College, he was engaged in educational work for more than fifteen years.  From 1838 to 1846 he was teacher of natural science in the Gouverneur Wesleyan Seminary; from 1841 to 1846, in the Troy Conference Academy; in 1846 he accepted the Presidency of the McKendree College, Lebanon, Ill., which position he occupied until 1850, when he took the chair of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry in Dickinson College.  It was in this year, 1850, that he received the degree of D. D. from Alleghany College. From 1854 to 1862 he was missionary to Fuh Chau, China.  On his return, he was engaged for ten years in the active work of the ministry, in the Troy Conference.  In 1872, he was made editor of the Ladies' Repository.  He retired from this position four years later, in 1876, and did not again resume active ministerial work, though he preached at frequent intervals until his death.  He was three times a delegate to the General Conference; and, in 1876; he was appointed by that body one of the Committee for the revision of the Hymnal of the Church.  His cultivated taste, and wide acquaintance with the best religious poetry, made his services upon this committee of very great value.  During the later years of his life he wrote much on occasional topics, both for the secular press and the periodicals of the Church., In 1881 he removed to Sandy Hill, N. Y., where he passed the remainder of his days. His death occurred on May 26, 1886.

Dr. Wentworth was a man of very wide reading, especially in polite literature, and of highly cultivated literary tastes; a pithy and brilliant writer; an eloquent, though somewhat uneven preacher; an incisive but kindly critic; a most genial companion, with a peculiar and unfailing vein of humor.  Such a combination of abilities, all in such high degree, is rare; and in Dr. Wentworth they were all subservient to a steady and devoted Christian purpose.  He had the elements of a great man.

All who knew him will recognize the fidelity of the following brief portraiture, from the pen of his old friend, Rev. B. K. Peirce, D. D., in Zion’s Herald:

“He was a man of marked intellectual ability, a powerful preacher, at times sweeping an audience in his discourses with astonishing forced.  He could be terribly sarcastic, but had the tenderest of natures; he was eminently witty, hand had a rare gift of caricature.  His private letters were often amusingly illustrated. He was a genial companion, of rare conversational powers.  He was a true man, and had wholesome abomination of all shams.  He had a very picturesque and epigrammatic style in writing, and was a broad, general scholar.  He was a good man, prayerful, devout, without distrust in the divine plan of salvation or in the providence of God.  He was not surprised when death came, but readily accepted his call, and trusting confidently in his Saviour, passed peacefully behind the clouds into the open vision of Paradise.”

Source:  Obituary Record of Alumni of Wesleyan University for the Academic Year Ending June 24, 1886, Middletown, Conn. 1886