Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Stebbins, Rufus Phineas

STEBBINS, Rufus Phineas, clergyman, b. at South Wilbraham, Mass., 8 March, 1810; d. at Cambridge, Mass., 13 Aug., 1885. After graduating from Amherst in the class of 1834, he studied theology at the Harvard divinity school. He was ordained as pastor of a Unitarian church at Leominster, Mass., 20 Sept., 1837, where he remained until 1844. He held a pastorate at Meadville, Pa., from 1844-'9, and was president of the theological seminary there from 1844-'56. He then held various pastorates, and at the First Unitarian church, Newton, Mass., from 1877 till his death. He was the author of a history of Wilbraham, Mass. (Boston, 1864); “Study of the Pentateuch” (1881); “Common-Sense View of the Books of the Old Testament” (1885); and numerous addresses. Harvard university gave him the degree of D. D.