Abiel Holmes
Born	(1763-12-24)December 24, 1763 Woodstock, Connecticut, U.S.
Died	June 4, 1837(1837-06-04) (aged 73) Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupations	clergyman historian
Spouse(s)	Mary Stiles Sarah Wendell

Abiel Holmes (December 24, 1763 – June 4, 1837) was an AmericanCongregational clergyman and historian. He was the father ofOliver Wendell Holmes Sr. and grandfather ofOliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Holmes was born inWoodstock, Connecticut. He was the son of David Holmes and Temperance Bishop. He graduated fromYale College in 1783. In 1784, while ministering inSouth Carolina, he was recruited to be the minister at the Congregational Church inMidway, Georgia. He returned to New England to be ordained in 1785 and once for health reasons between 1786 and 1787, but returned to Midway and remained there until 1791. Holmes married Mary Stiles, the daughter ofEzra Stiles, the president of Yale. Mr. Stiles was the subject of a laudatory biography penned by Holmes.

In 1792, Rev. Holmes became the minister atFirst Church inCambridge, Massachusetts. He was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1803.^[1] In 1805, he published a history entitledAmerican Annals. Holmes was elected a member of theAmerican Antiquarian Society in 1813,^[2] and also served as its corresponding secretary from 1816 to 1828.^[3] In 1816, he was elected as a member to theAmerican Philosophical Society inPhiladelphia.^[4] Amid a theological controversy betweenCalvinism andArminianism, Holmes resigned from the ministry in 1831 and the church chose aUnitarian minister to replace him. Holmes died June 4, 1837.

Holmes married Mary Stiles, daughter ofEzra Stiles, in 1790 and second to Sarah Wendell. By the second marriage, Abiel was the father ofOliver Wendell Holmes Sr. and grandfather ofOliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

• The Life of Ezra Stiles (1798)
• The History of Cambridge (1801)
• A Memoir of the Mohegan Indians (1804)
• American Annals (1805)

• Gray, George Arthur (1908),Descendants of George Holmes of Roxbury 1594-1908,Boston:David Clapp and Son.
• White, G. Edward (1993),Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: Law and the Inner Self.

• Open Library.Abiel Holmes
• The Oliver Wendell Holmes Library at theLibrary of Congress contains his paternal grandfather, the Rev. Abiel Holmes books.

• 1763 births
• 1837 deaths
• People from Woodstock, Connecticut
• American sermon writers
• 19th-century American historians
• 19th-century American male writers
• Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Congregationalist writers
• 19th-century American Congregationalist ministers
• People from Midway, Georgia
• Yale College alumni
• 18th-century American historians
• 18th-century American Congregationalist ministers
• American male non-fiction writers
• Historians from Georgia (U.S. state)
• Historians from Connecticut

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