Samuel Merrill Woodbridge

The Reverend Samuel Merrill Woodbridge, D.D., LL.D. (April 5, 1819 – June 23, 1905) was an American clergyman, theologian, author, and college professor. A graduate of New York University and the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, Woodbridge preached for sixteen years as a clergyman in the Reformed Church in America. After settling in New Brunswick, New Jersey, he taught for 44 years as professor of ecclesiastical history and church government at the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, and for seven years as professor of "metaphysics and philosophy of the human mind" at Rutgers College (now Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey) in New Brunswick. Woodbridge later led the New Brunswick seminary as Dean and President of the Faculty from 1883 to 1901. He was the author of three books and several published sermons and addresses covering various aspects of Christian faith, theology, church history and government. Biography Samuel Merrill Woodbridge was born April 5, 1819, in Greenfield, Massachusetts. He was the third of six children born to the Rev. Sylvester Woodbridge, D.D. (1790–1863) and Elizabeth Gould (died in 1851). According to a genealogical chart published in Munsey's Magazine in 1907, Woodbridge was in the eleventh generation of a family of clergymen dating back to the late 15th century. The earliest clergyman in this ancestral line, the Rev. John Woodbridge (born in 1493), was a follower of John Wycliffe.