Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, 1823-1904

[Evan M. Corcoran]

PYNCHON, THOMAS RUGGLES (Jan. 19, 1823-Oct. 6, 1904), Protestant Episcopal
clergyman, college president, descended from William Pynchon [q.v.], chief
founder of Springfield, Mass., was born in New Haven, Conn., the son of
William Henry Ruggles Pynchon, a banker, and his wife, Mary Murdock.
Because of the death of his father during his boyhood, Thomas went to
Boston to live with his mother's sister.  He attended the Boston Latin
School and planned to enter Harvard, but was persuaded to go to Washington
College (now Trinity), Hartford, by Professor John Smyth Rogers, a friend
of the family, who promised to take him under his care.  He entered a
prliminary class at Hartford when he was thirteen, matriculated in the
college in 1837, and was graduated as salutatorian of his class in 1841.
  From 1843 to 1847 he was a tutor in the college.  Meanwhile, probably
under the influence of his friend John Williams, subsequently Bishop of
Connecticut, he decided to enter the ministry of the Episcopal Church.  He
studied theology and on June 14, 1848, was made a deacon by Bishop Thomas
Church Brownell in Trinity Church, New Haven.  He took charge of St.
Paul's Church, Stockbridge, and Trinity Church, Lenox, in Massachusetts,
and was ordained priest in Trinity Church, Boston, June 25, 1849, by
Bishop Manton Eastburn.  Six years later, having been elected Scovill
Professor of Chemistry and Natural Science at his alma mater, he resigned
his church at Stockbridge and went abroad for a year to prepare for his
new duties.  He studied in Paris and at Cambridge, and took a geological
trip through southern France and Italy.
  From 1855 to 1877 he taught science as it was understood in his day,
giving instruction in chemistry, geology, and zoology.  During this period
he published The Chemical Forces--Heat, Light, Electricity (1870), the
second edition of which, issued in 1873, bore the title, Introduction to
Chemical Physics.  From 1857 to 1882 he was college librarian, and from
1860 to 1864 and during the year 1866-67 he served as chaplain, also.  In
1874, he was elected president of the college, serving till 1883,  The
nine years of his presidency were a critical period in the history of
Trinity College.  The site and buildings had been sold to the state for
the new Capitol, and a new site for the college had been purchased.  The
heavy burden of superintending the erection of new buildings and of
planning for the removal devolved upon President Pynchon.  He carried
through the task with good judgment, and the college entered upon its work
in the new buildings in the fall of 1878.  With the assumption of
executive duties, however, he did not relinquish his teaching; he was
professor of moral philosophy from 1877 until his retirement in 1902
(Hobart Professor, 1877-83; Brownell Professor, 1888-1902).  In 1889 he
published a volume entitled Bishop Butler, a Religious Philosopher for All
Time.  He was a member of the standing committee of the diocese of
Connecticut from 1871 to 1882, served from 1872 to his death as a trustee
of the Episcopal Academy at Cheshire.  He was also a trustee of the
General Theological Seminary in New York.
  Pynchon was a dignified gentleman, precise in his habits of thought and
of expression, who seemed to belong to an earlier generation.  He did not
marry.  He died in New Haven, in his eighty-second year, and was buried in
the Grove Street cemetery there.  Trinity College has a portrait in oil,
and a bust of him in bronze by Louis Potter.

  [Records of Trinity College, Hartford (MSS.), authority for date of
birth and parents' names; J.C. Pynchon, Record of the Pynchon Family in
England and America (1898); Who's Who in America, 1903-05; Churchman, Oct.
15, 1904; New Haven Evening Reg., Oct. 7, 1904.]           A--r.A.





In the same volume there're also entries for William and John Pynchon.
The entry for John reveals that it was he, with Joseph Dudley, who drew
the boundary line between Massachusetts and Connecticut in 1680.