Rev Joseph FISH

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Joseph Fish graduated from Harvard in 1728, received his M.A. in 1731 and began preaching at the North parish of Stonington, Connecticut, in August 1732. He was ordained on 27 December 1732 as the second pastor of the Congregational Church. He was described as a 'tall, light complexioned, sturdy man, impressive, dignified, graceful, suave, affable, kind, and gentle.' The onset of the Great Awakening caused problems for rev. Fish who disagreed with many of the new preachers whom he considered uneducated. He lost two thirds of his congregation in 1746 when Baptist and other churches were formed, but did not accept offers at other churches.

Parson Fish worked among the Indians as a representative of the Society for Promoting the Gospel in New England and Parts Adjacent and was later a commissioner for the Scots' Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge among the Indians. For more than a dozen years Fish managed the Indian school in Stonington, and he preached monthly lectures to a congregation of about twenty-five Indian women and children, most of the men having been killed in the army. This congregation, too, deserted him in favor of illiterate Narragansett preachers who regularly came over from Rhode Island. In 1766 he assumed oversight of the school among the Narragansetts at Charlestown, Rhode Island, and he supported Wheelock's Indian school at Lebanon, Connecticut.

Joseph married Rebecca PABODIE on 6 Dec 1732 in Little Compton, Connecticut. Rebecca (daughter of William PABODIE and Judith TILDEN) was born on 29 Feb 1703/4 in Little Compton, Connecticut; was christened on 3 Aug 1707 in United Congregational Church; died on 27 Oct 1783 in Fairfield, Connecticut. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Mary FISH was born on 19 May 1736; died on 2 Jul 1818 in Wallingford, Massachusetts.