_Thomas SKINNER _
_John SKINNER ____________|_Mary PRATT _____
_Ezra SKINNER _________|
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_Timothy SKINNER _|
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_Timothy SKINNER _|
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|--Warren SKINNER
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|_Ruth WARNER _____|
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!.....Copley Skinner Book p. 196, 234 Universalist Register and Almanac for 1875 pp 130-133: Rev. Warren Skinner, son of Timothy and Ruth (Warner) Skinner was born in Brookfield, Mass., June 2, 1791. He was the oldest of a family of nine children, the late Rev. Dolphus Skinner, D.D., of Utica, NY, being a younger brother. Before Warren was three years old his family moved to Westmoreland, NH, where he spent his youth and learned the clothier's trade. He afterwards worked at that trade two years in Brownville, NY. He taught school for one year. He embraced Universalism in 1808, and it would seem that a sermon he heard in Westmoreland on Matthew XVI:25-26, by Rev. A. Kneeland, (then a popular preacher in Langdon, NH) had something to do with his adoption of that faith. He commenced preaching in Ellisburg, NY, in 1823, and in the same year received the fellowship of the General Convention, which met that year in Clinton, NY. He was ordained in 1825. It appears that he lived in Brownville from 1814 to 1825, inasmuch as the first five of his children were born there in that period. For the years 1826, '27, '28, he lived in Langdon, NY, as is shown by the fact that his inventroy is found on the records of that town for these years. But while living in Langdon he preached in all the region round about, on both sides of the Connecticut River, in Alstead, Jaffray, Walpole, NH; and in Andover, Chester, Ludlow, Plymouth, Springfield and Cavendish, VT, and gave a powerful impetus to the gospel truth whereever he labored. As early as 1828, possibly 1827, he removed his family to Proctorsville (Town of Cavendish) VT where he preached regularly for about 14 years, i.e., until 1845, deducting the interval from August 1833, to Sept 1836, which he spent in Shaftsbury, preaching there in Bennington. He continued in Proctorsville from 1845 to 1849 without any pastoral charge, yet preaching in many different places as occasion called, and officiating at many funerals, where his able services were in great request and were very acceptable. In 1849, he removed to South Woodstock, in the same county, and took charge of the boarding-house connected with the Liberal Institute (now Green Mountain Perkins Academy) in that place. In 1851, he again returned to his home in Proctorsville and resided there till 1867, when he went to live with a daughter, first in Waterbury, then Burlington, VT, and finally in Claremont, NH. He was the contemporary co-laborer in the gospel ministry of John E. Palmer, William Bell, Samuel C. Loveland, Thomas Browning, Russell Streeter, Kittridge Haven, and Robert Bartlett, of whom only the last four remain to this present time, and all of them octogenarians. On March 30, 1874, he preached for the last time at a funeral in Acworth, NH. On the 12th of the ensuing Sept. he went to visit his son in Proctorsville, and it is thought by his family that he felt that his end was near. For, it is said, "after reaching Proctorsville he failed rapidly." Still he was cheerful, and his mind was clear and bright to the last. Scarcely an hour before he died an old friend, Ex-Governor Ryland Fletcher, who is a Baptist, called upon him. In their early acquaintance their contests of faith had been many and warm. In the last hour of his life the contest was renewed, and Father Skinner said to Gov. Fletcher: "I have no more doubt of the truth of the doctrine I have preached, than I have that I breathe." These were almost his last words. He died October 6, 1874, in the 84th year of his age, of heart disease, as it is supposed, with which he had been afflicted for many years. He died, too, as we have seen, rejoicing in the faith which with eminent ability and fidelity he had preached for more than 50 years. A large congregation attended his funeral in the Methodist Church in Proctorsville, and the officiating minister, Rev. John Gregory, was assisted in the services by Elder Freeman (Baptist) who paid a cordial and deserved tribute to the moral worth of Father Skinner. The Fremasons were present in large numbers. from Cavendish and the neighboring towns, and buried him according to their usages. Thus the grave closed over the mortal remains of a valiant Christian soldier; a man of venerable age and distinguished ability as a writer and preacher, a clear thinker, a logical reasoner, a man mighty in the scriptures; a forcible and fluent speaker; and upright and honest man. In 1830 Father Skinner published a series of 12 able and well-written Essays "On the Coming of Christ". At various times he contributed elaborate and scholarly articles to the "Universalist Expositor" and "Quarterly Review," and one of them, "On the Popular Doctrine of Atonement" (Expositor for 1833), as we happen to know, elicited from the editor (Rev. H. Ballou, 2nd) the high praise of being the best article which, up to that time, had been furnished him. Father Skinner was twice married; first, March 5, 1815, to Miss Nancy Farnsworth of Stoddard, NH, and 2nd, Nov 24, 1831, to Mrs. Lucretia (Slapp) Reddington of Lebanon, NY, who survives him in her 75th year, with two of her four children, together with seven of the first wife's. Among the latter is Rev. Charles Augustus Skinner of Hartford, Conn. Excerpts from "Footlights and Spotlights" by O. A. Skinner [O. A. Skinner was Otis Augustus Skinner, Grandson of Warren, and son of above mentioned Rev. Charles Augustus Skinner, a noted actor in his own right.] My grandfather, Warren, also a clergyman, a man of overwhelming presence and when I knew him, of great age, viewed his annually assebled grandchildren at the family homestead in Proctorsville, VT, with an impersonal eye. We might as well have been his chickens or his cows. We used to greet him decorously, as if he were a mayor or a president. His air of aloofness had perhaps come from long years of sermon-preaching in high pulpits where he was separated from his flock. He had married twice. From each union had come a considerable crop of off-spring. It was father setp-mother I knew - and hated - a sour soul who never had a kindly word for any of us. To her lord and master she never spoke except in a snappy growl. From the parent stem of Timothy spread nine limbs, vanously labeled Warren, Alanson, Cynthia and Hiram, and from these, lesser shoots in profusion. And so it fell that Timothy begat Warren, and Warren begat Chas. A. Skinner, and Charles begat Charles, and Otis, and William who grew to man's estate. The great-uncles blossomed into doctors, merchants, jurists, and clergymen. These summer round-ups of the Skinner clansmen were well attended. There was my Aunt Harriet, tall, broad-shouldered and spectacled, whose personality was dominant and assertive. She was the wife of a lawyer in Washington, and she had done work in the military hospitals during the Civil War, after giving to her country the lives of two of her sons. They brought with them a group of pretty girls, the youngest of whom wore her hair flowing away from a horse-shoe roach-comb, like Alice in Wonderland, and in her web of brown tresses my youthful affections became sadly entangled. My Uncle Bill, an engineer who had run the first train through Dismal Swamp in Virginia, brought his hard-favored wife and my cousin Bert from their home in Indiana. Bert, bigger and rougher than I, generally came off the victor in our frequent squabbles which sometimes took on a note of seriousness. Then there was my gentle and sweet-faced Aunt Nancy, and her husband, a newspaper editor over in N. H. who came with their children. And my Augnt Martha, whom I adored for her great beauty, her freckles, and her auburn hair. And my Uncle Eugene, whom I thought something of a sport: he was certainly rather out of the family picture for he had once been connected with a troupe of negro minstrals - a monstrous affiliation! But he made up in full atonement by a life devoted to pulling the teeth of the village folk in his little dentist's shop at Proctorsville, VT. Excerpts from "Family Circle" by Cornelia Otis Skinner Born in Cambridge, Mass., the second son to bless the home of a scholarly Universalist preacher (Rev. Chas. A. Skinner), my father, Otis Augustus Skinner, came, on his father's side, from a long line of granite faced New Englanders, worthy citizens righteous and God-fearing to a conscientous point when one wondered if it might be a case of the Deity who was doing most of the fearing. His dark-eyed mother had come from up-state NY. Modest, soft-spoken, her Union with the Skinner family tree was in the nature of the grafting of a delicate fern onto a giant oak. Whoever married a Skinner became a Skinner; their children were Skinners and there was no nonsense about it. The atmosphere of the Skinner household was austere. Life was a dedication to a rigidly restricted path marked Duty, and the bringing up of children was a business of serious endeavor. My father's boyhood days were spent largely in the observance of a stern routine. His happiest interludes were the summer months when the family went to Proctorsville, VT, to stay with Grandfather Warren. That impressive old patriarch regarded his grandchildren with much the same mild interest he held for his chickens or his cows, and as long as they didn't bother him they were at liberty to do as they pleased. Vermont meant the annual gathering of the Skinner clan, a large flock that numbered such colorful individuals as dashing as Uncle Eugene, who it was whispered, had once toured the county in a minstrel show, but had retired to a life of reform and respectability as Proctorsville's leading dentist. Then there was the rought old Uncle Bill, a railroad engineer, who during the Civil War had driven the first train through Dismal Swamp. He told how he had run down the Northern lines with a heavily loaded ammunition train, going "fast as all git-out", on a one-track section. He suddenly saw directly ahead of him the headlight of an on-coming train. After jamming the brakes with a force that all but telescoped the heavily explosive cars behind him, he backed the train to a standstilll into the nearest siding, jumped down from the cab, reset the switch, sat down on the embankment, and waited for the passing of what proved to be the planet Venus. In early September, Grandpa Warren bade them all a perfunctory and quite relieved farewell and they returned to Cambridge. Life in a New England clerical household was hardly luxurious. The pay of a Universal minister was moral rather than monetary, and as a virtue, frugality was on an even tie with godliness.
!.....E95.0724.106 SKU 12(4)82 1850 Census VT, Windsor, Woodstock
!.....Hayes. History of Rockingham Vermont -1753-1907. pg. 755 Skinner: Rev. Warren, b. Brooksfield, Mass., June 2, 1791; learned clothierıs trade in Westmoreland, N. H., ordained Univer. Minister 1825; held various pastorates including Proctorsville, Vt.; from 1828 to 1845, preaching in many nearby towns; supplied Univer. Chh. at S. R. being one of its two pastors; "of distinguished ability as a writer and preacher, a clear thinker, a logical reasoner, a man mighty in the Scriptures, a forcible and fluent speaker, an upright and honest man." He d. Proctorsville, Vt., Oct. 6, 1874.