Bird, Gustavus Claggett

Life Span
to
Dickinson Connection
Class of 1857
    Full name
    Gustavus Claggett Bird
    Place of Birth
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Origins
    Slave State
    No. of Spouses
    1
    No. of Children
    5
    Family
    Benjamin Lee Bird (father),  Emily Eversfield Duvall (mother), Anna Louisa Hull (wife)
    Education
    Dickinson (Carlisle College)
    Occupation
    Clergy
    Church or Religious Denomination
    Episcopalian

    Gustavus Claggett Bird (Dickinson Chronicles)

    Scholarship
    Gustavus C. Bird was born in West River, Maryland on January 4, 1839 to Benjamin Lee and Emily Eversfield Duvall Bird. His father was a prominent physician in the county.  Bird entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1857.  He was a member of the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity and was elected to the Belles Lettres Society.  After graduation in the summer of 1857, Bird attended theological seminary in Alexandria, Virginia.

    After his ordination, Bird took up a pastorate in Centreville, Maryland.  He moved on to Grace Church in Honesdale, Pennsylvania and then was assistant rector at the Emmanuel Church in Baltimore.  In 1872 Bird settled as the rector of St. Martin's Protestant Episcopal Church in Marcus Hook on the Delaware River, which is in the extreme south-eastern corner of Pennsylvania. He served there for twenty-seven years.

    Bird married Anna Louisa Hull of New York and the couple had five children between 1867 and 1882.  In March 1899, Reverend Bird suffered a nervous breakdown brought on by troubles in the parish.  His debilitation was severe enough for him to resign, to be placed in a sanitarium in nearby Lindwood, and his wife and family to move to Philadelphia.  Gustavus Claggett Bird died in the Lindwood institution on April 5, 1899.  He was sixty years old.
    John Osborne and James W. Gerencser, eds., “Gustavus Claggett Bird,” Dickinson Chronicles, http://chronicles.dickinson.edu/encyclo/b/ed_birdGC.htm.
    How to Cite This Page: "Bird, Gustavus Claggett," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/5101.