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/node/5101.