Male

December 6, 1795

March 27, 1875

Savannah, GA

Darien, GA
Richmond, VA
New York, NY
New Haven, CT
KY

Caroline Peck Stiles (August 14, 1820)
Caroline Nephew Stiles (April 2, 1828)

Joseph Clay Stiles was the son of Joseph and Catherine (Clay) Stiles. Born December 6, 1795, Stiles graduated from Yale College in 1814, and later that year joined the army during the last year of the War of 1812. He served as a private in the First Georgia Militia until discharge din 1815. After the war ended, Stiles resumes his education by beginning a course of study at the Litchfield Law School.

He began his legal practice in Savannah with William W. Gordon. Stiles first wife died just one year after their marriage at the age of nineteen and this event led him to a religious conversion. Stiles consequently abandoned the practice of the law and began to preach, often to the slaves on his father's plantation.

After his graduation from the Andover Theological Seminary, ...he returned to Georgia as a result of his failing eyesight and became an ordained evangelist of the Hopewell presbytery. After his second marriage in 1828, Stiles and his second wife had four daughters and three sons. Stiles moved his family frequently to preach at various locations.

He first moved to Darien, GA in 1829 and the following year returned to Savannah, GA where he became the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church. In 1835, he moved with his family to central, Kentucky. However, in 1844, he moved to Richmond, VA where he preached at the Grace Street Presbyterian Church. Two years later he received an honorary degree from Transylvania College. In 1860 Stiles received an L.L.D. from the University of Georgia.

In 1848, he moved to New York City and worked at the Mercer Street Church. In 1850, he became the General Agent of the American Bible Society in the South. He then relocated his family to New Haven, CT where Gerard Hallock had built a Church especially for him. His work as a General Agent for the Southern Aid Society in 1853 caused him to work for the aid of the poor southern churches and he remained sympathetic to their plight, In 1857, however, the American Home Missionary Society withdrew aid to southern churches over the issue of slavery.

Stiles left his wife and four daughters in New Haven, CT and returned to the South at the beginning of the Civil War. He worked as an Evangelist Chaplain to the Confederated Troops with Stonewall Jackson from 1861 to 1862. After the war ended, he traveled as an evangelist throughout the South. He continued preaching until 1874 and later died in Savannah, GA.

Dr. Stiles was the author of a Speech on the Slavery Resolutions in the General Assembly (New York, 1850); Modern Reform Examined, or the Union of the North and South on the Subject of Slavery (Philadelphia, 1858); The National Controversy, or the Voice of the Fathers upon the State of the Country (New York, 1861); and Future Punishment Discussed in a Letter to a Friend (St. Louis, 1868)
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"The pleasure of Miss Lewis' company is requested at a Ball to be given at the house of Mr. Phelps, on Tuesday, the 24th int. at 1/2 past 6 o'clock P.M."

Hand-written invitation to Litchfield Law School ball, from George Boardman, George Devereaux, Joseph Clay Stiles, William Holt Averell, and William Greene, 1818

Mary All Lewis Collection, Folder #5, ca. 1818-1823

Joseph Clay Stiles is buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, VA.

1817

Prepared for college by the Rev. Samuel Whelpley in Newark, NJ, and graduated from Yale College in 1814. He then graduated from Andover Theological Seminary in 1825.

Military; Lawyer; Religious Calling

After comleting his studies at Litchfield, CT he studied in the office of Hon. John M. Berrien in Savannah, GA.

Handwritten list by William Samuel Johnson, "Catalogue of the Students at Law in the school at Litchfield Conn. at & after Aug. 15th 1817..", Connecticut Historical Society, Johnson Family Papers, 1722-1863, Box - Johnson Papers.

Houghton, Josiah. "LLS Law Notebook 1817-1818." Litchfield Law School Collection, Series 1, Subseries 1, Litchfield Historical Society. Available online at https://archive.org/stream/35102011793091#page/n11/mode/2up.

Wilson, James Grant and John Fiske. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. 5. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1888.

Dexter, Franklin Bowditch. Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College with Annals of College History, Vol. 6. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1912.

Obituary Records of Graduates of Yale College 1860-70, 1870-80, 1880-90, 1890-1900. Yale University: 1900.
Honeyman, A. Van Doren. Joannes Nevius and His Descendants. Plainfield, NJ: Honeyman and Company, 1900.