Son of Jothan Sewall and Rachel Crosby Bradbury. Secondly married Emma Louise French.∼Rev. Jotham Bradbury Sewall was born on 3 October 1825 in Newcastle, Maine.2 He was the son of Rev. Jotham Sewall and Rachel Crosby Bradbury.3 Rev. Jotham Bradbury Sewall. He was prepared for college at the academies at Newcastle, Bluehill, and Yarmouth, Me., and graduated from Bowdoin College in 1848. After teaching a few months at Winthrop and Augusta, Maine, he became principal of the Lewiston Falls Academy, a position he held for two years. In 1851 he was recalled to his alma mater as a tutor in Greek. He then pursued the regular course of theological study at the Bangor Theological Seminary, where he graduated in 1854. After further study at the Andover Theological Seminary he became pastor of the Central Congregational Church at Lynn, Mass. A successful pastorate of ten years in that city was terminated by his call to Bowdoin to the professorship of ancient languages. His title was changed in 1873 to professor of Greek, the subject in which he had given instruction during most of this period. In 1877 he resigned his college professorship to accept the headmastership of Thayer Academy at Braintree, Mass. He presided over this new and well-endowed secondary school with marked success for nineteen years. The remainder of his life was given to foreign travel and study and to the interests of several educational institutions with which he was connected.

Professor Sewall received the degree of D.D. from Bowdoin in 1902. He was secretary of the General Association of the Alumni from 1865 to 1879 and its president from 1879 to 1885; he served on the Board of Overseers from 1877; he was a member of the Corporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1895; and he was a trustee of Thayer Academy from 1899. He was a charter member of the American Philological Association and its president in 1877-78.Besides many religious and educational essays, he published in 1865 "Evenings with the Bible and Science" and in 1896 a school edition of the "Timon"of Lucian. During his professorship he was curator of the art collections, and in 1870 issued the first printed catalogue of the Bowdoin paintings. "A classical scholar, an eminent teacher, a Christian gentleman, he was kind and tender, cultivated and pure, without taint of hypocrisy or sham, a lover of men. His was a gracious presence, irradiating cheerfulness and calm courage, the joy of goodness and virtue, the beauty of simplicity.". He married firstly Frances Louisa Swett, daughter of Edward S. Swett and Abigail Mason, on 14 March 1855 at Lewiston Falls, Maine.4 Rev. Jotham Bradbury Sewall and Frances Louisa Swett appear on the census of 1 June 1860 at 4th Ward, Lynn, Essex County, Massachusetts.5 The marriage of Rev. Jotham Bradbury Sewall and Emelyn Louisa French was registered in the quarter ending September 1909 in the Liverpool, England Registration District.6 Rev. Jotham Bradbury Sewall died on 16 June 1913 at 1501 Beacon Street, Brookline, Massachusetts, at the age of 87.7

Citations:

[1] NEHGR, Vol. 69 p. xlvii.
[2] Ancestry.com, U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925.
[3] William Darcy McKeough, McKeough Family Tree.
[4] Newspaper, Boston Daily Advertiser, (Boston, MA) Monday, March 19, 1855.
[5] 1860 US Census.
[6] Free BMD.
[7] Ancestry.com, Massachusetts, Death Records, 1841-1915.