Edwin Otway Burnham

Who was Edwin Otway Burnham?

Rev Edwin Otway Burnham was a Congregational minister and missionary.

He was born in Ghent, Kentucky, his father died when he was 5 and his mother died the following year. He and his younger sister, Caroline, moved to Madison, New York to live with their grandfather Abner Burnham, a soldier of the American Revolutionary War, but Abner died soon thereafter. Burnham graduated Hamilton College, New York, in 1852 and was a member of the Delta Upsilon fraternity. On July 18, 1852 he was ordained, after having been stated supply at Columbus City, Iowa and he became a student at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He graduated in 1855 and was licensed as a preacher of the gospel. He was a teacher in Pennington, New Jersey, and a Pastor of Congressional Church in Wilton, Minnesota. At Tivoli, Minnesota, an Indian Reservation, he preached and served as a missionary and also served as stated supply. To most he was known as, "a Kentucky frontiersman and rifle shooting parson who could bark a squirrel, swing an axe or dispense Gospel with equal ferver and efficiency."