J. B. (Jared Bell) Waterbury

Born in 1799 and dying in 1876, Jared Bell Waterbury was an American Presbyterian clergyman usually credited in print as J. B. Waterbury. He wrote a number of religious books and tracts for general readers, including works such as Who Are the Happy? and the 1870 Memoir of the Rev. John Scudder, M.D.: Thirty-Six Years Missionary in India.

The surviving references available online point to him mainly as a minister-author rather than as a public literary figure. His writing appears to have focused on practical devotion, Christian character, and biography, which helped place him within the broad world of 19th-century Protestant publishing in the United States.

A readily available portrait was not easy to confirm from standard biography pages, but a memorial page does preserve an image associated with him. Because detailed biographical information is limited in the sources I could confirm here, it is best to describe him simply as a Presbyterian pastor and religious author whose books circulated in the mid-1800s.