author
Samuel Peters
1735–1826
An Anglican minister and Loyalist writer, he is best remembered for a sharply critical history of colonial Connecticut that became famous for its colorful — and often unreliable — stories. His life carried him from Yale and the pulpit in Hebron to exile in England during the American Revolution.
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About the author
Born in Hebron, Connecticut, in 1735, Samuel Andrew Peters studied at Yale and went on to serve as the Anglican minister of St. Peter’s Church in his hometown. During the years leading up to the American Revolution, he became known for his Loyalist views, which made him deeply unpopular with Patriots in Connecticut.
He left for England in 1774 and spent many years there, writing about New England from abroad. His best-known book, A General History of Connecticut (1781), gave British readers a hostile picture of the colony and helped spread the famous "Blue Laws" stories that later readers often treated with skepticism because of their exaggerations and inaccuracies.
Peters eventually returned to North America late in life and died in New York in 1826. Today he is remembered less as a major literary figure than as a vivid, controversial witness to the political and religious tensions of Revolutionary America.