Note 54 — IV. THE SILENT ADVANCE OF LIBERALISM.

"Oxnard was a merchant, born in Boston in 1740, but settled in Portland, where he married the daughter of General Preble, in 1787. He was a loyalist, and fled from the country at the outbreak of the war. He returned to Portland in 1787. A few years later, 1792, the Episcopal church being destitute of a minister, he was engaged as lay reader, with the intention of taking orders. His Unitarianism put a sudden end to his Episcopacy, but not to his preaching. He gathered a small congregation in the school-house, and preached sometimes sermons of his own, but more often of other men. He died in 1799." John C. Perkins, How the First Parish became Unitarian,--historical sermon preached in Portland.