CLASS OF 1876

Rev. William Seaman Sayres, D.D., died in Detroit, Mich., May 4.

Dr. Sayres was born in Jamaica, N. Y., October 16, 1851, and fitted for college at Anthon's Latin School, New York City, and privately. He was a member of Theta Delta Chi, was prominent in all class matters during his course, and was prophet on Class Day.

For two years after graduation he studied for the Episcopal ministry at Berkeley Divinity School, Middletown, Conn. Accepting a call to enter upon missionary work in China, he went to Shanghai in the fall of 1878, and taught in St. John's College to May 1, 1885, returning then to America on account of the health of his family.

He then engaged with equal ardor in home mission work, in which he was unremitting in his labors, and highly successful. The record of his life during these years would be somewhat as follows: in charge of missions at Joliet, New Lenox, and Morris, Ill., 1885-7; rector of Grace church, Montevideo, Minn., 1887-90; rector at Broken Bow, Neb., 1890-3; assistant at St. John's church, Detroit, Mich., 1893-5; rector St. Stephen's church, Detroit, 1895-9; since 1899 archdeacon, or general missionary, for the diocese of Michigan, with headquarters at Detroit. During this period he became the best known man of his denomination in the state, and on the occasion of the election of a bishop received many votes.

In 1886, Mr. Sayres was made general secretary of the Church Unity Society, and for many years devoted much time to the work of the society. He was a frequent and forceful contributor to the religious and secular press, and in 1910 published a little book of spiritual meditation, entitled "Forty Days". He was a Mason and an Odd Fellow. Dartmouth made him a Doctor of Divinity in 1904.

July 9, 1878, he was married in Hanover to Rosa, daughter of Charles (Dartmouth 1827) and Mary (Everett) Hopkins. She died March 1, 1880. April 13, 1882, he was married in Shanghai to Anna Stevens, who died May 15, 1911. A third marriage, September 7, 1912, was to Sara Lydia Hunter of Detroit. Dr. Sayres left four sons and a daughter, one son, Homer Stuart, being for a time a member of Dartmouth '06, but later graduating from the University of Michigan.