Class of 1870.
Arthur Brooks, D.D. (Non-graduate.)
Son of William Gray Brooks and Mary Ann Phillips; born in Boston, Mass., June 11, 1845; fitted for college in the Boston Public Latin School; graduated at Harvard College, 1867; studied in this Seminary, 1867-68, and graduated at the Protestant Episcopal Divinity School in Philadelphia, 1870; was ordained deacon in Trinity Church, Boston, by Bishop Eastburn, June 25, 1870, and ordained priest in Trinity Church, Williamsport, Pa., by Bishop Stevens, October 12, 1870. He was rector of Trinity Church, Williamsport, 1870-72; of St. James Church, Chicago, 1872-75; of the Church of the Incarnation, New York City, 1875-95.
He received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from the University of New York in 1891, and from the College of New Jersey in the same year. He was chairman of the Board of Trustees of Barnard College, New York City, and one of the Board of Overseers of the Divinity School in Philadelphia. He was also a member of Victoria Institute, or Philosophical Society, of Great Britain. He had published a volume of sermons, The Life of Christ in the World, and a memorial sermon written upon Phillips Brooks.
Dr. Brooks was of honored Andover ancestry, his mother having been a granddaughter of Judge Samuel Phillips, the founder of Phillips Academy, who was the grandson of Rev. Samuel Phillips, the first pastor of the South Church, Andover. He was a brother of Right Rev. Phillips Brooks, Bishop of Massachusetts, and of Rev. John Cotton Brooks (Class of 1876). Rev. Charles C. Tiffany, D.D., Archdeacon of the Diocese of New York (Class of 1854), furnishes the following tribute: "Rev. Arthur Brooks, D.D., was at the time of his death one of the most prominent and influential ministers of the Episcopal communion. The promise given by his energetic and large-minded administration of the parish of St. James, in Chicago, was more than fulfilled in his twenty years' labor as rector of the Church of the Incarnation, New York City. He made his parish strong, reliable, generous, and influential. He made his pulpit a synonym for intellectuality suffused with spirituality. There was no abler preacher of any denomination in the city, though he was not a popular preacher in the common acceptation of the term. One always gained some fresh thought and aspiration from his sermons, and an air of Christian manliness always surrounded him. He was a power without as within his church. In the Evangelical Alliance, the City Mission, the Church Congress, and Barnard College he was a conspicuous factor. He stood in the front rank of citizens as well as of divines. It is a matter of lasting regret that he did not live to complete the biography of his distinguished brother, Phillips Brooks, whose charm he may not have fully shared, but to whom as a thinker and man of affairs he was an equal. Had he lived longer his fame would have been greater, as he was ripening fast both in character and power, but his work could not have been more healthful or helpful had he lived to be fourscore.
Dr. Brooks was married, October 17, 1872, to Elizabeth Willard, of Williamsport, Pa., daughter of William Waldo Willard and Sarah Maynard, who survives him.
He died at sea, on the steamship Fulda, bound from Southampton to New York, July 10, 1895, aged fifty years and twenty-nine days.
Source: Necrology, 1880-81, Andover Theological Seminary, Andover Theological Seminary Alumni Association, Bound August 28, 1900; Pg. 228
