Theodore L. Cuyler

Theodore Ledyard Cuyler (January 10, 1822 – February 26, 1909) was an American Presbyterian minister and writer.

Biography

Theodore Ledyard Cuyler was born on January 10, 1822, in Aurora, Erie County, New York. His father died before he was five years old. Cuyler graduated from Princeton University in 1841 and from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1846. He first became a pastor in Burlington, New Jersey. Cuyler served as the first pastor of Third Presbyterian Church in Trenton, New Jersey (now a part of Ewing Covenant Presbyterian Church) from 1849 until 1853. He was then called in 1853 as pastor of the Market Street Dutch Reformed Church in New York City. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1857. His success at the Market Street Dutch Reformed Church led to Cuyler's installation in 1860 as the pastor of the Park Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, from which he oversaw the construction of the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church a block away. Completed in 1862, the church served the largest Presbyterian congregation in the United States. Cuyler's friends and acquaintances included a staggeringly large number of other contemporary notables, including Horatius Bonar, Samuel Hanson Cox, Phillips Brooks, Horace Bushnell, Horace Greeley, James McCosh, Gilbert Haven, Joseph Addison Alexander, Albert Barnes, William E. Dodge, Newman Hall, Richard Salter Storrs, Philip Schaff, Stephen H. Tyng, Joseph Parker (theologian), Charles Spurgeon, Benjamin M. Palmer, D. L. Moody, Charles G. Finney, President Benjamin Harrison, Vice President Henry Wilson, and Prime Minister William Gladstone.