Adeline Blanchard Tyler
By Bill McEvoy
In honor of Memorial Day, local historian Bill McEvoy has compiled histories of some of the Civil War clergy who are buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery. This is part two of 15. I am grateful to Reverend Daphne Noyes, retired Deacon of Boston’s Church of the Advent for her assistance in adding an additional background to Sister Tyler’s life.
The biography of William Rollinson Whittingham, Bishop of Maryland set apart, Adeline Tyler, as the first Deaconess in the Episcopal Church.
Per Deacon Noyes, most sources agree that these women were not ordained (laying on of hands, invocation of the Trinity) but were “set apart” — living under a rule, often but not always in community, under the direction of a Bishop. In Adeline’s case, that was Bishop Whittingham. I also drew heavily from the: Project Gutenberg’s 2007 eBook release of 1867, text, Woman’s Work in the Civil War, by Linus Pierpont Brockett and Mary C. Vaughan
Adaline Blanchard Tyler was born on December 8, 1805, in Billerica, Massachusetts.