1814–1863
Summary
Sylvester Bliss was a Connecticut-born Millerite scholar, editor, and the principal biographer of William Miller. Born in Tolland, Connecticut, on June 19, 1814, he was the editor of the Signs of the Times and the Advent Herald alongside Joshua V. Himes, the secretary of the May 1842 Boston General Conference, the author of the standard Memoirs of William Miller (1853) — the work cited extensively by Loughborough, Spalding, and others as the primary record of Miller’s life — and a co-editor of The Voice of Truth. He died in 1863 at the age of forty-eight.
Family Background and Connecticut Years (1814–1840)
Per the Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists (Milton Hook), Bliss was born June 19, 1814, in Tolland, Connecticut, to John and Sally Abbott Bliss. He had three sisters and was the only son. The youngest, Emeline Elizabeth, died at the age of twenty-four in 1840. He received a liberal-arts education and showed literary talent from his youth. He taught school in Hartford, Connecticut, near his family’s farm at Tolland, and was a member of the Congregational Church.
Embracing the Millerite Cause
Per ESDA, Bliss embraced the Millerite advent message in the early 1840s and quickly became one of the editorial leaders of the movement. He was the secretary at the May 1842 Boston General Conference where Elon Galusha was elected president. Bliss’s name appears in Bliss’s own Memoirs of William Miller in the conference’s organizing minutes: “After the names and residence of members were ascertained, the Conference was fully organized by the choice of Rev. Elon Galusha, of Lockport, N. Y., President, and S. Bliss and O. R. Fassett, Secretaries” (Memoirs of William Miller, p. 300, par. 11; refcode MWM 300.11). The same volume records his service on the conference’s twelve-man business committee: “A committee of twelve, consisting of William Miller, Josiah Litch, N. N. Whiting, J. V. Himes, Sylvester Bliss, L. D. Fleming, Erastus Parker, H. Caswell, I. R. Gates, I. H. Shipman, Prosper Powell, and Elon Galusha, were appointed to arrange business for the action of the Conference” (Memoirs of William Miller, p. 301, par. 1; refcode MWM 301.1).
Bliss’s Exposition of Matthew 24 (1843)
Loughborough’s Great Second Advent Movement records the influence of Bliss’s 1843 Exposition of the Twenty-fourth of Matthew: “Of the use that was made, both in England and America, of these wonders seen in the heavens, we may learn by reading from the Exposition of the Twenty-fourth of Matthew, by Sylvester Bliss, published in Boston in 1843” (The Great Second Advent Movement, p. 117, par. 1; refcode GSAM 117.1). Loughborough quotes Bliss directly, in the same chapter: “As sure as the leaving out of the trees is an indication of summer, just so sure, on the fulfillment of these signs, are Christians to know that the coming of Christ is near, even at the doors. It is not a mere permission to know it, but our Saviour commands them to know it.” (The Great Second Advent Movement, p. 117, par. 3; refcode GSAM 117.3).
Josiah Litch’s Prophetic Expositions, vol. 2, also acknowledges his debt to Bliss on Matthew 24: “I here acknowledge myself indebted to Mr. S. Bliss” (Prophetic Expositions, vol. 2, p. 228, par. 1; refcode PREX2 228.1) for thoughts on the same prophecy.
Editor of the Advent Herald (1844 onward)
After the Great Disappointment, Bliss continued as one of the principal editors of the Advent Herald (the renamed Signs of the Times) alongside Joshua V. Himes and Apollos Hale. Loughborough quotes the November 13, 1844 Advent Herald: “A good idea as to how the Adventists viewed their work previous to March 21, 1844, and just after that date, can be obtained by reading the following quotation” (The Great Second Advent Movement, p. 155, par. 1; refcode GSAM 155.1) — published by J. V. Himes, S. Bliss, and A. Hale.
Memoirs of William Miller (1853)
In 1853 Bliss published Memoirs of William Miller, the principal biographical record of the founder of the Millerite movement. Per ESDA, the volume was the standard reference for the life of William Miller for the rest of the nineteenth century, and Loughborough, Bliss’s contemporary, drew on it extensively in his own Great Second Advent Movement and Rise and Progress of the Seventh-day Adventists. Ellen White’s The Great Controversy cites Memoirs of William Miller on multiple pages (per the TopIndex of the 1888 edition: “Memoirs of William Miller, by S. Bliss, quoted GC 318-40, 375, 396-407”).
Death (1863)
Per the Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists, Bliss died in 1863 at the age of forty-eight. J. N. Andrews, writing later in The Three Messages of Revelation XIV, refers to him as “the late Sylvester Bliss” (The Three Messages of Revelation XIV, p. 27, par. 2; refcode TMR 27.2).
