Kiah Bailey Glidden (1819-1891)

Portrait courtesy of Find-a-Grave.

  Sporting a pair of substantial push broom sidewhiskers, Kiah Bailey Glidden was, like our 2019 Strange Name of the Year Submarinus Girard Norcross, a New England based Congregationalist minister who had fleeting involvement in state politics. Interestingly, both of these men were born in Maine and graduated from Maine's Bangor Theological Seminary in the same class (1859). After being ordained, Glidden held pastorates in New Hampshire and Connecticut, and in 1883 was elected to one term in the Connecticut House of Representatives from Mansfield. The son of William and Lydia (Hatch) Glidden, Kiah Bailey Glidden was born in Newcastle, Maine on April 21, 1819.

  Receiving his name in honor of the Rev. Kiah Bailey (1770-1857), a Newcastle based clergyman, Glidden studied at the Lincoln Academy in his native town and briefly worked in a local pharmacy. He married in December 1841 to Damariscotta, Maine native Caroline Hitchcock (1826-1911), with who he had two daughters, Miriam (1846-1933) and Carolyn (1862-1925)

   Following graduation from the Bangor Theological Seminary, Glidden was licensed to preach and from 1859-60 was an assistant pastor at churches in North Belfast and Union, Maine. He was subsequently ordained in Westmoreland, New Hampshire and after a three-year residency in that town accepted a pastorate at the First Congregational Church of Enfield, Connecticut, where he ministered from 1863-66. This was followed by a three-year pastorate in Redding, Connecticut, and in 1869 removed to Mansfield in Tolland County.

  After being installed as pastor at the Congregation Church in Mansfield Glidden settled into a two-decade pastorate, one that later saw him acknowledged as one of the "veteran Congregational clergymen of the state." Glidden would author a history of his adopted hometown and in July 1876 delivered and published an address celebrating Mansfield's centennial. He would be active in the temperance movement in Mansfield and for a time held the post of acting school visitor for the town.

  Kiah B. Glidden made his lone foray into Nutmeg State politics in 1883 when he was elected as a Republican to the Connecticut House of Representatives from Tolland County. His one term (1884-85) saw him named to the committee on Humane Institutions, and during the opening session of the legislature introduced a resolution "that instruction may be given in the public schools on the effects of using alcoholic liquors."

  Glidden wasn't a candidate for renomination in 1885 and returned to his pastorate in Mansfield, where he remained until retiring in 1890. In that year he and his wife purchased a home in Enfield, and a week prior to his death was taken violently ill on a return train trip from the town of Bolton. He would die of "heart trouble" at his Enfield home on October 15, 1891, aged 72, and was survived by his wife and children. Memorialized as a "quiet, amiable gentleman...respected by all denominations", Glidden was later interred at the Enfield Street Cemetery in Hartford County, Connecticut.

From the Stafford Springs Press, October 22, 1891.