Edwin Hubbell Chapin was an American evangelist and editor of the Christian Leader. He was also a poet, known for the poem Burial at Sea, which inspired the popular folk song Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie. Chapin was born in Union Village, Washington County, New York. He completed his formal schooling at a seminary in Bennington, Vermont. At the age of twenty-four, following a period of theological study, he was invited to take over the pulpit of the Universalist Society of Richmond, Virginia, and was consecrated as a minister in 1838. Two years later, he relocated to Charlestown, Massachusetts, and in 1840 assumed the pastorate of the School Street Society in Boston. In 1848, he moved to New York to serve as pastor of the Church of the Divine Paternity, later known as the Fourth Universalist Society in the City of New York, which was located on Broadway. He worked there for over thirty years, garnering crowds of nearly 2,000 people every Sunday. Under his supervision, a new structure was built on the corner of 5th Avenue and 45th Street and dedicated on December 3, 1866.
