Ebenezer Burgess (1790-1870) is one of the many citizens of Dedham buried in the Old Village Cemetery who were an important part of shaping the Town’s history. He was born in Wareham, MA, graduated from Brown University in 1809, and received his doctorate in divinity from Middlebury College in 1835. Following a schism at the First Church and Parish, and the subsequent lawsuit (Baker vs. Fales), he was ordained pastor of the Allin Congregational Church in 1821. An adventurer and missionary, in 1817 he accompanied the Reverend Samuel J. Mills to Africa as an agent of the American Colonization Society and spent almost a year exploring the continent’s west coast. Mills died on the return journey and was buried at sea. Burgess was a founder of the Dedham Institution for Savings in 1831 and served as its President until his death in 1870. Dedham Savings is one of the oldest banks in America and is still doing business under its original charter, to wit, “to provide a safe and profitable mode of enabling industrious persons of all descriptions to invest such part of their earnings as they can conveniently spare”. In 1832, one year after its founding, the bank’s assets were $30,000, compared to $1.736 billion in 2020.
Dedham Village Preservation Association 