EDWARD PAYSON (1783-1827), American Congregational preacher, was born on the 25th of July 1783 at Rindge, New Hampshire, where his father, Seth Payson (1758-1820), was pastor of the Congregational Church. His uncle, Phillips Payson (1736-1801), pastor of a church in Chelsea, Massachusetts, was a physicist and astronomer. Edward Payson graduated at Harvard in 1803, was then principal of a school at Portland, Maine, and in 1807 became junior pastor of the Congregational Church at Portland, where he remained, after 1811, as senior pastor, until his death on the 22nd of October 1827.
The most complete collection of his sermons, with a memoir by Asa Cummings originally published in 1828, is the Memoir, Select Thoughts and Sermons of the late Rev. Edward Payson (3 vols., Portland, 1846; Philadelphia, 1859). Based on this is the volume, Mementos of Edward Payson (New York, 1873), by the Rev. E. L. Janes of the Methodist Episcopal Church.