Solomon Stoddard (1643- ca. 1728), American colonial Congregational clergyman, was for nearly 60 years the dominant civil and religious figure in western Massachusetts.

One of 15 sons, and grandnephew of John Winthrop, Solomon Stoddard was born in Boston in September 1643. He graduated from Harvard in 1662. He became the college's first librarian (1667-1674), though during part of this period he served as Congregationalist chaplain to Bermuda. He preached at Northampton after 1669; asked to be regular pastor, he formally accepted in 1672 and continued in that post until his death. In 1670 he married Esther Warham Mather; the couple had 12 children.

As pastor, Stoddard accepted the Puritan "Half-way Covenant," approved by the Synod of 1662, but soon came to feel it inconsistent to deny Communion to those who had been baptized but lacked a conversion "experience." Seeking to convert the unregenerate, he began teaching that Communion was itself a converting ordinance, and he extended membership privileges...