Bentley, Rev. William

William Bentley (June 22, 1759, Boston, Massachusetts – December 29, 1819, Salem, Massachusetts) was an American Unitarian minister, scholar, columnist, and diarist.

Bentley graduated from Harvard University in 1777,(he entered when only 14 years old) and worked as a schoolteacher and then a tutor of Latin and Greek at Harvard. On September 24, 1783, he was ordained as a minister and became pastor of the Second Congregational (Unitarian) Church in Salem, known as the East Church, where he remained until his death of a heart attack in 1819.

He was extremely well read, having a personal library of over four thousand books, and could converse in seven languages and read twenty-one. Bentley contributed frequently to the Salem Gazette and Register and kept a daily diary that published in its four volume set, is widely studied to reflect Salem's history and the concerns of the day.