Alfred Montague Lambert

Alfred Montague Lambert was born in 1892 in Olveston, on the island of Montserrat (then part of the British West Indies), to Joseph Mainwaring Brown Lambert and Mary Elizabeth Skerrit Lambert. He came to the United States in 1913, moved to Connecticut in 1916, and became a US citizen in 1921 while living in New Haven. At the time he petitioned for citizenship, he was employed as a metal inspector. He was married to Winifred Augusta Smith Lambert in 1917; they had five children. One of his daughters, Ethel Elizabeth, attended the Yale School of Music. He completed a bachelor of divinity degree from the Yale Divinity School in 1925. He also attended General Theological Seminary in New York, and in 1930 was awarded a master’s of sacred theology degree by the Hartford Seminary Foundation.

In the 1920s, Lambert worked at St. Phillip’s Church in New York City for two years. In 1928, he became minister of St. Monica’s Episcopal Church in Hartford, where he remained minister for 35 years.

For over a decade, while minister at St. Monica’s, Lambert also served as chaplain for the Connecticut Shade Growers Association. In this role, he led non-denominational services and provided support for workers at tobacco camps in northern Connecticut and southern Massachusetts. When he began in this role, Lambert saw that workers had little reading material, and began collecting and distributing magazines at both the camps and at nursing homes. During World War II, he served as a member of a local ration board and monitored grocery prices for the Office of Price Administration.

Lambert served on the board of trustees for the Hartford Seminary Foundation, the Social Service Commission of the Diocese of Connecticut, the New Britain Memorial Hospital board, the Ministers’ Fellowship of Greater Hartford, and the Connecticut Safety Commission.

After a heart attack in 1960, Lambert stepped back from his work serving tobacco workers. He retired from St. Monica’s in 1963. Lambert died in 1974 and is buried in Hartford.