Rodolphus Dickinson (1786–1862), attorney, author, and Episcopal minister, was born in Deerfield, Massachusetts, graduated from Yale College (later University) in 1805, and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1808. He was clerk of the Franklin County courts from 1811 until 1819, when he accepted Episcopal orders and began serving two parishes in South Carolina. By 1832 Dickinson had returned to Deerfield, and he officiated at Trinity Parish in nearby Montague. His literary endeavors included geographical, legal, and religious works (Thomas W. Baldwin, Vital Records of Deerfield Massachusetts, to the Year 1850 [1920], 55; Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates of Yale University … 1701–1910 [1910], 83; David Willard, Willard’s History of Greenfield [1838], 166; William Stevens Perry, ed., Journals of General Conventions of the Protestant Episcopal Church, In the United States, 1785–1835 [1874], 2:502; George Sheldon, A History of Deerfield Massachusetts [1895–96; repr. 1972], 2:148–9; Greenfield Gazette and Courier, 3 Nov. 1862).