Collins historical sketches of Kentucky. History of Kentucky: Vol. I, Part 91

Author: Collins, Lewis, 1797-1870. cn; Collins, Richard H., 1824-1889. cn
Publication date: 1874
Publisher: Covington, Ky., Collins & Co.
Number of Pages: 1452

USA > Kentucky > Collins historical sketches of Kentucky. History of Kentucky: Vol. I > Part 91

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Rev. JOHN HOWE, a younger brother of Rev. Joseph P. Howe, was installed pastor of Beaver Creek and Little Barren churches in April, 1798. Early in 1805 he removed to Greensburg, Green county, became pastor of the church there. and also taught a school in a jury-room of the new court-house, of which the use was granted him by a special order of the county court. He subsequently moved back to his former charges in Barren county, but in 1812 returned to the Greensburg church, and continued its pastor until the fall of 1845. Dur- ing most of this time he had charge of two additional churches, Bethel and Ebenezer, and also of the New Athens Seminary in Greensburg. His great reputation as a classical scholar and successful teacher kept his school full of young men of promise. Many of his pupils in after life attained distinction, among whom were Asher W. Graham and Wm. V. Loving, of Bowling-Green, Andrew Barnett of Greensburg, and Richard A. Buckner, Jr., of Lexington, all circuit judges ; Henry Grider and Aylett Buckner, members of Congress; Rev. John Howe Brown, D.D., successively pastor of the Presbyterian church at Richmond, the McChord church at Lexington, the Ist church at Springfield, Illinois, and now of the 26th street church at Chicago; Rev. Richard Howe Allen, D.D., pastor of the Pine street church, Philadelphia; Col. Wm. T. Willis, who was killed at Buena Vista; Dr. John Rowan Allen, formerly superintendent of the lunatic asylum at Lexington, and now of Memphis, T'en nessee; and Judge Burr II. Emerson, of Missouri. As a minister, his ser- mons were plain, practical, and convincing-earnest, without pathos. He sel- dom, or never, wrote a sermon, except a few on funeral occasions, which were published. In stature, he was about five feet ten inches, active, erect, and rather corpulent. Born in North Carolina, December 31, 1769; he came to Kentucky in 1794, and removed to Missouri in 1845, where he spent his declin- ing years among his children in Pettus county. He died in 1857, aged eighty- eight years.

Rev. NATHAN H. HALL, D.D., was the son of a Baptist minister, Rev. Ran dall Hall, and was born in 1783, in Franklin county, Virginia; emigrated to Garrard county, Ky., in 1799; was converted in the great revival of 1801 ; and placed himself under the teachings of Joshua L. Wilson, D.D., afterwards of Cincinnati, and of Thomas Cleland, D, D, with whom he studied theology. In 1805 he was licensed, and in 1807 ordained and installed over the churches of Springfield, Hardin's creek, and Lebanon, where he labored fifteen years; in 1822 became pastor of the Ist Presbyterian church at Lexington, for twen- ty-five years; spent two years as an evangelist; in 1845 was moderator of the synod of Kentucky ; removed to Missouri in 1849, and preached the ensuing winter in the Central church, St. Louis; in 1851 was installed over the Pres-

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byterian church at Columbia, and continued to labor there until his death, June 22, 1858. He was distinguished as a revival preacher ; his appeals to the heart and conscience were remarkably tender and touching; his labors in protracted meetings, many and highly blessed of God. It has fallen to the lot of few ministers to reap such rich harvests of converted souls, of whom not a few are bright and shining lights in the church of God.

Rev. JOHN TODD EDGAR, D.D., was born in Sussex county, Delaware, April 13, 1792, and died of apoplexy, at Nashville, Tenn., November 13, 1860. His father was a farmer, and in 1795 removed with his family to Kentucky, set- tling in Scott county. True to the Scotch-Irish characteristic of his ancestry, he received the best education that could be obtained in his adopted State ;- pursuing his studies successively with Rev. John Tull, Rev. John T. Lyle, and at Transylvania University, and his theological course at Princeton Sem- inary. In 1817 he was ordained by Ebenezer Presbytery as pastor of the church at Flemingsburg, thence became pastor in 1823 at Maysville, in 1827 at Frankfort, and in 1833 at Nashville for the remainder of his life. From the first he took high rank for earnestness and eloquence, and was a fine specimen of a courtly Christian gentleman-attracting all classes by his gen- ial, winning, and catholic manners. Henry Clay said of him, "If you want to hear eloquence, listen to the young Presbyterian preacher at Frankfort, named John Todd Edgar." He was moderator of the synod of Kentucky in 1831, and of the General Assembly in 1842; steadily refused a professorship in the theological seminary at Danville; and for awhile was editor of The American Presbyterian newspaper at Nashville. He was twice married; in 1816 to Miss Mary, daughter of Dr. Andrew Todd, one of the early settlers in Kentucky; they had a number of children, one of whom died in 1845 while a student for the ministry at Princeton. His second wife, a daughter of John Morris, of Frankfort, Kentucky, and the widow of the late Robert Crit- tenden, was still living in 1874.

Rev. JOHN CLARKE YOUNG, D.D., was born in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, August 12, 1803-after the death of his father, Rev. John Young, pastor of the Presbyterian church of that place. He received a liberal education, spending four years in a classical school in New York city, three years in Columbia college in that city, and graduating with the honors of his class, in 1823, at Dickinson college, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, when that college was under the presidency of the distinguished Dr. John M. Mason. He was the subject of strong religious impressions in early youth, and chose the ministry as his life-work long before his public reception to the church in his eighteenth year. In 1824 he began at Princeton seminary his theological course, of four terms, and was licensed in 1828. So successful and full of promise were his earliest efforts that more than one important opening eagerly sought him. For two years he was pastor of the MeChord church in Lexington, just left vacant by the resignation of Dr. John Breckinridge. In 1830 he accepted the presidency of Center college at Danville-the institution established by the Presbyterian church in Kentucky for the education of her sons for the ministry or for the business of life. The double duty, of this presidency and of the pastorate or co-pastorate of the church in Danville, he continued faithfully to discharge, for nearly twenty-seven years, until his death, June 23, 1857. Few men have ever been so beloved or so blessed in either relation. The number of students when he began was only 33 in all; when he died there were 187 students in college proper, and about 65 in the preparatory or grammar school; there were 6 graduates in 1830, 33 in 1846, 34 in 1848, 31 in 1854, and 47 in 1857. Dr. Young was twice moderator of the synod of Kentucky, in 1832 and 1841-an honor never repeated but in two other cases; and moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly (O. S.) in' 1853. A few newspaper articles, half a dozen literary addresses and tem- perance speeches, an address in 1832 before the Kentucky Colonization Soci- ety, another in 1853 at the inauguration of the first professor of Danville the- ological seminary, another to Kentucky Presbyterians on the instruction and emancipation of their slaves, a few sermons, the opening sermon before the

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General Assembly at Buffalo, 1854, and a tract on the efficacy of prayer, pp. 63, published after his death, comprise his published writings. His forte was as a speaker or preacher; without notes, except merely skeleton, and abound- ing in illustrations, fresh, original, striking. The matter of his sermons was never common-place, always good, and rising at times to the most eloquent and convincing. The power, tenderness, fascination of his appeals to the heart and conscience will never be forgotten. While there was inuch about him that was remarkable, he was an eminently useful man, combining the great and the good to a wonderful extent Dr. Young was twice married; about 1829 to Frances Breckinridge, daughter of Hon. Joseph Cabell Breek- inridge and sister of Gen. John C. Breckinridge, who left four daughters, all living in 1873; in 1841 he married Cornelia Crittenden, daughter of Hon. John J. Crittenden, by whom he had six children.

Rev. JOHN THOMSON, born near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, November 11, 1772, was the son of an Irish Presbyterian elder, who brought his family, in 1793, to Kentucky; pursued his studies at the Kentucky academy in Lex- ington; studied theology privately under Rev. James Blythe, D.D .; was li- censed in 1799 by Transylvania Presbytery, and in 1801 ordained by Wash- ington Presbytery, at Springdale, Ohio; was a pioneer missionary in South- western Ohio, and an earnest revival preacher; strayed off into New Lightism, but its errors and extravagancies developed so fast that Mr. Thomson left them and returned, in 1811, to the Presbyterian church; he was pastor of the Glendale church from IS01 to 1833, when he removed to Indiana and labored as an evangelist while his strength lasted. He was an eloquent and successful minister for nearly half a century; after 1838, in connection with the New School. He married Miss Nancy Steel, of Lexington, Kentucky, and had eight children. Of his seven sons, four became ministers, viz. : Rev. James Thom- son, for many years pastor at Crawfordsville, Indiana, and for more than eleven years (to 1871) at Mankato, Minnesota; Rev. John Thomson, professor in Wabash college, Crawfordsville, Indiana, where he died in 1842; Rev. Wm. M. Thomson, D.D., for thirty-six years, and still in 1871, a missionary of the American Board at Beirut, Syria, and author of "The Land and the Book;" and Rev. Samuel Steel Thomson, for many years professor of Wabash college, Indiana. A fifth son, Alexander Thomson, was a ruling elder in the Craw- fordsville church, and at his house his father died, of paralysis, February 15, 1859, in his 87th year.

Rev. JAMES KERR BURCH was born in Albemarle county, Virginia, August 2, 1785; graduated at. Washington college, Lexington, Virginia, and studied theology privately; was licensed and ordained in 1807 by Orange Presbytery, and preached for several years in Newbern and Washington, North Carolina; was a member of the Presbyterian General Assembly, which met at Philadel- phia, in 1809, where his preaching was so popular and made such an impres- sion that he was called in 1810 to preach for a Reformed Dutch congregation in Philadelphia; as they were unwilling to unite with the Presbyterian church, he left them and took charge of a colony organized as the Fifth Pres- byterian church, in Locust street, where he labored until 1821; thence he came to Kentucky, preaching at Flemingsburg, Lexington, and Georgetown, for some time at each place; resided at Danville for several years, and was con- nected with a young ladies' seminary ; while there was elected by the synod of Kentucky as professor of theology, in the theological department of Centre college, in 1829, which important trust he filled for one year; enjoyed the sin- gular popularity of serving three times, in 1823, 1827, and 1837, as moderator of the synod of Kentucky-an honor in seventy years never accorded more than once to any of the distinguished ministers of the state, except to Dr. James Blythe three times, and to Dr. John C. Young twice. His ministry extended over half a century; he was very fond of preaching, and during the latter years of his life, preached in destitute neighborhoods some forty miles south-west of St. Louis, Missouri, although still holding his connection with Transylvania Presbytery. 'He died of inflammation of the stomach, July 28,

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1858, aged 73, at the residence of his son-in-law, Rev. Nathan L. Rice, D.D., in Chicago, Illinois.

Rev. ROBERT JEFFERSON BRECKINRIDGE, D.D., LL.D., born March 8, 1800, at Cabell's Dale, Fayette county, Kentucky; died at Danville, Kentucky, De- cember 27, 1871; was the seventh child and fourth son of Hon. John Breck- inridge and Mary Hopkins Cabell, and connected, through his grandmother Letitia Preston Breckinridge, with the Prestons of Virginia, Kentucky, and South Carolina, and with the Marshalls, Browns, and other distinguished fami- lies of Kentucky. His Protestant lineage was unbroken from the days of the Reformation, and his ancestors took part in the memorable defense of London- derry, in the seventeenth century. He was educated in Kentucky, until six- teen, under Dominie Thompson, Wilson, Kean O'Hara. and Brock, well-known and successful teachers. He spent two years at Nassau Hall, Princeton, New Jersey, one winter at Yale college, and graduated in 1819, at Union college, Schenectady, New York. In 1824 he commenced the practice of law, and took an active part in politics-being elected, in 1825, on the Old Court ticket, a representative from Fayette county in the Kentucky Legislature, and reelected in 1826, '27, and '28. After this he had a spell of sickness of great length and severity-during which his religious impressions were deepened and a change of life resolved on. He retired from politics, and joined the Pres- byterian church ; shortly after was elected a ruling elder of Mt. Horeb church, near his Breadalbane farm, and as such was a commissioner from West Lex- ington Presbytery in the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church, which met in Cincinnati, in 1831. In 1832 he was licensed to preach the Gospel, and removed with his family to Princeton, to pursue his theological studies in the seminary. While still a student there he accepted a call to the Second Presbyterian church, in Baltimore, late the pastorate of his distinguished brother, Dr. John Breckinridge. For thirteen years he occupied that pulpit, and made a national reputation as a controversialist of the highest ability. His controversy with the Roman Catholics was so violent and heated that great fears were entertained of personal violence, but that did not moderate his earnestness or vehemence. He attacked the Universalists also, and was a decided advocate of the temperance or total abstinence cause. He was the author of the celebrated "Act and Testimony," June 19, 1834, the bold and determined spirit and strength of which, followed up by energetic speaking in the General Assembly, and out of it by frequent and vigorous writing, threw him in the front rank of the leading Old School Presbyterians in the exciting controversy with the New School which ended in the rupture of 1837. He was the last survivor of the great leaders of that side, at that day; and singu- larly enough, in 1866-7, thirty-two years after, was the severest as he was the ablest denouncer of the " Declaration and Testimony," of which Rev. Dr. Sam- uel R. Wilson, of Louisville, was the author, and which was one of the noblest defenses of true Presbyterianism, and of the crown rights of the Head of the Church ever penned. .

In 1836, for his own health and that of his wife, he visited Europe and spent a year-engaging at Glasgow, Scotland, in an exciting public discussion with the infidel abolitionist, George Thompson, and also writing a letter upon the slavery question to the celebrated Presbyterian minister, Dr. Wardlaw. In 1845 he accepted the presidency of Jefferson college. Cannonsburg, Pa .; but resigned, in 1847, to become pastor of the First Presbyterian church, Lexing- ton, Ky. Soon after, Gov. Owsley appointed him state superintendent of public instruction-an open door to distinguished and lasting usefulness from which he could not turn away. Gov. Crittenden re-appointed him, and the people, by election in Aug., 1851, extended his term to 1853. His labors were almost incredible, and their results wonderful ; he was the founder of our really beneficent system of public education.

In the Presbyterian General Assembly of 1853, the Kentucky commission- ers-realizing the power for good of a great theological seminary for the west, in their midst-offered to endow three chairs, donate ten acres of ground for a site, and obtain valuable charters for the control of its property and funds. The Assembly, accordingly, located the seminary at Danville, and filled the

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four chairs-electing Dr. Breckinridge to that of exegetic, didactic, and po- lemic theology, which position he held until about two years before his death; besides this he managed its finances or endowment funds with singular ability and success.

For nearly a quarter of a century after the famous " Old and New Court " times-of which Dr. Breckinridge was no uninterested or silent observer- Kentucky knew no such agitation as that of 1849. Delegates were to be chosen to a convention to revise the old or form a new constitution. A rest- less public clamored for change. If other formidable issues interested, the slavery question fairly convulsed, the people. The political wisdom of the state was invoked. Its time-honored institutions were in danger. In Fayette county the friends of gradual-emancipation resolved to stand or fall by their dogma. They nominated Dr. Breckinridge as one of their candidates. He consented, but with reluctance; took the stump; made one of the ablest, most exciting, and most stormy canvasses ever known; was beaten by a small majority. His party friends-though limited in numbers, yet great in intellectual prowess-were signally defeated all over the state; electing, out of the one hundred, a solitary representative of their principles and faith. Dr. B. believed that the highest economy and the noblest humanity favored the emancipation of the slaves ; not suddenly and by violence, or as the war policy which he afterward advocated or justified-but gradually and guard- edly ; with some opportunity for education and business training and husband- ing of wages, to prepare them for advantageous colonization in the new re- public of Liberia, the home of African freedom. He was never an anti- slavery man, as the word was generally understood-as his two unanswerable letters to Charles Sumner and Wm. H. Seward, in 1855, and before, bear great and noble evidence.

In 1861, and throughout the civil war, the same unwavering and determined faith in himself and in the justice of his cause -- which characterized him in the courts and councils of the church, from 1831 onward to within a year of his death-found gradual development, and then full and vigorous sway. He was a "Union " man, decidedly, from the beginning of the contest to its close; but more actively and intensely so than his writings in 1861-2 gave earnest of-sustaining many of even the most extreme war measures in Kentucky, where his influence with the military authorities, as also with the administration at Washington, was commanding if not controlling. He was one of the giants of the intellectual and religious world, and the power of the government was strengthened by his cooperation and support. He encouraged the Church to make deliverances on "the state of the country," in which it left its true sphere to intermeddle with things civil. In 1860 the measure of his fame was full-as a statesman, as a writer, as a preacher of the gospel, as a theologian. His subsequent course, during the war, while it gained him many new friends, lost him the confidence and regard of many of his oldest and best friends ; more than one of whom observed of him that he resembled the Apostle Peter, not merely in boldness, but even more in requiring great and distinguishing grace. He was irregular and sometimes strangely inconsistent within the period of a few years, in his views and feelings. In a company of gentlemen, of whom the author of this was one, in the evening of October 11, 1861, and again the next day in a speech in the synod of Kentucky at Harrodsburg, he remarked, playfully but emphatically, that "the unkindest and the unfairest thing in the world to him was to quote him on himself-to hold him responsible for views and sentiments he had uttered or written years before; he held himself responsible for his present expressions, not for his past utterances." Firmly and consistently he opposed, to the day of his death, the reunion of the Old School and New School Presbyterian churches; never consenting to "go back" upon, or acknowledge as wrong, the Old School action in which he took so prominent a part in 1834-38. During the last year of his life he was, as to church matters, literally "retired"-more the result of ill-health than of any unwillingness or indisposition to handle matters with his accustomed positiveness.

Dr. Breckinridge was in many respects an extraordinary man. His fam- ily-ancestry and cotemporary-is remarkable for many great qualities,

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genius, education, culture, eloquence, energy, will, popularity, prominence, success. In all these Dr. Breckinridge excelled; he was the giant of his family: but at the same time the most impulsive of them all. In oral discus- sion, his very excitability and irritability often put him at a disadvantage; in written controversy, he had time to be cool, and was always powerful. In social conversation few men, living or dead, were so genial, versatile, lively, entertaining, or instructive. His published writings-newspaper, magazine, and review articles, travels, controversies, and theological works-if collected, would probably fill twenty octavo volumes. The "Act and Testimony" first made him famous as a writer. In 1835, conjointly with another he founded and edited the "Baltimore Religious and Literary Magazine," and seven years later its successor, "The Spirit of the XIXth Century." In 1839 was published in book form part of his letters from Europe, and in 1844 the whole-as "Memoranda of Foreign Travel" in 1836-7. The "Danville Review," in 1861- 64 contains many able and brilliant articles from his pen-too often the reflex of his ardent temperament in those stormy times. In authorship, what he regarded as the great work of his life, and upon which he seemed to rest his hopes of enduring fame, was his theology; of which two volumes, "The Knowledge of God, Objectively Considered," and "The Knowledge of God, Subjectively Considered," were published in 1857 and 1859, while the third remains in quite an unfinished condition.

It was not alone in conversation that Dr. Breckinridge was versatile. He was great and brilliant in many departments of human learning and expe- rience. "His elaborate defense of the constitutional rights of the South and of slavery, in a couple of letters, to Charles Sumner and to Wm. H. Seward, in 1855, was a magnificent vindication of a wronged and outraged people, and attracted universal attention. And, it is remembered of him, that in 1857, he won the prize for an essay on "Improved Modes of Agriculture," which was awarded without knowledge of the author's name, and although many promi- nent agriculturalists contested. He was as fond of farming as he was of the- ological or political disputation, and knew all the points of an animal as thor- oughly as the most experienced stockbreeders."

Dr. Breckinridge was moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly, in 1841, and of the synod of Kentucky in 1849. He was distinguished as an ecclesiastic, and very active and attentive usually in all the church courts. He was a member of fifteen General Assemblies-in '1831 and 1832 as an elder, and as a minister in 1837, 1838, 1841, 1842, 1846, 1850, 1853, 1854, 1857, 1858, 1862, 1867, and 1868; and, besides these, attended several other Assem- blies, especially those of 1844, 1863, 1866, and 1867, and by outside consulta- tions and conference, directed or helped to shape their policy and action. In all important church questions, when present, he was foremost in the discus- sions, always a power, and sometimes the controlling spirit.

Dr. Breckinridge was married three times; first, on March 11, 1823, to his relative, Miss Sophonisba Preston, daughter of Gen. Frank Preston, of Abing- don, Virginia, who died in 1844. Of their children six survived both pa- rents-three married daughters, and three sons, Col. Robert J. Breckinridge, Jr., and Col. Wm. C. P. Breckinridge (both officers of the Confederate army dur- ing the civil war, the former a member of the Confederate Congress in 1863-4, and since the war both distinguished lawyers), and Maj. Joseph C. Breckin- ridge, an officer in the Union army during the war, and since then in the reg- ular army. His second wife was Mrs. Virginia Shelby, widow of Alfred Shel- by, and daughter-in-law of Gov. Isaac Shelby-one of the most elegant and queenly ladies who ever led Kentucky society; one son survived as the fruit of this marriage. In 1868 he married Mrs. Margaret F. White, widow of Wm. White, and daughter of Gen. Jolin Faulkner, who survived him.

Rev. NATHAN L. RICE, D.D., was born December 29, 1807, in Garrard county, Kentucky. His father, a farmer in moderate circumstances and with a large family, could only help him to an education in the most common branches, and to one year's teaching under that great teacher, Joshua Fry, during which he studied Latin. In his 17th year he taught school, and thus raised means to enter Centre college, Danville, in 1824-25. At the end of

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Collins historical sketches of Kentucky. History of Kentucky: Vol. I, Part 91

Author: Collins, Lewis, 1797-1870. cn; Collins, Richard H., 1824-1889. cn Publication date: 1874 Publisher: Covington, Ky., Collins & Co. Number of Pages: 1452

Author: Collins, Lewis, 1797-1870. cn; Collins, Richard H., 1824-1889. cn
Publication date: 1874
Publisher: Covington, Ky., Collins & Co.
Number of Pages: 1452