Maryville College - Chilhowean Yearbook (Maryville, TN)

Page 18 text:

BOARD OF EDITORS GRACE CARXAHAX. 07. STAXLEY HA IILTOX JEWELL. 07. LLOYD EL? IORE FOSTER, 07. FRAXK ECKLE TAYLOR, 07, Business : L . ager. BURREL OTTO RAULSTOX. 09. KARL ED. STEIXMETZ, bS. WILLL : I HARRISOX CA IPBELL, ' 10. THERON ALEXAXDER. i ' . Art Editors. CARL VICTOR BURGER, (12)

Page 20 text:

REV. ISAAC ANDERSON, D.D. (From sketch by Prof. T. J. Lamar, i88f,.) ,11,.W HE founder of Maryville College was born March 26, 1780, in Rockbridge fiuM- County, ' irginia. He was of Scotch-Irish descent. His ancestors came • ' from County Down, Ireland, and his great-grandfather and great-grand- mother were both at the siege of Derry. At fifteen or sixteen years of age he entered Liberty Hall Academy, now Washington and Lee University. where he pursued his classical studies with diligence and success. He never attended a college, but was remarkably scholarly in his tastes and made the most thorough use of his opportunities. Having resolved to study for the min- istry, he placed himself under the care of Lexington Presbytery and began to studv theology with Rev. Samuel Brown. Soon his father emigrated to Grassy Valley, in Knox County, Tennessee. Here the son continued the study of the- ology with Samuel Carrick and Gideon Blackburn, of Union Presbytery, and in 1802 was licensed to preach. In the fall of that year he was installed pastor of Washington Church, in Knox County, where he labored nine years. His mis- sionarv and apostolic zeal led him through the mountainous counties of Ten- nessee sowing the seed of the Word. Thus he came to be deeply impressed with the intellectual, moral and religious destitution of the county, and as a result of these impressions he began to lay plans for meeting the great needs that confronted him everywhere. In 181 1 he accepted a call to become pastor of the New Providence Church, at Marvville, then one of the most important churches of Tennessee. While pastor here he supplied also, for ten years, the Second Presbyterian Church at Knoxville. A few years later his plans for providing educational facilities, so that the religiously-destitute people of the outlying counties might have intel- ligent preaching, began to take definite shape. Dr. Anderson, together with Rev. Eli Smith, of Frankfort. Kentucky, after a few years of patient labor among sympathizers in the North and elsewhere, established in 1819. at Marv- ville, the Southern and Western Theological Seminary. This institution existed for about twentv-three vears, and from it were graduated many earnest and con- secrated ministers, whose labors among the struggling churches of Tennessee and neighboring fields justified many times over the labors and prayers and sacrifices of the founders and supporters of the Seminary. In 1842 the insti- tution was chartered by the Legislature of Tennessee as Maryville College, of which Dr. Anderson was the President until three or four years before his death, which occurred in 1857. (14)