Lewis W. Green

Lewis Warner Green[1] was born on January 28, 1806, in Danville, Kentucky,[2] the twelfth and youngest child of Willis Green and Sarah Reed.[3] Green was orphaned as a young boy—his father died when he was five years old and his mother died two years later—[4]forcing him to live with his oldest brother, Judge John Green.[5] His first education came in Latin and Greek by way of "renowned teachers" Duncan F. Robertson and Joshua Fry, and he began attendance at a classical school directed by Louis Marshall in Woodford County, Kentucky, at the age of thirteen.[2] He was baptized at Pisgah Presbyterian Church in March 1820 alongside his brother Willis. He fell seriously ill for a time during his second year at the school and suffered a "malignant fever" for several weeks, at one point with a slim chance of survival, though ultimately he recovered.[6] Afterwards, Green entered Transylvania University and completed the coursework through his junior year, but transferred in 1822 to Centre College because of a lack of support by Kentucky Presbyterians for Transylvania president Horace Holley.[7] He graduated from Centre in 1824, becoming one of the two members of the school's first graduating class.[2] Green took brief interest in law and medicine following his graduation, studying the former with his brother, John, and the latter with physician Ephraim McDowell, each for a short time.[2] Green went on to study the Hebrew language at Yale College and also enrolled at the Princeton Theological Seminary in 1831, where he was classmates with Henry Augustus Boardman and David X. Junkin,[8] but did not graduate from either due to a necessity to return to Kentucky.[9]

Green was first given a chance to enter academia when he was elected professor of Greek at Centre College in August 1831, though he declined the position in order to study at Princeton, where he had just enrolled. He returned to his alma mater, though, in August 1832, when he was elected to teach political economy and belles-lettres. He was first licensed as a preacher on October 4, 1833, at Harmony Church in Garrard County, Kentucky,[10] and thereafter preached in Danville, its surroundings, and elsewhere in Kentucky on nearly every Sunday.[11] In August 1834, some months after he was remarried, he obtained a two-year leave of absence from Centre and sailed with his wife from New York to Liverpool in order to learn more and better his skills as a pastor; they arrived on September 15, 1834. The pair spent two weeks in London before traveling to Berlin, where they heard lectures from August Neander and Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg.[12] In the summer of 1835 they traveled throughout Germany and Switzerland, and spent the following winter in Haale studying under August Tholuck, Karl Ullmann, and Wilhelm Gesenius. Afterwards, they went to Bonn and Paris before returning to the United States sometime after December 1835.[13]

Green was offered the pastorate of the Presbyterian Church of Shelbyville, Kentucky, after preaching a sermon there in 1837, though he declined in order to remain at Centre.[14] The following year, he was elected by the Synod of Kentucky to teach oriental and biblical literature at the theological seminary at Hanover College, and he resigned his teaching positions at Centre in order to move to Hanover, Indiana, so he could accept the new job.[15] Shortly after starting there, "influential gentlemen" at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, offered him the presidency of that school in an effort to return a Presbyterian to the office, though Green declined so as to avoid negatively impacting Danville and its status as the de facto center of the church in Kentucky. He returned to Danville having completed his stint at Hanover at the conclusion of the 1838–1839 academic year, and upon his arrival was elected vice president of Centre College, returned to his former positions teaching political economy and belles-lettres, and appointed co-pastor at Danville's First Presbyterian Church, alongside Centre president John C. Young.[2]

In May 1840, soon after taking up these positions at Centre, Green was called away from Kentucky once again after the Presbyterian General Assembly unanimously appointed him professor of oriental literature and biblical criticism at Western Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,[2] on the recommendation of Charles Stewart Todd.[16] Around this time, in the midst of his move from Kentucky, a slave state, to Pennsylvania, a free state, he made the decision to emancipate his 25 to 30 slaves; he originally planned to have them sent to Liberia with the help of the American Colonization Society, but when the freedmen were not willing to go Green decided to free them as they were.[17] The same year, he received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Centre and gave an inaugural address in Pittsburgh;[18] the address was well-received, and he received invitations to speak at Jefferson College, Lafayette College, and Miami University over the subsequent years.[19] He resigned his teaching position in Pittsburgh in October 1846, though he remained there until February 1847, at which point he moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in order to take up the pastorate of that city's Second Presbyterian Church.[20]

He later served as president of Hampden–Sydney College from 1849 to 1856 and for about a year as president of Transylvania University. He served from 1857 to 1863 as president of Centre College.[2]

It was during Green's presidency at Hampden–Sydney that a disagreement arose between the faculty of the Richmond Medical College (now the VCU Medical Center) and the Hampden–Sydney board of trustees in 1853.[21] The medical faculty wanted the right to appoint any new member of their staff without the say of the board of Hampden–Sydney.[21] This disagreement resulted in the Medical College being withdrawn from the benefits of the Hampden–Sydney charter, effectively becoming their own institution.[21]

Green married Eliza J. Montgomery, daughter of Congressman Thomas Montgomery, in February 1827. At the time of their marriage, Montgomery was suffering from an "advanced stage" of tuberculosis,[22] and the couple were married for slightly longer than two years before Eliza died in 1829.[9] He remarried in April 1934 to Mary Lawrence.[23]

While tending to injured Union Army soldier, he contracted a disease and died on May 26, 1863. He was interred at Bellevue Cemetery in Danville, Kentucky.[24]

His publications included the inaugural addresses at Hampden–Sydney in 1849 and at Transylvania in 1856. The later included a moderate attack on abolitionists. His Memoirs, published posthumously in 1871 also included a number of his more important sermons.

• Lewis W. Green at Find a Grave