David Nelson (September 24, 1793 – October 17, 1844) was an American Presbyterian minister, physician, and antislavery activist who founded Marion College and served as its first president. Marion College, a Protestant manual labor college, was the first institution of higher learning chartered in the state of Missouri. Born in Tennessee, Dr. Nelson had once been a slaveholder but became an "incandescent" abolitionist after hearing a speech by Theodore D. Weld. Unpopular with proslavery groups in northeastern Missouri, Nelson stepped down as president of Marion College in 1835. In 1836, Nelson fled Missouri for Quincy, Illinois, after slaveowner Dr. John Bosely was stabbed at one of his sermons. Nelson then remained in Quincy, where he founded the Mission Institute to educate young missionaries. Openly abolitionist, two Mission Institute sites became well known stations on the Underground Railroad, helping African Americans escape to Canada to be free from slavery.
Nelson was the author of The Cause and Cure of Infidelity, which includes an account of his conversion to Christianity. He also wrote the lyrics to "The Shining Shore," a popular hymn by composer George Frederick Root. Nelson is said to have written the poem while he was a fugitive in Marion County, Missouri, looking across the Mississippi River toward Quincy, Illinois.
Education and early career Nelson was born near Jonesborough in East Tennessee in 1793. His parents were originally from Rockbridge County, Virginia. His father, Henry Nelson, was an elder in the Presbyterian Church. His mother, Anna Kelsey Nelson, was a teacher. Both taught at Washington College, which had been founded by Samuel Doak, a slaveowner who later became an abolitionist. David attended Washington College, and graduated in 1809 at the age of sixteen.
Medical training and practice
Nelson first studied medicine in Danville, Kentucky, under Ephraim McDowell, a pioneer surgeon. He then went to the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, where he received his degree in 1812. At the age of nineteen, he returned to Kentucky intending to practice medicine. With the outbreak of the War of 1812, he joined a regiment in Kentucky instead, and went to Canada as a military surgeon.
After the war, he returned to Jonesborough, Tennessee, where he had grown up. Nelson opened a medical practice earning three thousand dollars a year. On May 15, 1816, he married Amanda Frances Deaderick, the daughter of David Deaderick, a respected merchant. They eloped because her father did not approve of Dr. Nelson, who had a reputation as an avid card player and gambler.
Around this time, Elihu Embree and Benjamin Lundy were publishing antislavery newspapers in Jonesborough. However, Nelson kept slaves during his years in Tennessee and Kentucky, and first adopted his antislavery views much later in Missouri.
Entry into ministry Although Nelson had spent several years questioning his faith, he had a change of heart and started studying theology privately with Reverend Robert Glenn. He was reportedly inspired by missionary Elias Cornelius of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, who gave a sermon when he passed through Tennessee. In April 1825, Nelson was licensed to preach by the Abingdon Presbytery in Virginia, and six months later, he was ordained as a minister `in Rogersville, Tennessee. For two years, Nelson preached in East Tennessee, and traveled with Frederick Augustus Ross through Ohio, Tennessee, and Kentucky, as guest preachers in churches and revival meetings. Nelson also collaborated with Ross and James Gallaher on editing the Calvinistic Magazine.
In 1828, David Nelson became pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Danville, Kentucky, succeeding his brother Samuel who had died. He also traveled extensively within Kentucky as an agent of the American Education Society, and taught classes on medicine. Reverend Nelson developed a reputation as a skilled orator and preacher who could "surprise and thrill...with eloquence and pathos." Standing six feet two inches tall, with a large chest, he also had a powerful singing voice which he used effectively during worship.
Founding of Marion College
In 1830, the Reverend Dr. David Nelson moved to Missouri and settled in what is now Union Township, 13 miles northwest of Palmyra, in Marion County. He was sent to northeastern Missouri by the American Home Missionary Society (AHMS), along with several other Presbyterian ministers from Kentucky.
Nelson soon had the idea of establishing a Protestant college to educate "industrious young men, farmers and mechanics." He received financial backing from two partners who were large landowners in the area: Dr. David Clark, the first physician to settle in Marion County, and William Muldrow, a progressive farmer and speculator. Muldrow was heavily involved in the early years of Marion College, and would later develop a reputation as a "visionary, fool, swindler." The three founders envisioned a manual labor college that would eventually be self-supporting. Students would be expected to farm the land for three hours a day. Within a few years, they decided to add a theological seminary, in addition to a preparatory school and literary department.
In 1830, Nelson and his co-founders submitted their proposal to establish Marion College to the legislature of Missouri. On January 15, 1831, Marion College became the first institution of higher learning to be chartered in the state. Marion College was also granted the right to confer college and university degrees. The founders received eleven acres of land, where they built their first school building, a log cabin. In 1832, Dr. Nelson became the first president of Marion College, as well as its first teacher.
Nelson traveled around the state to raise money for the school. The education board of the Presbyterian Church pledged $10,000 to purchase more land for Marion College, but there were misunderstandings, and the agreement was dissolved. In April 1833, Muldrow, Nelson and Clark secured a $20,000 loan from a bank in New York City, to purchase 4,000 acres of land. In the fall and winter of 1834, the three founders canvassed their contacts in the East and returned with $19,000 in donations and subscriptions.
As of the winter of 1834, Marion College consisted of a one-story building and several cottages. The Palmyra Courier, a Jacksonian newspaper which opposed the college, estimated that there were only 20 to 30 students. Meanwhile, The Christian Almanac, which was supportive of the school, estimated that there were as many as 60. In the summer of 1835, the construction of several new buildings was underway at multiple sites. By the fall of 1835, the college catalog listed a total of 80 students, 52 of whom were from other states including New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia.
In 1835, Dr. Nelson resigned as president of Marion College, although he remained on the board of trustees that year. The exact circumstances are unknown, but his resignation was probably intended to appease proslavery groups in northeastern Missouri. Nelson was succeeded by Presbyterian minister Reverend William S. Potts as president of Marion College. Marion College encountered financial problems between 1837 and 1840, and its final term started in May 1843. By 1844, Marion College had closed.
Abolitionism in Missouri
In early 1832, the First Presbyterian Church in St. Louis held a major revival meeting. Reverend William S. Potts invited Reverend David Nelson to speak, and succeeded in recruiting 126 new members that year. Among the new members Nelson helped to recruit was Elijah Parish Lovejoy, who joined the church on February 9, 1832 and decided to enter the ministry.
Around this time, abolitionist Theodore Weld was in St. Louis, possibly in early March. Reverend Dr. David Nelson was converted to the antislavery cause after hearing one of Weld's lectures. According to Reverend Asa Turner, Nelson declared, "I will live on roast potatoes and salt before I will hold slaves."
Nelson himself is said to have been a major influence on Elijah Lovejoy both as a Presbyterian and as an antislavery activist. Nelson later wrote about the teachings of Charles Finney and the Second Great Awakening and their implications for slavery in the St. Louis Observer, the evangelical newspaper run by Lovejoy.
In the summer of 1835, Nelson attended the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, and heard Theodore Weld speak once again. On June 16, 1835, the American Anti-Slavery Society voted to recommend the appointment of David Nelson as one of its agents. Another abolitionist professor from Marion College, Job Halsey, was also appointed. As one of 70 trained agents of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), Nelson recruited white and black antislavery activists in Marion County. He and his followers started Sunday schools to teach African Americans to read the Bible and also distributed antislavery literature, angering many in the local community.
Tensions in Marion County In 1836, there was a large influx of migrants from Pennsylvania, Ohio and other Eastern states to Marion County known as the "Eastern run". Many of these newcomers opposed slavery. Their arrival was viewed with mistrust and suspicion by local residents who were proslavery, and regarded them all as "abolitionists".
Among the new migrants from the East were two men named Garrett and Williams, agents of the American Colonization Society, who had settled in Philadelphia, Missouri. At Hannibal, it was discovered that Garrett and Williams had been bringing hundreds of tracts and pamphlets supporting colonization – the idea that slaves should be emancipated and sent to Africa – into Marion County. A group of armed and mounted men led by Captain Uriel Wright organized at Palmyra and marched up to Philadelphia, took Garrett and Williams prisoner, searched the premises, and found a box of ACS pamphlets in an outbuilding, hidden under corn husks. On their way back to Palmyra, the proslavery mob threatened to hang Garrett and Williams unless they left Missouri for good. The mob took the box of ACS pamphlets to Palmyra. In front of a large, enthusiastic crowd there, they burned the pamphlets "formally and with some ceremony."
That same day, a group rode to Dr. Nelson's house and surrounded it, demanding that he turn over any antislavery pamphlets as well. Nelson warned them to leave. The mob left, threatening to come back for him.
The Garrett-Williams incident was followed by a series of public meetings in Marion County denouncing anyone suspected of harboring sentiments opposing slavery, with many local citizens vowing to drive them out. On May 21, 1836, Professor Ezra Stiles Ely was called before a meeting discussing the role of Marion College in the abolition movement. Much to the alarm of abolitionist groups in the East, Ely admitted that he opposed slavery but denied supporting abolitionism and claimed to own a slave. Garrett and Williams left for Illinois and later became students of David Nelson in Quincy.
Life as a fugitive On May 22, 1836, David Nelson was forced to flee for Illinois, after violence erupted in Marion County. Reverend Nelson had been asked to give the Sunday sermon on the campground of his church in Union Township, a few miles from Marion College. After his sermon, William Muldrow handed him a paper to read. It was a plea for donations to help free slaves and send them to Liberia. Nelson objected at first, telling Muldrow that he thought it would incite the proslavery mob once again. Muldrow reassured him, and Nelson read the paper from the colonizationists.
Stabbing of Dr. John Bosely