Nathaniel Colver

Nathaniel Colver (born in Orwell, Vermont, 10 May 1794; died in Chicago, 25 December 1870) was a United States Baptist clergyman.

Biography

His father, a Baptist minister, moved, while Nathaniel was a child, to Champlain, in northern New York, and thence to West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where the son was converted and decided to enter the Baptist ministry. Though he had but slender opportunities of early education, he made himself a respectable scholar.

After brief pastorates in various places, he was called in 1839 to Boston, where he cooperated in organizing the church later known as Tremont Temple. His ministry there was remarkable for its bold, uncompromising, and effective warfare upon slavery and intemperance, as well as for its directly spiritual results. On leaving Boston in 1852, Colver was pastor at South Abington, Massachusetts, at Detroit, at Cincinnati, and finally, in 1861, at Chicago. While in Cincinnati, he received from Denison University the degree of D.D. In Chicago he was invited to take the professorship of doctrinal theology in the theological seminary in process of organization in that city.

From 1867 to 1870, he was president of the Freedman's Institute in Richmond, Virginia. Colver played a conspicuous role in the anti-masonic, anti-slavery, and temperance movements of his day.

He published, besides occasional addresses, three lectures on Odd-fellowship (1844).

Notes

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wilson, James Grant; Fiske, John, eds. (1900). "Colver, Nathaniel". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton  This work in turn cites:
  • Justin A. Smith, Memoir of Nathaniel Colver (Chicago, 1873)