Tichenor was born on November 11, 1825 in Spencer County, Ky. He was the son of James and Margaret (Bennett) Tichenor. He was a descendant of Martin Tichenor, said to have been of French extraction, who was in New Haven, Connecticut, as early as 1644, and was later one of the settlers of Newark, N. J. Martin's great-grandson, Daniel, grandfather of Isaac, moved from New Jersey to Kentucky in 1790.
At the age of fifteen Isaac entered the Taylorsville academy, where he was under two able teachers, Moses and David Burbank, graduates of Waterville College, Maine, and there did work that would have admitted him to the junior class of a college.
An attack of measles, left him with physical infirmities which troubled him for a long time. When he was sufficiently recovered, he engaged in teaching and was for three years connected with the Taylorsville academy, the last year as principal. In the meantime, at the solicitation of local Baptists, he had begun to preach, and his effectiveness soon won for him the title "boy orator of Kentucky. "
In 1847 he became agent for the American Indian Mission Association and while traveling about in its interest he was called to the Baptist church in Columbus, Ky. , where in 1848 he was ordained. He served here until 1850, then traveled and preached in Texas, was in charge of the church at Henderson, Ky. , for a short time, and on Jan. 1, 1852, began a sixteen-year pastorate at the First Baptist Church, Montgomery, Ala.
For two years during the Civil War he served as chaplain of the 17th Alabama Regiment--not confining himself strictly to his prescribed duties, for he acquired reputation as a sharpshooter and at the battle of Shiloh went to the front of his regiment and rallied the wavering lines.
In 1868 he resigned his church and for some three years lived on his plantation in Shelby County, Ala. , engaging more or less in evangelical work. He accepted a call to the First Baptist Church, Memphis, Tenn. , in 1871, but the following year returned to Alabama to be the first president of the State Agricultural and Mechanical College, located at Auburn.
During the ten years he was at the head of this institution he laid a broad and firm foundation for its subsequent development. He studied the agricultural, mineral, and manufacturing resources of the state, and in his numerous addresses awakened its people to a greater appreciation of them. He prophesied the industrial development which has since taken place and labored to prepare the way for it. Throughout this period he continued to maintain a position of leadership in the councils of the Southern Baptists, and in June 1882 he resigned his collegiate position and became secretary of the Home Missionary Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, the headquarters of which were at Atlanta, Ga. For eighteen years he carried on the work of this office with a statesmanship that resulted in great constructive achievements.
At the outset his activities did much to preserve for the Southern Convention its natural field, which was being encroached upon by other more aggressive and better equipped Baptist bodies. He inaugurated extensive work west of the Mississippi, took possession of Texas, insisted that the Convention provide its own Sunday school literature and arranged for its publication, initiated educational projects in the mountain regions, and grappled with problems created by growing industrial centers.
In 1899 he retired from active work and was made secretary emeritus. His health soon failed and after protracted suffering he died at Atlanta.
In 1871, he became pastor at the First Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, but resigned shortly after. He also served as a pastor in Kentucky and Mississippi.
He was four times married: first, December 16, 1853, to Monimia C. Cook, who died February 9, 1860; second, in April 1861, to Emily C. Boykin, who died September 7, 1864; third, in October 1865, to Lulah Boykin, who died in 1869; and fourth, to Mrs. Eppie Reynolds McCraw, who died in 1878. By each he had children, four of whom survived him.
(1796–1886)
(1790–1865)
(1877–1935)
(1866–1869)
(1862–1866)
(1863–1864)
(1847–1869)
(1843–1878)
