John Meigs was the son of Rev. Matthew K. Meigs and Mary Morton (Gould), both of New England ancestry. He was descended from Vincent Meigs who settled in New Haven about 1644. His father served as a Presbyterian pastor in Michigan and Virginia and later was president of Delaware College. Determining on account of his health to retire from his college position, he bought an old stone house on a hill near Pottstown, Pennsylvania, and in it established a small day school where he planned to train his own boys. In this house, John Meigs, the fifth child, and fourth son was born.
Education
Meigs entered Lafayette College at fourteen, but upon the death of a brother in December, was taken from college and spent the rest of the year in Europe, returning to Lafayette in the fall of 1867. Graduating in 1871 with honors, he began to teach under his father, but in 1872 became a tutor in Latin and Greek at Lafayette, and in 1875, adjunct professor of modern languages. He was awarded the degree of doctor of philosophy in 1876.
Career
In the fall of 1876, in response to his mother's urging, John reluctantly went home to take charge of the school, from which his father wished to withdraw. With The Hill School, he was identified for the rest of his life. He found the institution established in extemporized quarters with meager and primitive equipment, a faculty of three teachers, and an enrollment of sixty boys. Giving evidence at once of his extraordinary energy and tenacity, he assumed the responsibility of direction and at the same time conducted as many recitations as any one of the other teachers about twenty-five a week. In addition, he kept the accounts; wrote all the letters with his own hand, saw to all matters of discipline; kept the general records; and received all the visitors. The school had no endowment, nor any wealthy friends. An epidemic of typhoid fever of which nearly one hundred, boys and masters, fell ill in the early summer of 1902, laid John Meigs under such a strain physically and emotionally that in the following years his great vitality began to wane. In 1906 it was evident that he had serious heart-trouble. With intervals of seeming improvement, this grew worse in the next five years; and in 1911 he died of a heart attack at The Hill School, in the house in which he was born.
Achievements
Religion
Like his mother before him, John Meigs was instinctively and strongly religious. Although an Evangelical in spirit, John Meigs stood among the theological liberals in his beliefs and sympathies. As a member of the Presbyterian General Assembly which in 1893 conducted the ecclesiastical trial of Charles Augustus Briggs he did his utmost to prevent Briggs's condemnation for heresy.
Personality
Of John's qualities as a man and as a schoolmaster, most notable were his own extraordinary capacity for work, and his ability to require and to gain the utmost energy of those who worked with him. He set and exacted high standards of industry and thoroughness both for masters and for boys. Vehement and impetuous and quick to anger, he was quick also to tenderness and able to inspire loyalty. He reflected Thomas Arnold of Rugby in his passionate moral purpose and Edward Thring of Uppingham in his emphasis upon beauty and dignity in equipment and surroundings, and in his concern not only for the brilliant but for the ordinary boy.