Robert Davidson

Background

Robert Davidson was born in 1750 at Elkton, Maryland, United States.

Education

Davidson graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1771.

Career

In his twenty- third year Davidson was ordained by the Second Presbytery of Philadelphia. Until 1784 he lived in that city, teaching history in the University of Pennsylvania and acting as assistant to Dr. Ewing of the First Presbyterian Church.

At the outbreak of the Revolution he spoke so frequently and vigorously in behalf of the revolting patriots that when the British occupied Philadelphia he found it prudent to retire unobtrusively into Delaware.

In 1784 first appeared his Geography Epitomized; or, a Tour round the World: Being a short but comprehensive Description of the Terraqueous Globe attempted in Verse for the Sake of the Memory: And principally designed for the Use of Schools. Other editions of the pamphlet, with its ingenious rhymes, were published in London in 1787 and at Burlington, New Jersey, in 1791.

In November 1784 he was called to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in the double capacity of professor of history, geography, chronology, rhetoric, and belles-lettres in Dickinson College and of pastor of the Presbyterian Church. There for twenty-eight years he served church, state, and school with his extensive learning and his sterling private character.

Acquainted with eight languages, well read in theology and in the sciences he had studied at Franklin’s college, he was particularly fond of astronomy.

In 1794 with mingled tact and resolution he upheld law and order against the Whiskey Insurrectionists. In 1796 he was chosen moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church.

In 1811 he published The Christian’s A. C. , or the 119th psalm in metre, each octave commencing with the appropriate letter of the alphabet, with the exception of Q, X, and Z. In the year of his death appeared a New Metrical Version of the Psalms, which his son rates above Sternhold and Hopkins but below Watts.

He left behind him twenty manuscript volumes of sermons and scientific lectures, for, strangely diffident of his powers, he always entered pulpit or classroom with his discourse completely written out.

Achievements

• Davidson was president of Dickinson College. He was a moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbytarian church and the author of several works.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

Connections

While a student of divinity Davidson was taken dangerously ill at a farmhouse and was kept alive only by the assiduous care and kind nursing of the farmer’s daughter. On his recovery he ascertained that there was only one way to repay his benefactress. “Although she was older than himself, had not the slightest pretension to beauty, and moved in a humble sphere of life, ” wrote his son by a second marriage, “she made him for upward of thirty years an excellent and devoted wife. ”

His second wife, Margaret Montgomery of Carlisle, died in 1809, and on April 17, 1810, he married Jane Harris, who survived him.

Third wife:

Jane Harris

Second wife:

Margaret Montgomery