Thomas William Humes

Background

Humes was born in Knoxville in 1815. His father was Thomas Humes, merchant, native of Armagh, Ireland, and his mother was Margaret (Russell), widow of James Cowan.

Education

He graduated from the local East Tennessee College at the age of fifteen and three years later received the master's degree from that institution. Having already made some study of theology, in 1833 he spent a few months in Princeton Theological Seminary only to find that he could not subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith.

Career

He became a merchant in Knoxville. Since mercantile pursuits did not appeal to him, he next tried journalism, in 1839 as editor of the Knoxville Times and in 1840, of the Knoxville Register and of a Whig campaign paper, the Watch Tower. An unsuccessful candidate for the state legislature in 1841, he turned again to the ministry, was ordained deacon in March 1845 and presbyter in July, and in 1846 became rector of St. John's Episcopal Church in Knoxville.

During the Civil War he was a Unionist in his sympathies, and when Tennessee seceded, he resigned his pulpit; but in 1863, after Knoxville had been occupied by Federal troops, he resumed it and continued in it for six years more. During and just after the war, he was chairman of the executive committee of the East Tennessee Relief Association, an organization for the distribution of the necessities of life to distressed Unionists of eastern Tennessee. War had brought distress also to his alma mater, by then in name East Tennessee University though in reality still a small classical college, and it had closed its doors.

In 1865 Humes accepted the presidency of this institution and in the following year was able to reopen it. As clergyman and as educator, he was wellbred, cultured, public-spirited, with a strong sense of duty, frequently called upon for public addresses. In his theological and educational views he was dogmatically conservative: modern science did not attract him; evolutionary philosophy he rejected; his faith was in the older classical education. Yet during his administration foundations were laid for a broadening of the work of his institution. In 1869 the legislature granted to it the state's proceeds from the Morrill Act for the development of colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts, and converted it, though still largely in name only, into the University of Tennessee. In 1883 Humes resigned the presidency. By 1888 he had written and published a not unbiased volume, The Loyal Mountaineers of Tennessee. The last six years of his life he served as librarian of the Lawson-McGhee Library of Knoxville.

Achievements

• Humes Hall, a residence hall on the campus of the University of Tennessee, is named for Humes. In 1983, Humes' Federal-style house in Knoxville, which had stood behind St. John's Episcopal Church for nearly 140 years, was torn down. Many of the house's fixtures were salvaged by preservationists, however, and the local group, Knox Heritage, has considered building a reproduced version of the house.

Works

More photos

• book

  • An address ..

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Approaches to Ethics: Representative Selections from Classical Times to the Present

Connections

On December 4, 1834, he married Cornelia Williams. On April 12, 1849, his first wife having died, he married Anna B. Williams, a school teacher from New Hartford, Connecticut.

Father:

Thomas Humes

Mother:

Margaret (Russell)

Spouse:

Cornelia Williams

Spouse:

Anna B. Williams