Background

William Jewett Tucker was born on July 13, 1839 at Griswold, Connecticut.

He was the son of Henry and Sarah White (Lester) Tucker, and a descendant of Robert Tucker, who settled in Weymouth, Massachussets, in 1635. His mother died when he was a child and he spent the greater part of his youth in the home of his maternal uncle, the Rev. William R. Jewett, at Plymouth, N. H.

Education

He was educated at Plymouth, at Kimball Union Academy, and at Dartmouth College, where he graduated in 1861. After teaching for a period at Columbus, Ohio, he entered the Andover Theological Seminary and was graduated from that institution in 1866. During his course in the Seminary he served for a time as agent of the United States Christian Commission with the Army of the Cumberland in the campaign before Atlanta.

Career

After a period spent as representative of the American Home Missionary Society in Kansas and Missouri, he was ordained, Jan. 24, 1867, and assumed the pastorate of the Franklin Street (Congregational) Church in Manchester, N. H. , transferring his activities to the Madison Square (Presbyterian) Church in New York in 1875.

In 1880 he became professor of sacred rhetoric in the Andover Theological Seminary. At Andover, in addition to the usual duties of his professorship, Tucker was specially concerned with the social responsibilities of the church. In connection with his lectureship in pastoral theology he developed courses in sociology, then a novelty in divinity schools.

In 1891 he founded a social settlement in Boston called Andover House (afterwards South End House) modeled after Toynbee Hall in London, which, under the immediate supervision of Robert A. Woods, soon achieved a distinguished success.

His Andover period was far from peaceful, however. In 1884 five professors in the Seminary, including Tucker, founded a periodical called the Andover Review. The articles in this journal, some of them republished in book form under the title Progressive Orthodoxy (1886), soon attracted the unfavorable attention of the conservative wing of Congregationalism. While numerous utterances of the editors were considered to be heterodox, particular objection was raised to their refusal to admit that infants and members of races which had never enjoyed the advantage of Christian teaching are necessarily doomed to eternal perdition. This doctrine of a "second probation" was especially objectionable to the missionary organizations of the church. Charges were filed against the five professors in 1886, at the end of that year they were tried before the board of visitors of the seminary, and Prof. Egbert C. Smyth was found guilty, while the other four (against whom the evidence was practically the same as against Professor Smyth) were acquitted by a tie vote. Upon appeal, the supreme court of Massachusetts in 1890 pronounced the proceedings faulty, and in 1892, at a second trial, Smyth was acquitted. The "Andover controversy" thus ended in a complete victory for the faculty.

In 1893 Tucker became president of Dartmouth College. Serious problems confronted him upon his accession. The institution had long been a stronghold of conservatism--dominated by a reactionary theology, averse to educational experimentation, and working in large part with the material facilities of the eighteenth century. To the solution of these problems Tucker brought educational vision and insight of a rare order, acumen and resource in business management, adroitness in matters of finance, and powers of leadership which ensured harmonious cooperation of all the branches of the college. As a result of his efforts student attendance rose from three hundred to eleven hundred, the teaching body was increased in like proportion, material facilities were modernized, finance reorganized and placed upon a sounder basis. The spirit of contention which had marked much of the previous history of the institution disappeared, theological dictation vanished, and, most of all, the spirit of the college became such as to enable it more intelligently to meet the educational demands of the age. Tucker's moral leadership was also impressive. Exerted under the advantage of direct personal contact at Andover, it was no less effective at Dartmouth where his opportunities, for the most part, were limited to chapel services and other public exercises. His personality awakened veneration, respect, and sincere affection, and through the strength of his appeal he became an influence for good in generations of college graduates. He retired from the presidency of Dartmouth in 1909.

The remainder of his life, so far as his health permitted, was devoted to literary activity. In addition to numerous articles in the magazines and to his contributions to books issued by the Andover faculty, he had already published The Making and the Unmaking of the Preacher (1898).

In 1910 appeared two volumes, Personal Power and Public Mindedness; in 1911, The Function of the Church in Modern Society; in 1916, The New Reservation of Time: and in 1919, an autobiography, My Generation.

Although retired, he remained an active figure on the public stage and lived in Hanover until his death in 1926.

Achievements

• The Rev. William Jewett Tucker served as the 9th President of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, United States, from 1893 to 1909. The William Jewett Tucker Center, commonly known as the Tucker Center, at Dartmouth College, is named after President Tucker.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The making and the unmaking of the preacher

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

  • Personal Power; Counsels to College Men

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • The Function of the Church in Modern Society

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • My Generation: An Autobiographical Interpretation, Volume 1893...

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

  • The New Reservation of Time: And Other Articles Contributed to the Atlantic Monthly During the Occupancy of the Period Described

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

Views

Quotations: "Be not content with the common place in character anymore than with the commonplace in ambition or intellectual attainment. Do not expect that you will make any lasting or very strong impression on the world through intellectual power without the use of an equal amount of conscience and heart. "

"For centuries men have kept an appointment with Christmas. Christmas means fellowship, feasting, giving and receiving, a time of good cheer, home. "

Membership

In 1909 and became president emeritus of Dartmouth College.

Connections

Tucker was twice married: on June 22, 1870, to Charlotte Henry Rogers of Plymouth, N. H. , who died in 1882, and in June 1887 to Charlotte Barrell Cheever of Worcester, Massachussets Two daughters were born of the first marriage and one of the second; all three survived their father.

Mother:

Sarah White Lester Tucker

(1817–1846)

Father :

Henry Tucker

(1815–1904)

Brother:

Edward Jewett Tucker*

(1846–1863)

Sister:

Elizabeth Coit Tucker*

(1844–1844)

Daughter:

Alice Lester Tucker Dixon*

(1873–1955)

Daughter:

Margaret Tucker Brown*

(1878–1952)

Spouse (2):

Charlotte Barrell Cheever Tucker*

(1858–1944)

Spouse (1):

Charlotte Henry Rogers of Plymouth

References

• History of Dartmouth College Volume II
• Genealogy of the Tucker Family: From Various Authentic Sources (Classic Reprint)
• A History of Dartmouth College, 1815 1909: Being the Second Volume of a History of Dartmouth College and the Town of Hanover, New Hampshire, Begun by Frederick Chase (Classic Reprint)
• Progressive religious thought in America: a survey of the enlarging Pilgrim faith
• William Jewett Tucker, A tribute