Davidson, Robert, Dd

Davidson, Robert, D.D.

a Presbyterian minister, only son of Reverend R. Davidson, D.D., second president of Dickinson College, was born at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, February 23, 1808. He graduated from Dickinson College in 1828, and from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1831; the following year took charge of the McChord (or Second) Church of Lexington, Kentucky, was ordained there in March 1832, and became distinguished for his pulpit eloquence and his earnest work as a pastor. In 1840 he became president of Transylvania University, Kentucky; in 1842 was appointed stuperintendent of public institutions, but after holding that office a short time and declining a professorship in Centre College and the presidency of Ohio University, he accepted the pastoral charge of the First Presbyterian Church in New Brunswick, N.J., May 4, 1843. In 1859 he became pastor of the Spring Street Church, New York city. From 1864 to 1868 his pastoral charge was the First Church of Huntington, L.I, and he afterwards resided in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, until his death, April 6, 1876. Dr. Davidson served the General Assembly as its permanent clerk from 1845 to 1850. For a quarter of a century he was a member of the Board of Foreign Missions. for ten years a director of Princeton Seminary, and in 1869 was one of the delegates to the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland. He was a frequent contributor to the periodical literature of the day. He published a large number of pamphlets, sermons, etc., and wrote several able articles for the Princeton Review. He was also the author of a number of volumes, the largest and best known of which is his History of the Presbyterian Church in Kentucky. "He was a man of fine culture, a scholar, a writer of great purity and elegance. As a minister of Christ he won and maintained to the end a high position." See Necrol. Report of Princeton Theol. Sem. 1877, page 26.