Pattison, Robert Everett

Pattison, Robert Everett D.D., an American Baptist divine who distinguished himself in the pulpit and the rostrum, was born at Benson, Vt., Aug. 19, 1800, and was educated at Amherst College, Mass., class of 1826. He was at once made tutor in Columbian College, Washington, D. C. He was ordained for the work of the holy ministry at Salem, Mass., in 1829, and in 1830 became pastor of the First Baptist Church in Providence, R. I. — a most important charge. He was elected in 1836 president of Waterville College, Me., holding the position till 1840, when he was recalled to his pastorate in Providence. In 1843 he was appointed one of the corresponding secretaries of the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions. He returned to his educational labors as a professor in the Covington Theological Seminary, Ky., in 1846. But in 1848 the legislature of that state (by an act afterwards declared unconstitutional) reconstructed the board of trustees, compelling his resignation. He was shortly after elected professor of theology in the Newton Theological Institution, Mass., resigning his chair in 1853 to serve a second term as president of Waterville College. He was subsequently at the head of Onead Female Institute, Worcester, Mass., and a professor successively in the theological department of Shurtleff College, Ill., and in the Baptist Theological Seminary, Chicago. He died Nov. 21,1874. Dr. Pattison was an eminently pious and modest man. He wrote considerably for periodicals, and was the author of a Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians (1859). (L. E. S.)