Scott, David

Scott, David, a Presbyterian minister, was born in Philadelphia, Pa., March 13, 1849. When a mere lad, his parents removed to New York city, and there he received his early lessons in the public schools. At the age fifteen he entered the employ of the Manhattan Gas Company as a book-keeper, and until he was graduated spent his vacations in earning the money needed for his education. He was prepared for college at the Lawrenceville (N. J.) High-school, under the Rev. Samuel M. Hamill, D.D. He united on profession of his faith with the Fifteenth Street Church (now the Phillips Memorial Church), New York city, at the age of fifteen. He was graduated from the College of New Jersey in 1873, taking a fellowship in the classics, one of the conditions of which is that the recipient shall spend one year abroad in some European university. Immediately after leaving college, Mr. Scott entered Princeton Theological Seminary and studied one year, at the end of which time he went to Leipsic, Germany, where he pursued the study of theology and philology for one year; then returning, he entered the middle class in the seminary, and, having finished the remaining two years, was graduated in 1877. He was licensed by the Presbytery of New York, April 4, 1876, and was ordained by the same presbytery as an evangelist, in the Fourteenth Street Presbyterian Church, June ,54, 1877. For nearly a year (from September, 1876, to June 1877) Mr. Scott was tutor of Latin and Greek in Princeton College, N. J., while pursuing his studies in the seminary. Having been accepted as a missionary by the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, he embarked with his wife, Sept. 1, 1877, for Teheran, Persia. There he remained about sixteen months, during which time he had well mastered the Persian language, when, on account of the continued illness of his wife, by the advice of physicians and of the mission, he returned to the United States, intending again to resume his work at Teheran as soon as possible. He arrived in New York near the end of March, almost immediately afterwards grew ill, and died in that. city, April 1, 1879. He was a young man of excellent abilities and of fine scholarship, and his death is regarded as a sad loss to the cause of foreign missions. (W. P. S.)