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 About
the Author
Charles Nisbet
(1736-1804)
Charles Nisbet was born on January 21, 1736 to William
and Alison Nisbet. William was a schoolteacher at Long Yester near Haddington,
East Lothian County, Scotland. By 1754, Charles Nisbet had completed
studies at both the high school of the university in Edinburgh and had
entered Divinity Hall to prepare for the ministry. He was licensed by
the Presbytery of Edinburgh on September 24, 1760 and began preaching
at churches in the Gorbals, near Glasgow. On May 17, 1764, he was ordained
in the Presbytery of Brechin and assigned to a church in Montrose, in
Forfar. Two years later, he married Anne Tweedie and his first son,
Thomas, was born. The Nisbets had three more children; Mary, Alison
(1773), and Alexander (1777).
Active, studious, and blessed with a remarkable memory, Nisbet reportedly
could speak nine languages, and he developed a high reputation in Scotland
for scholarship. He became a member of the General Assembly of the Church
of Scotland and was outspoken in his defense of strict Calvinism. He
was awarded an honorary doctorate of divinity degree from Princeton
University in 1783; it was Nisbet who had recommended fellow Scotsman
John Witherspoon for that institution's presidency.
Nisbet's accomplishments attracted the attention of the trustees of
the newly founded Dickinson College, who were searching for a man to
fill the position of the College's first principal. The College's founder,
Benjamin Rush, had met Nisbet while in Edinburgh. After much deliberation,
accompanied by the vigorous petitioning of Rush and John Dickinson,
Nisbet finally accepted the position and sailed from Greenock with his
family on April 23, 1785. The family arrived in Philadelphia on June
9 and in Carlisle on July 4, when the town greeted them enthusiastically.
In the height of a humid central Pennsylvania summer, the Nisbets did
not adjust well to their new home; the entire family fell very ill.
In addition, Nisbet felt that Rush had broken many of the promises that
he had made before accepting the position at the new college, and their
relationship suffered over this disagreement. All of this, coupled with
extreme homesickness, led Nisbet to resign in October 1785 and to seek
a return to his homeland. For reasons described variously as fearing
a winter Atlantic crossing, or refusing to sail on a ship with an Irish
captain, his departure was delayed. During that time, the health of
his family recovered and on consideration he requested his old position.
Despite Rush's misgivings, Nisbet was unanimously reelected as principal
on May 9, 1786. For the following eighteen years, his efforts to build
the new institution were untiring.
While principal, Nisbet served as professor of moral philosophy, mental
philosophy, belles lettres, and logic. According to the memoirs of former
students, his intellectual vigor was punctuated with cheerful and animated
wit, as well as his often caustic criticisms on the unstable advance
of American institutions and affairs. His course of 418 lectures in
systematic theology and 22 on pastoral theology, composed to accommodate
students preparing for the ministry, was the first of its kind given
in North America.
Nisbet's outspoken views hindered his relationship with his Board of
Trustees. Still, land was purchased and a new permanent building funded
and constructed. Following an 1803 fire that required a complete rebuilding,
the new college, on land immediately west of Carlisle, was ready for
occupation in November 1805. Nisbet did not witness this event, however,
because on New Year's Day, 1804 he contracted a cold that progressed
to pneumonia. Charles Nisbet died two and a half weeks later on January
18, 1804, three days before his 68th birthday.
Please visit the following link for materials authored
by Charles Nisbet maintained in the Their Own Words database:
Nisbet, Charles, 1736-1804.
Researched, authored, and
edited by John Osborne, Ph. D., and James Gerencser.
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