History of Leicester, (Addison County) Vermont United States of America

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Stephen Olin, clergyman and educator, was born in Leicester, Vt., March 2, 1797; son of Judge Henry Olin . He was graduated from Middlebury college with first honors, A.B., 1820, A.M., 1823. On account of poor health he taught school in Cokesbury, Abbeville district, S.C., 1820-23, and while there joined the Methodist church and became a preacher. He connected himself with the South Carolina conference in January, 1824, and was stationed at Charleston, S.C., 1824-26. His strength not being equal to the task of the itineracy, he accepted tile professorship of ethics and metaphysics at the University of Georgia, where he served, 1824-26, 1831-33. He was ordained deacon in the Methodist church, Jan. 13, 1826, and elder, Nov. 20, 1828. He was married, Aug. 10, 1827, to Mary Ann Bostick of Milledgeville, Ga. In July, 1832, he was elected the first president of the newly established Randolph-Macon college under the joint patronage of the conferences of Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia, and he accepted the office by letter dated Athens, Ga., Jan. 9, 1833. In December, 1833, he traveled from Athens to Virginia in his private carriage, accompanied by his wife, presented the needs of the college in Georgia and South Carolina on his journey, and secured the endowment of two professorships and other gifts for the college. He was also professor of mental and moral science, receiving $1500 per annum, and served until 1836, when infirm health caused his retirement. He traveled in Europe, Egypt and the Holy Land with his wife until 1840, when he returned to the United States. He was president of Wesleyan university, Middletown, 1839-41 and 1842-51; declined the presidency of Genessee college, N.Y., in 1850; was active in the debates of the general conference of 1844, and was prominent in the founding of the Evangelical Alliance, London, England, in 1846. He was married secondly, in October, 1843, to Julia Matilda, daughter of Judge James Lynch of New York city, and cousin of the wife of Freeborn Garretson, the Methodist pioneer at whose home in Rhinebeck, N.Y., Miss Lynch met Dr. Olin, then a widower. Their oldest son and only surviving child, Stephen Henry Olin, Wesleyan, 1866, became a prominent lawyer in New York city. The honorary degree of D.D. was conferred on Stephen Olin by Middlebury college in 1832, and by Wesleyan university and the University of Alabama in 1834, and that of LL.D. by Yale in 1845. The estimate of Dr. Olin's character and attributes given by his friends appears extravagant. Theodore L. Cuyler , who knew him less intimately and did not sympathize with his religious creed, says: "In physical, mental and spiritual stature combined, no Methodist in the last generation towered above Dr. Stephen Olin. He was a great writer, a great educator and preeminently a great preacher of the glorious gospel. Like all great men he was very simple and unassuming in his manners; with his grand logical head was coupled a warm, loving heart. Valuable as were his writings, yet his imposing personality was greater than any of his published productions." He is the author of: Travels in Egypt, Arabia, Petr?a and the Holy Land (1843); Youthful Piety (1853). The Works of Stephen Olin (1853); Greece and the Golden Horn (1854), and College Life, its Theory and Practice (1867), were edited by his widow. His name in "Class G., Preachers and Theologians," received four votes for a place in the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, New York University, October, 1900. He died in Middletown, Conn., Aug. 16, 1851.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

History of Leicester, (Addison County) Vermont

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