Robert Hamilton Bishop

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Robert Hamilton Bishop (July 26, 1777 in Linlithgowshire, Scotland - April 29, 1855 in Pleasant Hill, Ohio) was an Scottish-American educator and Presbyterian minister who became the first president of Miami University.

Robert Hamilton Bishop, was the son of William Bishop and his wife Margaret Hamilton, was born in Scotland to a very religious farm family.

When about seventeen years of age he entered the University of Edinburgh and graduated in 1798. When Bishop came to Edinburgh such men as David Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, and Thomas Reid were part of the distinguished faculty. The two men who influenced Bishop the most were Reverend James Finlayson and the celebrated philosopher, Dugald Stewart.

From the University of Edinburgh, Bishop went to the Divinity Hall at Selkirk, and was licensed to preach by the Associate Burgher Presbytery of Perth in 1802. Dr. John M. Mason of New York came visiting the Burgher Synod of Scotland on a on a recruiting trip as commissioner of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Synod of North America.

In March of 1803 Bishop accepted a call from the Ebenezer Church in Jessamine County, Kentucky. While serving as minister at Ebenezer, he was offered a professorship in Transylvania University in Lexington which he accepted. Bishop served as acting president of Transylvania University from 1816-1818

Bishop was an early sympathizer of the plight of black slaves. In 1815, he organized a Negro school at Pisgah, and in 1816 he opened a school for African American girls at Transylvania.

After leaving Ebenezer, Reverend Bishop organized the Second Presbyterian Church of Lexington and served as a minister in Versailles, Kentucky.

He became the first President of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, serving from 1824 to 1841 when he resigned the presidency but held the professorship of history and political science until the Autumn of 1844 and in 1845 he became headmaster of Farmer's College in North College Hill, Ohio.

He was buried on the grounds of Farmer's College and more than a hundred years later, he was reinterred at Miami University. Bishop Hall, the honors dormitory on the Miami campus, and the Bishop Medal, the University's highest alumni award, are named in his honor. In 1830, Miami's Erodelphian Literary Society commissioned Hiram Powers to sculpt a bust of Bishop.

Dr. Bishop was a voluminous writer. His chief works were:

• An Apology for Calvinism, 1804
• Elements of Logic, 1833
• Sketches of the Philosophy of the Bible, 1833
• The Western Peacemaker, 1839

Two of Bishop's most famous students were Jefferson Davis at Transylvania and Benjamin Harrison at Miami. He brought to the Miami faculty, William Holmes McGuffey and John Witherspoon Scott, father-in-law of Benjamin Harrison.