Thomas Osgood Summers
| Thomas Osmond Summers | |
|---|---|
| Born |
1812 England |
| Died |
1882 United States |
| Nationality |
English American |
| Occupation |
Clergyman Book editor Journal editor University professor |
| Religion | Methodist |
Thomas Osmond (or Osgood) Summers (1812-1882) was an English-born American Methodist clergyman, editor and university professor. He is considered as one of the most prominent Methodist theologians of the nineteenth century.
Early life
Thomas Osmond Summers was born in 1812 in England.[1] He emigrated to the United States in 1830 and became a Methodist minister five years later, in 1835.[1]
Career
Summers established a Methodist community on Galveston Island in Texas in 1840.[2] He also served as a Methodist clergyman in Mississippi.[3]
Summers moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 1850 and worked as a book editor for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.[1][4] He served as the editor of the Sunday School Visitor from 1851 to 1856, the Quarterly Review of the Methodist Church, South from 1858 to 1861, and the Christian Advocate from 1868 to 1878.[1]
In 1856, a few years before the American Civil War of 1861-1865, and together with William Andrew Smith (1802–1870), the President of his alma mater Randolph-Macon College, he published an essay about domestic slavery in the United States.[5] Later, in The Ladies' Repository, he justified punishment of the sinful as tough love.[6]
In 1875, Summers served as Professor of Systematic Theology at Vanderbilt University, a newly established university in Nashville which was started as a Methodist institution by Holland Nimmons McTyeire (1824-1889), Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.[1][7] By 1878, he became Dean of the Biblical Department at Vanderbilt University, later known as the Vanderbilt University Divinity School.[1] He became known as "one of the leading Methodist theologians of the nineteenth century."[6]
Death
Summers died in 1882.[1]
Works
- William Andrew Smith, Thomas Osgood Summers, and Sabin Americana. Lectures On the Philosophy and Practice of Slavery, As Exhibited in the Institution of Domestic Slavery in the United States: With the Duties of Masters of Slaves (Nashville, Tennessee: Stevenson and Evans, 1856).[5][8]
- Thomas O. Summers, Scripture Cathecism, Vol. 1, The Old Testatement (Nashville, Tennessee: Southern Methodist Publishing House, 1858).[9]
- S. L. Farr, A Manual for Infant Schools, ed. Thomas O. Summers (Nashville: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1860).[9]
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Andrew Johnson, The Papers: 1822-1851, Knoxville, Tennessee: University of Tennessee Press, 1976, Volume 5, pp. 320-321
- ↑ Earl Wesley Fornell, The Galveston Era: The Texas Crescent on the Eve of Secession, Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2011, p. 83
- ↑ Ray Holder, The Mississippi Methodists, 1799-1983: a moral people "born of conviction", Maverick Prints, 1984, p. 87
- ↑ Caryn Hannan (ed.), Georgia Biographical Dictionary, North American Book, 2008, p. 362
- 1 2 Villanova University library
- 1 2 Jeffrey Williams, Religion and Violence in Early American Methodism: Taking the Kingdom by Force, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2010, p. 146
- ↑ Vanderbilt University 1875 faculty
- ↑ Documenting the American South
- 1 2 James E. Kirby, The Methodists, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996, p. 198).
External links
- Works by Thomas Osmond Summers at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Thomas Osmond Summers at Internet Archive