Rev. John W. Scott
The Rev. John W. Scott, D. D., was born in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, January 22, 1800. His father was a Presbyterian minister, and in addition to the charge of two pioneer Churches of that day and region, conducted a small grammar school for the preparation of boys for entering Washington and Jefferson Colleges, which were at that day in their incipient and infantile stage. With his father Dr. Scott obtained his early classical and preparatory education, commencing when he was nine years of age. After two or three pears, when he had advanced a little in Latin, Greek and lower mathematics, his father used sometimes to set him to hearing the other classes recite. And when he was still further advanced in scholarship he would sometimes leave him in charge of all the classes for a day or so at a time, when he was called away on his parochial duties. The practice that was thus obtained in the field of education was often of much service in after life.
At sixteen years of age, after completing his preparatory education, to which his father had limited his school, and not wishing to graduate at so early and immature an age, he began to teach. The first year was in Eastern Ohio, and the last two years in Beaver and Washington Counties, Pennsylvania, the last eighteen months as principal of the Beaver Academy. In the Fall of 1821 he entered Washington College as a junior, and was graduated in September, 1823. His intention was to go into Kentucky and make a little money teaching, but as he was about to leave, the venerable Dr. Wylie, president of the college, came to him and told him that it was his desire that he should prepare himself for the chair of mathematics and natural sciences, in place of Professor Reed, the incumbent at that time, who was so feeble that Mr. Scott was often employed by the board to give him assistance. Professor Reed died in the course of the succeeding Winter. Dr. Wylie proposed that Mr. Scott should proceed at once to Yale, entering as a resident graduate, and prepare himself by taking a course of lectures, more especially in chemistry, under Professor Silliman, who was then at the head of this department in the United States. He accordingly went to Yale, received the necessary aid, and graduated in 1824, with the degree of A. M.; and in 1826 he returned to Washington and entered upon the duties which had been assigned him in his absence.
During his stay at Washington he married Miss Mary P. Neal, daughter of John Neal, cashier of the Branch Bank of Philadelphia. These two good people lived happily together until about six months after they had celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of their marriage, when Mr. Scott died, March 1, 1876.
Dr. Scott continued in the professorship for four years and a half, and in the Fall of 1828 received a call to a professorship from the Miami University, the same that he was then occupying in Washington College. He accepted this call, and reached Oxford shortly after the commencement of the Winter term of 1828 and 1829. This position Dr. Scott occupied for seventeen years and a half, till the Spring of 1845. In 1830, two years before, the board had created two new professorships, relieving Dr. Scott of the lower mathematics, and he was also licensed and ordained to the Gospel ministry, afterwards preaching occasionally.
But the institution in the midst of its prosperity and high promise fell upon evil times. A variety of unworthy causes and motives produced agitation and commotion, resulting finally in the reconstruction of the faculty, in which Drs. Bishop and Scott were displaced from their former positions. Dr. Bishop was the father of the Miami University; Dr. Scott was the next in age, and the injustice done to these worthy teachers was very great. Shortly after Professor Bishop was called to assist in Cary's Academy, and insisted that Dr. Scott should give him his aid. He also gave his attention to the female college, as already stated in the history of that institution, but in 1859, resigned, because of the pecuniary embarrassments of that seat of learning.
The year following his resignation he spent partly in travel and resting, and six months of it in supplying the vacant Church of Honesdale, in Northeastern Pennsylvania. In 1860 he received a call to the professorship of natural sciences in Hanover College, Indiana, which he accepted and entered upon in the Fall of the same year. He filled this position for eight years, until July, 1868. He then accepted an invitation to Springfield, Illinois, to begin and take the superintendency of a Presbyterian academy, which it was proposed by the old Presbytery of Sangamon to found in that city. In two years that project was given up on account of the city establishing and putting in operation a good high school with free tuition. He then returned to Ohio, and for a year or more, till the Spring of 1872, preached to vacant Churches throughout the land.
Now, becoming satisfied that it was time to cease active life, he returned with his wife to Priceton, New Jersey, where he had a widowed daughter, to spend the remainder of his pilgrimage in ease and comfort. But in the Fall of 1874, when on an extended visit in Western Pennsylvania, he happened upon the village of Jefferson, where he found a small Presbyterian Church, unable to support a pastor, and a Baptist college just organized wanting a professor of natural sciences, but unable alone to support one. These two, the college and the Church, joined hands in their common necessity, and Mr. Scott remained with them in their common poverty. He was at this point in October, 1880, having been fifty-two years in the Gospel ministry and fifty-six as a teacher in the various grades of school and higher institutions, and shortly, if spared, will be eighty-three years old.
His wife was buried where she was married. An unmarried son, who died in 1877, after twelve years of suffering from the results of hardships and exposure in the late war, lies by her side. Here the father and husband hopes to rest until that final awakening when they shall sleep no more.
From A History and Biographical Cyclopædia of Butler County Ohio, With Illustrations and Sketches of its Representative Men and Pioneers, Western Biographical Publishing Company, Cincinnati Ohio, 1882.