Nineteenth Century

1869

Reverend Jeremiah E. Rankin Speaks at Commencement

The Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Eames Rankin of Charlestown, MA, speaks at commencement.

Born in Thornton, NH, on 2 January 1828, Rankin graduated from Middlebury College in 1848. He read theology at Andover and was the pastor of the First Congregational Church of St. Albans, VT, from 1857 to 1863. He went on to become pastor of churches in Lowell and Charlestown, MA, Washington, DC, and Orange, NJ.

Rankin served as chaplain of the US House of Representatives and was a professor of pastoral theology at Howard University, where he served as university president from 1889 to 1903. He died in 1904.

Rankin published numerous sermons and pamphlets including A Spurious Fear of God (1861), The Claims of the Bible to a Place in Our Schools (1861), Moses and Joshua: a Discourse on the Death of Abraham Lincoln (1865) and The Sources of New England Civilization (1866).