Reverend John Walker: Renaissance Man (American University Studies)

This is the pioneer biography of a neglected but important person of nineteenth century America. John Walker shone in various significant lights: church, higher education, abolition, antimasonry, temperance, medicine, women's rights, and family life.

«The Reverend Mr. John Walker had a profound influence on the early history of Harrison County, Ohio. A man of classical learning and upright principles, he strove to nurture both in the wilderness that was Harrison County in the early nineteenth century. His instrument was Franklin College of New Athens, and it served him well, even beyond his death. Old Franklin educated hundreds of men and women, inspired them to a transcendent sense of moral duty, and sent them into the world advocates of both the well-developed mind and the principled character. Even today, more than sixty years after Franklin's demise, Walker's old college is remembered as an example worthy of imitation.»
«The story of John Walker deserves to be told, and no historian I know is better qualified to tell it than Erving E. Beauregard. He is the pre-eminent authority on Walker's Franklin College, and he is familiar with the people, history, and geography of Walker's home county. Moreover, Dr. Beauregard is a researcher whose attention to detail is unexcelled. This combination of knowledge and professionalism will undoubtedly produce the definitive biography of Reverend John Walker, an historical figure long deserving of attention.» (Charles B. Wallace, President Emeritus, The Harrison County Historical Society)
«John Walker was a nineteenth-century figure on the Ohio frontier whose unusual breadth of intellectual interest was matched by his abounding personal energy. He combined conservative Calvinist theology with commitment to social reform. His professional skills as a clergyman, physician and college administrator attest to the range of his abilities. This biography, marked by careful research and a felicitous prose style, captures the essence of his life and times.» (Dr. Fisk, Muskingum College)
«Yet if a book can indemnify, as the author intended, this one does so; it is the definitive record of a man whose deeds were long overlooked and unheralded.» (Jack H. Shellenberger, Foreign Service Journal)
«This volume has much to recommend it. The author's indefatigable research shows forth on every page. He has carefully pursued every bit of fugitive evidence on his subject, and it is safe to predict that there is not much new information about John Walker that will ever be found. Not only has he made a thorough search for the facts of his subject's life, but he has threaded his way through the tangled history of the minor Presbyterian denominations in eastern Ohio without making a misstep.» (William L. Fisk, American Presbyterians)