John Thornton Kirkland (1770–1840), clergyman and educator, was born on the New York frontier in what would become Herkimer County, near where his father served as a missionary to the Oneida Indians. While young he moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and he attended Phillips Academy in Andover, 1784–86. Kirkland enrolled at Harvard University in the latter year and graduated in 1789, having also served in a volunteer unit to help suppress Shays’s Rebellion of 1786–87. He spent the next year as a tutor at Phillips Academy, studied theology, and in 1792 returned to Harvard as a tutor in logic and metaphysics. In 1794 Kirkland was ordained as pastor of the Congregational New South Church in Boston, remaining there for sixteen years and guiding its transition to Unitarianism. As a member of the Anthology Society he contributed articles to the Monthly Anthology and in 1807 helped found the Boston Athenæum. In 1810 Kirkland was named president of Harvard University. During his tenure the school grew in prominence, increased standards for students and professors, and established law and divinity schools. Kirkland resigned in 1828. After a few years of travel in America and abroad, he settled permanently in Boston in 1832 (DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, repr. 1968, 20 vols. in 10 description ends ; Sprague, American Pulpit description begins William B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, 1857–69, 9 vols. description ends , 8:261–6; MH: Kirkland Papers; Biographical Catalogue of the Trustees, Teachers and Students of Phillips Academy Andover, 1778–1830 [1903], 11, 31; Harvard Catalogue description begins Harvard University Quinquennial Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates, 1636–1925, 1925 description ends , 7, 85, 176; Josiah Quincy, The History of the Boston Athenæum [1851], esp. separately paginated section of “Biographical Notices,” 64–71; Boston Courier, 30 Apr. 1840).

one of our professors: George Ticknor.