David Nelson (September 24, 1793 – October 17, 1844) was an American Presbyterian minister, physician, and antislavery activist who founded Marion College and served as its first president.

Openly abolitionist, two Mission Institute sites became well known stations on the Underground Railroad, helping African Americans escape to Canada to be free from slavery.

[5] Although Nelson had spent several years questioning his faith,[1] he had a change of heart and started studying theology privately with Reverend Robert Glenn.

[2] He was reportedly inspired by missionary Elias Cornelius of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, who gave a sermon when he passed through Tennessee.

[3] In 1830, the Reverend Dr. David Nelson moved to Missouri and settled in what is now Union Township, 13 miles northwest of Palmyra, in Marion County.

"[6] He received financial backing from two partners who were large landowners in the area: Dr. David Clark, the first physician to settle in Marion County, and William Muldrow, a progressive farmer and speculator.

[10] Among the new members Nelson helped to recruit was Elijah Parish Lovejoy, who joined the church on February 9, 1832[10] and decided to enter the ministry.

[12] Nelson later wrote about the teachings of Charles Finney and the Second Great Awakening and their implications for slavery in the St. Louis Observer, the evangelical newspaper run by Lovejoy.

[10] As one of 70 trained agents of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), Nelson recruited white and black antislavery activists in Marion County.

[7] He and his followers started Sunday schools to teach African Americans to read the Bible and also distributed antislavery literature, angering many in the local community.

[13] Among the new migrants from the East were two men named Garrett and Williams, agents of the American Colonization Society, who had settled in Philadelphia, Missouri.

[13] At Hannibal, it was discovered that Garrett and Williams had been bringing hundreds of tracts and pamphlets supporting colonization – the idea that slaves should be emancipated and sent to Africa – into Marion County.

[13] A group of armed and mounted men led by Captain Uriel Wright organized at Palmyra and marched up to Philadelphia, took Garrett and Williams prisoner, searched the premises, and found a box of ACS pamphlets in an outbuilding, hidden under corn husks.

[5] The Garrett-Williams incident was followed by a series of public meetings in Marion County denouncing anyone suspected of harboring sentiments opposing slavery, with many local citizens vowing to drive them out.

[13] Reverend Nelson had been asked to give the Sunday sermon on the campground of his church in Union Township, a few miles from Marion College.

[2] According to popular lore, Nelson was inspired to write his most famous poem, "The Shining Shore", while hiding near the riverbank, waiting to make his escape.

[5] David Nelson arranged for Amanda and their many children to wait at a friend's house in Missouri, where he arrived by night to take them back to Quincy.

[2] Once they were settled in Quincy, Nelson sent an open letter "To the Presbyterians of Missouri, who hold slaves," published in Elijah Lovejoy's newspaper, the St. Louis Observer.

[2] In the years that followed, Nelson would avoid public appearances in Missouri as much as possible due to ongoing opposition to his presence, even declining an invitation to preach at his old church in Marion County.

[5] On June 10, 1836, a public meeting was called for citizens of Adams County, Illinois, to oppose the introduction of abolitionist societies and any discussion of abolitionism from the church pulpit.

[7][2] The convention was called in support of Elijah Lovejoy, who had moved his antislavery newspaper from St. Louis to Alton, and continued to be harassed by mob violence.

[7] As an AASS agent in the slave state of Missouri, Reverend Nelson had focused his efforts on helping slaveholders understand that slavery was a "sin.

[7] Their proximity to Missouri also meant that local residents were exposed to the brutality of slaveowners, who ran ads in the Quincy Herald and came to Adams County to hunt down fugitive slaves, using force.

[7] Nelson took on a partner, an abolitionist theologian named Moses Hunter from Allegany, New York, and tasked him with starting a women's department.

[17] Nelson sent students and graduates of the Mission Institute to northeastern Missouri to preach the "whole gospel" to African Americans – enslaved and free – and help many slaves escape to freedom.

[5][15] According to historians, the Mission Institute had soon become "the special object of hatred by the slaveholders of Missouri,"[16] who referred to it as "Nelson College"[5] or the "abolitionist factory.

"[7] The Mission Institute buildings were burned down by a band of men from Palmyra, Missouri, who crossed over the "ice bridge" that had formed over the Mississippi River.

[1] A decade after his death, composer George Frederick Root set David Nelson's poem "The Shining Shore" to music.

[2][20] In the 1960s, Ruth Deters's family discovered a hidden room underneath a trap door in their home, east of Quincy, Illinois, after one of her young sons hid from a babysitter.

[2] Although she and her husband had known that Dr. Nelson had built the house, they had been unaware that "Oakland" had been an Underground station in its own right, with a secret room and tunnel which once led out of their basement.