John Jay Shipherd
Under Shipherd's leadership, Oberlin College set important precedents of admitting both men and women without regard for race.
"[2]: 10 As was typical in the early 19th century, Shipherd left home to attend a college preparatory school, first in Pawlet, Vermont, where Beriah Green may also have studied, and later for two years in Cambridge, New York.
Unfortunately, while spending a few days at home in February 1822, before leaving for college, he mistakenly swallowed saltpeter, thinking it was epsom salt.
[2] In 1824, Shipherd married Esther Raymond (1797–1879) of Ballston, New York, and moved to Vergennes, Vermont, to work in a marble business that his father started on his behalf.
After the death of his infant daughter and the failure of the marble business, Shipherd decided to enter the ministry, following in his older brother Fayette's footsteps.
His congregation was deeply divided by factional controversies, which included Shipherd's strong support for prohibition, and his health suffered.
[1] During the summer of 1832, Philo P. Stewart, Shipherd's friend from his Pawlet Academy days and an Indian missionary, visited Rev.
[1] Together, they formed a plan to establish a colony and educational institute in northern Ohio, based on idealistic Christian beliefs.
According to legend, Shipherd and Stewart rode southwest from Elyria into the untamed woods along an old surveyor's cut looking for a site for their colony.
[4] In October, Shipherd left his family and Steward in Elyria and traveled throughout the East for about eight months, securing a donation of the land for Oberlin, raising money, and recruiting teachers and students.
In September 1833, Shipherd, with his wife and four sons, joined the other colonists and moved into the basement of the first college building, rustic Oberlin Hall.
Shipherd was unanimously called to serve as the first pastor, which he did until June 1836, when he resigned due to ill health and his desire to establish other schools.
These included both Asa Mahan, first president of Oberlin (Finney had been asked first, which Theodore Weld recommended to Arthur Tappan, but declined); and John Morgan, professor and fervent abolitionist.
The expansion of the faculty at Oberlin was initiated by Shipherd's solicitation of additional financial support from Arthur and Lewis Tappan.
The support of the Tappan brothers brought the evangelist Charles Grandison Finney to head the Oberlin Theological Department.
Caught between President Jackson's "Specie Circular" that required payment for government lands with gold and the Panic of 1837, Shipherd's New York supporters could not pay their pledges and the effort failed.
In southern Eaton County, Shipherd spent the night at a settler's cabin in a small clearing near the hilltop now occupied by Olivet College.
