At the age of 23, he entered Williams College, and graduating with an Artium Magister degree from that institution in 1831.

After graduation, he was an instructor at Williamstown Academy, and later at Barhamville Seminary in Columbia, South Carolina.

[2] He was named professor of natural sciences at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia in 1842.

In 1848, he became principal of the Sigourney Institute in Culloden, Georgia, a school he helped found.

[4] In addition, he began producing and selling a patent medicine disinfectant known as "Darby's Prophylactic Fluid", which gained wide use throughout the Southeast.