Ransom Dunn

(July 7, 1818 – November 9, 1900) (nickname: "the Grand Old Man of Hillsdale")[1] was an American minister and theologian, prominent in the early Free Will Baptist movement in New England.

[7] Around 1840 Dunn attended the Baptist Seminary (later named Cobb Divinity School at Bates College) in New Hampton, New Hampshire.

[9] On the third Sabbath in August, 1837, Ransom Dunn, at the request of the Lenox church, was ordained to the gospel ministry.

[11] With John Jay Butler, he published Lectures on systematic theology: embracing the existence and attributes of God, the authority and doctrine of the scriptures, the polllinstitutions and ordinances of the gospel in 1892.

Dunn once mused, "The real value of colleges and universities is not to be estimated by the magnitude of buildings or endowments, but by the increase of mental power and moral force.

[15] Dunn secured the school's original financial support by riding on horseback for thousands of miles through the frontier lands of Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin in the early 1850s, gathering donations.