Gideon Blackburn

Gideon Blackburn (August 27, 1772 – August 23, 1838) was an American Presbyterian clergyman, educator and missionary to Cherokee and Creek nations, and college president. He raised funds for new colleges and founded numerous congregations and churches in areas of new western settlement in Tennessee and Kentucky.

Blackburn was born in Augusta County, Virginia, of Scotch-Irish descent. After being orphaned at the age of eleven, he moved to eastern Tennessee in 1787 to live with relatives. He worked at a sawmill and as a surveyor to obtain an education. As a youth he studied at Martin Academy in Washington County, Tennessee. In 1792 he received his preacher's license and two years later was ordained by the Abingdon Presbytery of Virginia.

In the 1790s Blackburn began his ministerial career as pastor at the New Providence Church, which he founded in Maryville, Tennessee. He had established a farm and distillery near Fort Craig, Tennessee. For the next two decades he mostly worked with congregations in Maryville, including Eusebia Presbyterian Church. He was known as a powerful and evangelizing public speaker.

In the early 18th century, he raised funds to establish schools for Cherokee children. He became a cultural missionary (1803–1809) to the Cherokee. Receiving permission from them, he founded two schools for Cherokee boys in southeast Tennessee—one in 1804 on the Hiwassee River near Charleston, Bradley County, which future Cherokee Chief John Ross attended; and in 1806 one at the mouth of Sale Creek, Hamilton County. Blackburn had all classes in English, with material on culture and practices of Anglo-American society. Together the schools had an enrollment of about 100 students, mostly bicultural Cherokee-American boys, often sons of traders, who found the English lessons more useful.

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