Rev. John Monteith
| John Monteith | |
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August 5, 1788 Gettysburg, Pennsylvania |
| Died | April 5, 1868 (aged 79) Elyria, Ohio |
| Nationality | American |
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| Parent(s) | Daniel Monteith and Sarah Lecky |
| Religion | Presbyterian |
| Ordained | May 1817 |
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Reverend John Monteith (August 5, 1788 – April 5, 1868) was a Presbyterian minister, educator, abolitionist and a founding father of the University of Michigan, formerly known as University of Michigania or the Catholepistemiad. Monteith served as president of the university from 1817 through 1821. During his five years in Detroit, he also served as the city's first librarian, and founded the first Protestant church in Detroit and the first Presbyterian church in what is now the State of Michigan.
According to his son, Rev. Monteith was six feet tall, and was straight as a rod. He did not drink liquor, and he was rarely ill. As an abolitionist, a temperance advocate, a defender of the Sabbath, and an educator of young minds, he took it as his personal mission to convince others to accept his beliefs, and was therefore sometimes a controversial figure.
John Monteith was born August 4, 1788 on a farm in the vicinity of what is now Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, but which was then Straban twp., York Co., Pennsylvania. About 1805, the family moved to Coitsville in northeast Ohio, to a farm close enough to the state line that the family regularly attended church in New Bedford, Pennsylvania in the Hopewell Congregation. According to his diary, his father's health was feeble, and so John worked at farming to support the family. Nevertheless, at age twenty, under the guidance of his pastor, Rev. William Wick, Monteith began to study Latin grammar and to educate himself in the hours not devoted to agriculture. He soon started his formal education at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, and graduated with a BA in 1813.
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