Samuel Doak

Samuel Doak (1749–1830) was an American Presbyterian clergyman and Calvinist educator, a pioneer in the movement for the abolition of slavery.

Minister and pioneer Samuel Doak founded the earliest schools and many of the Presbyterian churches of East Tennessee. The son of Irish immigrants, Doak was born August 1, 1749, in Augusta County, Virginia. He grew up on a frontier farm and began his education with Robert Alexander, who later founded the Academy of Liberty Hall (now Washington and Lee University). After attending an academy in Maryland, he entered the College of New Jersey (now Princeton), from which he graduated two years later in 1775. Doak married Esther Houston Montgomery of Augusta County in October 1775.

Doak taught at Hampden-Sydney College in the spring of 1776. There he studied theology under Samuel Stanhope Smith, president, and completed his theological training in 1777 at Liberty Hall. He assumed his first pastorate in Abingdon, Virginia, and also began to "ride circuit" in eastern Tennessee.

In 1778 he settled in Tennessee in Sullivan County and was ordained a minister. Moving to the Holston valley in Tennessee, Doak established the New Bethel Presbyterian Church.

In 1780, Doak regularly preached to settlers at the Big Spring in Greeneville, Tennessee and in 1783, Mt. Bethel Presbyterian Church (now First Presbyterian Church) was formed, Hezekiah Balch being the first settled minister.

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