Stephen Olin

Stephen Olin (b. Leicester, Vermont, 2 March 1797, d. Middletown, Connecticut, August 15, 1851). American educator, minister. He graduated Middlebury College in 1820 and was ordained into the Methodist Episcopal Church while teaching at the Tabernacle Academy in South Carolina and served a pastorate in Charleston. He became professor of belle-lettres at the University of Georgia in 1827. He was the first President of Randolph Macon College (1834-1837) and later was president of Wesleyan University (1839-1851).

In 1844, at the general conference of the Methodists, Olin called on his friend, Bishop James Andrew, to resign his office, on the grounds the latter owned slaves. Olin himself was criticized because his first wife (Mary E. Bostwick, whom he married in 1827) had owned slaves.

Publications:

"Travels in Egypt, Arabia Petræa, and the Holy Land" 1844 Harper, New York.
"Early piety, the basis of elevated character: a discourse to the graduating class of Wesleyan University "1851 Lane & Scott.
"The Works of Stephen Olin" (1852) and "Greece and the Golden Horn" (1854) were edited by his second wife, Julia Matilda Olin, and published posthumously.
"College Life: Its Theory and Practice" 1867, Harper, New York.

The Bronx, New York neighborhood of Olinville, began as two towns named for him (founded in 1852).

References

"Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography" (James Grant Wilson & John Fisk, eds.) New York, Appleton, 1888.
"The History of Methodism in Georgia and Florida: From 1785 to 1865" George Gilman Smith 1877J. W. Burke & Co.,