Presidents of Georgetown College

Duncan Robertson Campbell  1852-1865

            Duncan Robertson Campbell came to Georgetown College determined to build on the successes of Howard Malcolm.  He was familiar with the college by the time he became president, having served as a pastor in Georgetown during Malcolm’s administration.

            Campbell was differed from Georgetown’s previous presidents.  He was not from the northeast or the South.  Born in Perthshire, Scotland, on August 14, 1814, he trained for the ministry in the Presbyterian church, at the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and then became the pastor of a church at Nottingham, England.  A short time later, he came to the United States, where he disagreed with the Presbyterian practice of infant baptism, and left his Presbyterian affiliation and joined the First Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia, in 1842.  For three years, beginning in the fall of 1842, he pastored the Leigh Street church there.  He resigned in 1845 to become pastor of the Georgetown Baptist Church.  Campbell left the church four years later, and taught Hebrew and Biblical Literature at Western Baptist Theological Seminary in Covington, Kentucky, and pastored a local church. 

            In 1852, the trustees selected Campbell president of Georgetown College.  Under his leadership, the Western Baptist Theological Seminary was moved to the college’s campus; the Campbell Plan, designed to establish a large endowment, was initiated in 1856.  Enrollment reached a peak just before the Civil War, giving the college its largest number of students during the 1800s, and his efforts sustained the college through the divisions of the Civil War.  Campbell was successful in answering these challenges.  He, along with George Hunt, taught courses in a two-year program at the seminary, and the $100,000 goal set by the Campbell Plan was fully subscribed.  The Panic of 1857 and the Civil War prevented its achievement.

            When Fort Sumter was attacked, the students immediately divided along prosouthern and pronorthern sympathies.  Tension was high and potentially explosive.  Fights occurred frequently on campus.  As a result, the faculty and trustees to closed the college in late April.  It reopened in September 1861, and stayed open throughout the Civil War.  The effects of the Civil War were devastating, however.  Enrollment fell from 400 students to 100, with the lowest number being 63 in 1863, and one endowment was lost.  Soon after Lee’s surrender, Campbell died on August 16, 1865.

Please direct inquiries to Dr. Glen Taul