Presidents of Georgetown College

Howard Malcolm  1840-1849

            During his presidency, Howard Malcolm established a firm foundation for Georgetown College.  When he arrived, the college’s first permanent building, begun by his predecessor was partially completed.  The school still had a classical curriculum, a small student body of fifty, and an operating deficit.

            Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on January 19, 1799, to John J. and Deborah (Howard) Malcolm, Malcolm attended Dickinson College.  Before pursuing a theological education at Princeton Theological Seminary, he worked in a counting house.  He was licensed to preach on June 26, 1818.  Two years later, he was ordained as a Baptist minister, served as pastor of a Baptist church in Hudson, New York, and married. He eventually left his pastorate to become the first general agent for the American Sunday School Union.  After the death of his wife, Malcolm went on a two-year tour of missionary stations in India, Burma, and China for the American Baptist Foreign Missionary Union.  In 1838, he married Ruth Dyer.  He had five children.  In addition, he served as president of several religious organizations: American Baptist Historical Society, American Tract Society, and Pennsylvania Baptist Education Society.  He was a founder of the American Peace Society, and he authored Nature and Extent of the Atonement (1829), Christian Rule of Marriage (1830), and A Dictionary of Important Names, Objects and Terms Found in the Holy Scriptures (1830).  He also received an honorary A.M. degree from Dickinson in 1842.  Because of his book Malcolm’s Travels, which recounted his work for the American Baptist Foreign Missionary Union in 1835-1837, Malcolm received D.D.s from the University of Vermont and Union College. 

            Upon the death of Rockwood Giddings, the trustees of the Kentucky Baptist Education Society elected Robert Boyte C. Howell, pastor of the First Baptist Church, Nashville, Tennessee, and a leader in organizing the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845, as president of Georgetown College. When Howell declined, the trustees appointed Rev. Howard Malcolm, then of Poughkeepsie, New York.  Under his leadership, Georgetown College established a new curriculum, which included the classics as well as electives in the areas of arithmetic, geography, electricity, magnetism, chemistry, and geometry.  Malcolm completed the first permanent building on the campus, known today as Giddings Hall; raised funds to eliminate the deficit, and buy a library and scientific equipment; expanded the faculty and dormitory space by adding a wing to Pawling Hall; and increased the number of states represented within the student body.  During his tenure, he encouraged the establishment of Georgetown Female Academy and the organization of the college’s first literary societies.  While president, Malcolm served as pastor of the Georgetown Baptist Church, which under his leadership moved and built a new building near downtown Georgetown.

            In 1849, Malcolm resigned because of his vote for antislavery delegates to Kentucky’s third constitutional convention.  In those days votes were cast publicly by voice at polling places, and his vote created such an uproar in the pro-slavery community that his life was threatened.  He returned to his native Philadelphia to pastor the Fifth Street Baptist Church before assuming the presidency of Bucknell University in 1851, where he remained until 1857. Malcolm’s tenure at Bucknell rivaled his accomplishments at Georgetown College.  He led in the erection of that institution’s first three buildings, laid out the campus, which included an avenue, and established its library.  He later became president of Hahneman Medical College in 1874, remaining there until he died on March 25, 1879.   

Please direct inquiries to Dr. Glen Taul