Presidents of Georgetown College

Nathaniel Macon Crawford  1865-1871

            Nathaniel Macon Crawford came to Georgetown College with distinguished Southern and political credentials.  Born in Oglethorpe County, Georgia, on March 22, 1811, he was the son of William H. Crawford, a United States senator from Georgia, secretary of the treasury in James Monroe’s administration, and a candidate for president.  When he came to Georgetown, Crawford faced the enormous challenge of rebuilding the college at the end of the Civil War.

             Because of his father’s career, Crawford was educated in the schools of Washington, D.C. and graduated from the University of Georgia with high honors in 1829, the year Georgetown College was chartered.  He studied law and was admitted to the bar, but stay long in that profession, turning to teaching.  Between 1837 and 1841, he taught mathematics at Oglethorpe University, a Presbyterian school.  Raised as a Presbyterian, Crawford became a Baptist after his wife, Anne Katherine Lazer, encouraged him to study the New Testament teaching on the meaning of baptism.  In 1844, he was ordained as a Baptist minister, and served a church in Washington, Georgia and the First Baptist Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

             In 1847, Crawford returned to teaching.  At Mercer University, he was professor of biblical literature and then became its president in 1854.  He stayed only two years as president, resigning because of dissension in the faculty.  He taught mental and moral philosophy at the University of Mississippi and systematic theology at Georgetown College’s Western Baptist Theological Seminary before returning to Mercer University in 1858 to again to serve as its president.

             At the end of the Civil War, Mercer was bankrupt, and Crawford left to become president of Georgetown College.  Like Mercer, Georgetown suffered from the disruption of the war years.  The number of enrolled students at Georgetown had dwindled to 35 by 1863, and a large portion of its endowment had been lost.  During the six years Crawford was president, the number of students had risen to 145 in the preparatory and college divisions.  While at Georgetown, Crawford established a reputation for wide academic interests.  He knew French, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew well. Ill health, however, forced him to resign in 1871.  He died a few months after returning to Georgia at the age of 59.