Christian Presidents and Chancellors of the University of Georgia from 1785 until 1898.
Lyman Hall visionary of the University of Georgia ,
A graduate of Yale and ordained into the Congregationalist Ministry he turned to the practice of medicine and later joined the Puritan settlement at Midway Georgia south of Savannah. He became a representative for the colony of Georgia to the first and second Continental Congress becoming one of Georgia’s signers of the Declaration of Independence. After independence was achieved from Britain he was elected as the Governor of Georgia in 1783. He immediately urged a resolution passed by the new Georgia Legislature, that due to the deplorable state of the local churches in the Savannah area, because of the war, that they assemble and elect officers to reestablish their churches. He said, “Whereas nothing can have a greater tendency to promote the honor of God, the propagation of the Christian religion, and the Spiritual welfare of the citizens residing this state, than the regular performance of Divine service”. In this same vein of thought, soon afterwards he laid down the philosophical foundations for the establishment of the University of Georgia. “From the view of the profligate and wicked lives of many in the community, it appears that some laws to restrain vice and encourage virtue are of the highest importance to the welfare of the state; it being certain that almost all the evils of government originate from men of corrupt principles and abandoned manners. In addition, therefore, to wholesome laws restraining vice, every encouragement ought to be given to introduce religion and learned clergy to perform divine worship in honor to God, and to cultivate principles of religion and virtue among our citizens. FOR THIS PURPOSE, IT WILL BE YOUR WISDOM TO LAY AN EARLY FOUNDATION FOR ENDOWING SEMINARIES OF LEARNING; NOR CAN YOU, I CONCIEVE, LAY IN A BETTER, THAN BY A SUFFIUCIENT TRACT OF LAND, THAT MAY, AS IN OTHER GOVERNMENTS, HEREAFTER, BY LEASE OR OTHERWISE, RAISE A REVENUE SUFFICIENT TO SUPPORT SUCH VALUABLE INSTUTIONS.” In 1784 he persuaded the Georgia legislature to grant 40,000 acres were set aside as an endowment for the purposes of founding a "college or seminary of learning."
The Birthplace of the University of Georgia, Savannah, Ga. “Directly across Bay Street from this marker formerly stood the brick building, built in late colonial days and known as the “Coffee House,” in which the Legislature of Georgia met in 1785.” “While meeting in the house owned by Thomas Stone the House of Assembly of Georgia enacted on January 28, 1785, an act for the “establishment of a public seat of learning in this state” The trustees were named and given a charter (the first such in the United States) in which they noted that “THE HAPPINESS OF FREE GOVERNMENTS IS CREATED BY AN INFLUENCE BEYOND THE REACH OF LAWS AND PUNISHMENTS, AND CAN ONLY BE CLAIMED BY RELIGION AND EDUCATIION. IT SHOULD THEREFORE, BE AMONG THE FIRST OBJECTS OF THOSE WHO WISH WELL TO THE NATIONAL PROSPERITY, TO ENCOURAGE AND SUPPORT THE PRINCIPLES OF RELIGION AND MORALITY, AND EARLY TO PLACE THE YOUTH UNDER THE FORMING HAND OF SOCIETY, THAT BY INSTRUCTION, THEY MAY BE MOLDED TO THE LOVE OF VIRTUE AND GOOD ORDER.”
The task of creating the university was given to the Senatus Academicus, which consisted of the Board of Visitors – made up of "the governor, all state senators, all superior court judges and a few other public officials" – and the Board of Trustees, "a body of 14 appointed members that soon became self-perpetuating." Among these were the three sons of James Habersham a convert and supporter of the ministry of Evangelist George Whitefield of the Great Awakening. His son Joseph was the Speaker and Sons James Jr. and John were Trustees. The first meeting of the university's board of trustees was held in Augusta, Georgia, on February 13, 1786. The meeting installed Abraham Baldwin, as the first president of the University of Georgia.
*Note: About Yale and Cotton Mather: Cotton Mather was a Puritan clergyman and author in colonial New England, who wrote extensively on theological, historical, and scientific subjects. Personally, and intellectually committed to stemming the waning social and religious orders in New England, and in his alma mater Harvard, he championed the new Yale College as an intellectual bulwark for Puritanism in New England. Yale was established as the Collegiate School in 1701 by Congregationalist clergy of the Connecticut Colony. Originally restricted to instructing ministers in theology and sacred languages, the school's curriculum expanded, incorporating humanities and sciences by the time of the American Revolution.
Abraham Baldwin
Abraham Baldwin, The First President of the University of Georgia (1785–1801; 16 years). Abraham Baldwin attended Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut, where he was a member of the Linonian Society. He graduated in 1772. Two years later at the conclusion of the war, Baldwin declined an offer from Yale's new president, Ezra Stiles, to become Professor of Divinity. Three years later after theological study, he was licensed as a congregationalist minister. He also served as a tutor at the college. He held that position until 1779. During the American Revolutionary War, he served as a chaplain in the Connecticut Contingent of the Continental Army. Encouraged by his former commanding officer General Nathanael Greene, who had acquired the plantation at Mulberry Grove where Eli Whitney would later invent the cotton gin, Baldwin moved to Georgia. Considered one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, Baldwin would later represent Georgia in the 1786 Constitutional Convention that created the Constitution of the United States and go on to be President pro tempore of the United States Senate. He was recruited by fellow Yale alumnus Governor Lyman Hall, another transplanted New Englander, to develop a state education plan. Baldwin was named the first president of the University of Georgia and became active in politics to build support for the university, which had not yet enrolled its first student.
The statue of Abraham Baldwin in front of Old College building UGA.
Below taken from: https://lawliberty.org/a-connecticut-yankee-in-georgia-abraham-baldwin-and-the-establishment-clause/ “Abraham Baldwin was born in Connecticut in 1754. He graduated from Yale College, served as a full-time chaplain in the Revolutionary Army from 1779 to 1783, and was a tutor at Yale for three years. Yale’s president, Ezra Stiles, recruited him to be a full professor of divinity, but Baldwin declined and studied law instead. Licensed to practice law in 1783, he moved to Georgia the following year. There he was promptly elected to the state General Assembly. After Governor Lyman Hall requested that the legislature design a school system where “every encouragement [is] given to introduce religion,” Baldwin drafted a statute to create a state university (the first state-funded university in the nation) and to provide oversight for other public schools in Georgia. The statute began with a preamble proclaiming that it should be: among the first objects of those who wish well to the national prosperity, to encourage and support the principles of religion and morality, and early to place the youth under the forming hand of society, that by instruction they may be molded to the love of virtue and good order. The bill also required that “all officers appointed to the instruction and government of the university shall be of the Christian religion.” As was often the case in this era, the proposed law’s discriminatory provisions went hand in hand with one protecting religious liberty, in this case the requirement that: "trustees shall not exclude any person of any religious denomination whatever, from free and equal liberty and advantages of education, or from any of the liberties, privileges, and immunities of the university in his education, on account of his or their speculative sentiments in religion or being of a different religious profession." Baldwin’s statute favored Christianity with respect to employment, although the provision quoted above prohibits trustees from discriminating against people of a “different religious profession.” This provision may have been crafted specifically to protect members of Savannah’s Jewish community. The legislature approved the bill, and Baldwin was appointed the first president of the University of Georgia (even as he continued to hold other public offices). In 1785, Baldwin drafted a statute entitled For the Regular Establishment and Support of the Public Duties of Religion. It began with a preamble declaring that: AS THE KNOWLEDGE and practice of the principles of the Christian religion tends greatly to make good members of society, as well as good men, and is no less necessary to present, than to future happiness, its regular establishment and support is among the most important objects of legislature determination; and that the minds of the citizens of this state may be properly informed and impressed by the great principles of moral obligation and thus be induced by inclination furnished with opportunity, and favored by law to render public religious honors to the Supreme Being. The bill guaranteed that “all the different sects and denominations of the Christian religion shall have free and equal liberty and toleration in the exercise of their religion within the state.” It also required each Georgia county “which contains thirty heads of families” to choose a “Minister of the Gospel who shall on every Sunday publicly explain and inculcate the great doctrines and precepts of the Christian religion.” This minister would be supported by public tax revenues, and the bill provided that counties with larger populations could have multiple ministers. This bill was passed by the state legislature, but, apparently, its provisions were never acted upon.”
*Note: Why is all of above the important? The above clearly reveals that those who originally had the vision for the University of Georgia, Hall, Baldwin, and the Trustees, believed in the value and necessity of the Christian religion in education for the civilizing benefit of society. Hall and Baldwin had even come from an originally Puritan educational system which saw no conflict between religion and society and James Habersham, a trustee, had been a student at Princeton. For the first 16 years of the school's history, the University of Georgia only existed on paper. By the new century, a committee was appointed to find suitable land to establish a campus. Committee member John Milledge purchased 633 acres of land on the west bank of the Oconee River and immediately gave it to the university. This tract of land, now a part of the consolidated city–county of Athens-Clarke County, Georgia, was then part of Jackson County. As of 2013, 37 acres of that land remained as part of the North Campus. Next Because Baldwin was elected to the U.S. Senate, the school needed a new president. Baldwin chose his former student and fellow professor at Yale, Josiah Meigs, as his replacement.
Josiah Meigs
Josiah Meigs, 2nd President (1801–1810; 9 years) A Yale graduate and mathematics professor, Josiah Meigs was the University of Georgia's first active president from 1800 to 1810. Given the responsibility for opening the university, he forged a course of study, shaped a system of laws for faculty and students, supervised construction, and served as the university's main recruiter. Once the doors of the university opened, he taught classes as the first and only professor and acted as the principal administrative official for nearly a decade. After travelling to the state to recruit a few students, Meigs opened the school with no building in the fall of 1801. The first school building patterned after Yale's Connecticut Hall was built a year later. Yale's early influence on the new university extended into the classical curriculum with emphasis on Latin and Greek. By 1803, the students formed a debate society, Demosthenian Literary Society. Meigs had his first graduating class of nine by 1804. In 1806, the school dedicated the first legacy building, Franklin College (named after Benjamin Franklin). The building is now known as Old College (below). A scientist when most American college presidents were ministers, Meigs was responsible for the scientific contents of the university curriculum and the purchase of equipment for demonstrations and experiments. Because he believed that the “scientific outlook” was necessary for political and religious freedom in the young country, he relished the chance to "kindle a scientific fire" among his students. But, his Jeffersonian Republicanism, was not in tune with the evangelical Protestantism and political sentiments of the university's trustees or much of Georgia society. He came into conflict with the trustees of the University over the fact that, He had made no provisions for the study of theology, divinity, or religion in the curriculum of this public institution and scheduled far fewer prayer sessions than at his alma mater or many other American universities. His comments concerning this issue were that “a group of Presbyterians had become entrenched on the board of trustees. This group was supported by various elements throughout the state who desired education in the University have a definitely religious basis.” But “That he had neither religious preference nor pretensions “. Under pressure in 1810 Meigs first stepped down from President to professor and then later resigned.
*Note: Why was this incident important? It reveals that in more than just words the vision and intentions of the University trustees and those supporting them believed in Meigs own words, that “education in the University have a definitely religious basis”. Today we might say that they believed that the University education should be grounded in and proceed from a Christian World and Life view. Because after this incident the University increased the religious components of the school's regimen and hired only ministers as presidents until 1899. This is also important in that it shows that the contest between “enlightenment science” and “religion” that had begun creeping into Havard was now bearing fruit also in this Yale graduate.
Note: The First University Chapel. The original UGA chapel was built by Reverend Hope Hull in 1807 and a belfry was added later that was constructed by Reverend Hope Hull with the help of a one-hundred-dollar donation from the university’s Board of Trustees. The original chapel stood until 1830 when a fire broke out, burning the entire structure but the bell. Rev. Hull is considered the founder of the Methodist Church in Georgia, the founder of the first Methodist church in Athens, and was a trustee of the University of Georgia.
Old College UGA
Second Chapel UGA
Rev. John Brown (no picture) Rev. John Brown, 3rd President (1811–1816; 6 years). He was born in Ireland, to Scots-Irish Presbyterians emigrating with his parents to America at the age of three. His father had obtained acreage for Protestants willing to settle in the South Carolina back-country. There they joined the Fishing Creek Presbyterian church. When the American Revolution came to their area in 1780, he joined the South Carolina Militia under the command of Capt. John McClure and General Thomas Sumter at the age of 17. He was in the battles of Rocky Mount and Hanging Rock. Being a known patriot family, the British burned down the family home, driving his parents to North Carolina. After the war, John resumed his education. He studied under Dr. S. E. McCorkle in Salisbury, North Carolina, and received a Doctor of Divinity degree. In 1788, the Presbytery of Concord (NC) licensed Brown as a Presbyterian minister. The now Reverend John Brown's first pastoral post was Old Waxsaw Presbyterian church, in Lancaster, South Carolina. In 1792, Brown reorganized the congregations of Upper, Middle, and Lower Fishing Creek Presbyterian churches into one, and renamed them Richardson Presbyterian. From here in 1793, Brown was called to be the pastor of Beaver Creek, Hanging Rock and Miller's congregations in Kershaw County, South Carolina. One of Brown's main concerns was education. For the next ten years, he was a professor at South Carolina College (later The University of South Carolina). During this time, he helped start schools: Lancaster Academy (SC) in 1802, and Wadesboro Academy (NC) in 1803, and served as a trustee and president. In 1811, Brown became President of the University of Georgia in Athens. He served in this post until 1816. After he resigned as President of the University of Georgia, Brown became pastor of Mt. Zion Church in Hancock County, Georgia. He ministered to this congregation for the next twelve years. Next, he was pastor at the Washington (GA) Presbyterian church before he began missionary work in the South Georgia frontier near Fort Gaines in Clay County, Georgia.
Rev. Robert Finley
Rev. Robert Finley, 4th President (1817; 1 year) Presbyterian clergyman and educator. He studied theology at Princeton in 1793 and served as a tutor there. In 1794 Presbytery of New Brunswick, New Jersey licensed Finley as a minister and in 1795, Finley was ordained as the pastor of the Presbyterian church at Basking Ridge, where he served for 20 years. In 1795, Dr. Robert Finley, re-established the private academy, known as the Basking Ridge Classical School, conducting classes first at the Presbyterian parsonage and then in a new frame school building erected near the church. In 1809, with enrollment expanding, Finley organized financing and construction of a new two-story brick building, prominently located in the center of the village of Basking Ridge (Brick Academy). Boys were drawn both from the local area and from more distant places, such as Virginia and New York City, to attend this private preparatory academy. Most were given a classical education in preparation to enter the College of New Jersey (later expanded and renamed Princeton University). Students boarded with Dr. Finley and other local residents. Two buildings still standing near the Brick Academy were later used as dormitories. He was a popular preacher and noted educator, developing the concept of the modern Sunday School curriculum. In 1806 He was appointed as a trustee of Princeton serving there until his resignation in 1817 when he departed for Georgia. Finley was selected as the next president of the University of Georgia. He fell ill during the journey south to Athens, Georgia where He died three months after arriving. Finley is buried in Jackson Street Cemetery on the north campus of the university.
Rev. Dr. Moses Waddel
Rev. Dr. Moses Waddel, 5th President (1819–1829; 10 year). Moses Waddel graduated from Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia in the fall of 1791. He came before Hanover Presbytery there as a ministerial candidate and was licensed to preach on May 12, 1792. Following a brief stay and pastoral ministry in Virginia, he opened a school in Columbia County, Georgia, about two miles east of the town of Appling, where he also served the Carmel Church. Beginning in 1801 and until 1819 he started two schools in South Carolina and pastored Hopewell church there. In his Wilmington Academy there were about one hundred eighty pupils who were called to class in its log structure by the blowing of a horn. While there he was awarded a Doctor of Divinity by South Carolina College in 1807. Considered the foremost educator in the South, Waddel "received an urgent and persistent invitation" to revitalize the University of Georgia and in 1819 he answered the call to become President of Franklin College, now the University of Ga. One of the most prominent ante-bellum leaders of that institution, he served until 1829. He found the school "nearly extinct, consisting of only seven students with three professors." But, “with great industry he scoured the state and soon built enrollment to one hundred students.” He acquired money for the library, garnered state funding, and raised three new buildings: Philosophical Hall (1821), New College (1823) and Demosthenian Hall (1824). As was said, "The effect of his coming to this Institution was magical. It rose instantly to a rank which it had never held before. “Unwilling to divorce education from religion, Waddel stimulated the religious life of the campus. In 1820 he organized and was pastor of the first Presbyterian congregation in Athens, which became the First Presbyterian Church. The present church building was erected in 1855. His tireless and selfless work not only as a minister but as an educator provided both spiritual guidance and education for thousands of church members and students.
The history marker for Rev. Dr. Moses Waddel in front of Athens Presbyterian Church .
New College
Demosthenian Hall
Waddell or Philosophical Hall “Waddel’s Presidency at the University of Georgia was defined by his faith leading the University in a more religious direction. This directly resulted in more than thirty of the sixty-one graduates under his Presidency to go on to become protestant ministers.”
Rev. Dr. Alonzo Church
Rev. Dr. Alonzo Church, 6th President (1829–1859; 30 years). After obtaining his education in Vermont he migrated to Georgia where he opened a classical school in Eatonton, Ga. A devoted member of the Presbyterian Church, He joined the Hopewell Presbyterian Church in Madison, Ga. in 1817. He became known as a classical teacher and in 1819 he was elected as a professor of mathematics at the University of Georgia. Then in 1829 he succeeded Dr. Waddell as the University president holding this position for the next 30 years thus giving 40 years of his life to this institution. At this period, it is said, “the educational interests of Georgia needed such a man”. In 1824 he was ordained a Minister in the Presbyterian and though never holding a regular pastoral charge and deeming his income from the University adequate to meet his modest needs, he served without compensation for churches too poor to afford a minister. In 1854, Bethany Church of Greene County ordained him as an evangelist.
Church Street in Athens and
Church Hall UGA are named in his honor
The 2nd University of Georgia Chapel was built in 1832 the time, the Chapel was one of the first Greek Revival style buildings in Athens and by far the finest building on the university’s campus. Daily mandatory religious services took place there in addition to assemblies and commencements.
Rev. Andrew A. Lipscomb
Rev. Andrew A. Lipscomb, 1st Chancellor/ 7th President (1860–1874; 15 years) Lipscomb was born in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. As a young man, he entered the ministry of the Methodist Protestant church, joining the Maryland conference in 1835, and for some time was President of the Alabama conference. From 1842 to 1849 he was pastor of the Bibb Street Methodist Protestant Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He founded in 1849 the Metropolitan Institute for Young Ladies at Montgomery, AL. Lipscomb then served as the inaugural President (1856–1859) of the Tuskegee Female College of the Methodist Episcopal Church South in Alabama (present-day Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama). From 1860 until his resignation in 1874, Lipscomb served as the Chancellor of the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens. Lipscomb was the first leader of UGA to have the title Chancellor instead of President.
Lipscomb Hall UGA is named in his honor
Rev. Dr. Henry Holcombe Tucker
Rev. Dr. Henry Holcombe Tucker, 2nd Chancellor/8th Pres. (1874–1878; 4 years) was ordained at La Grange, Ga., in 1851. The degree of D. D. was conferred on him by Columbian College, Washington City, in 1860, and the degree of LL. D. was conferred on him by Mercer University in 1876. Tucker was a regular pastor once only, in 1854, at Alexandria, Va., but failing health compelled his resignation in less than a year. However, he continued to preach, and in many of the cities and towns on the Atlantic coast, from Maine to Georgia, as an educator, He taught in the Southern Female College, LaGrange, Ga., and afterwards for a short time, in the Richmond Female Institute, Richmond, Va. In 1856 he was elected Professor of Belles-Lettres and Metaphysics at Mercer University, which position he held until 1862. In 1866 he was unanimously elected president of Mercer University, resigning the presidency of Mercer University in 1871. In 1874 he was elected chancellor of the University of Georgia, a position which he filled four years. He then became the editor-in-chief of the Christian Index, Atlanta, Ga.
Tucker Hall UGA is named in his honor
Rev. Patrick Hues Mell
Rev. Patrick Hues Mell, 3rd Chancellor/9th Pres. (1878–1888; 10 years) “Patrick Hues Mell was one of the most influential educators and ministers in nineteenth-century Georgia.” Patrick Mell was born in 1814 in Liberty County, Ga., home of the Midway Church and the original Puritan Congregationalist settlement from which Lyman Hall was a member and the county from wince Button Gwinnett came. His mother’s family (the Sumners) had been among these first pilgrims. “His mother was a woman of marked individuality of character, intellectual and a truly Godly woman, brought up in the strictest mode of old Congregationalism, and, no doubt, perfectly familiar with the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which was thoroughly taught in old Midway church in ancient and in modern times.” “His becoming a Baptist minister may be attributed to the fact that a few members of old Midway church, (the Sumners among them,) joined a Baptist church which was organized at Sunbury, Georgia, in the early part of that century.” Mell’s personal story is one of courage and inspiration. “Dr. Patrick Hues Mell’s career in the educational and religious annals of 19th Century Georgia remains unprecedented. From his humble beginnings as a teacher in a one room Montgomery County school house, Mell rose to become Chancellor of the University of Georgia.” By the age of fourteen, Patrick became an orphan after the death of his father followed shortly by the death of his mother. With only the clothes on his back and a satchel of purely personal belongings, Mell began his teaching career in a one- room log schoolhouse, complete with a dirt floor. He spent two years at Amherst College in Massachusetts before leaving early to teach school in West Springfield, Massachusetts. He later served as Assistant Principal of East Hartford High School in Connecticut. In October 1838, Mell accepted a position as teacher at Ryals. Just four months later, Mell received an offer to become the principal of a Female Seminary at Emory College at Oxford. His employment came at the urgent request of Gov. George M. Troup of Laurens County. Troup had become an ardent advocate of the young man. When plans to establish the seminary failed to materialize, Mell was offered an alternate position as Principal the chair of the Department of Ancient Languages at Mercer University of the Classical and English School at Oxford due to the influential request of Gov. Troup. It was during his term at Emory that Mell was called to preach the Gospel. He obtained a license to preach in 1840. “From his first sermon as a licensed minister in a small Baptist Church, Rev. Mell was elevated to the Presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention for nearly a quarter century.” In 1841 Rev. Mell was ordained as a minister and served Greensboro Baptist Church and other churches in the area until 1852. In 1845, Rev. Mell was one of the Georgia delegates to the organizing of the Southern Baptist Convention in Augusta. He served as Clerk of the Georgia Baptist Convention from1845 until 1855. In 1855, he resigned his position as professor at Mercer and turned down innumerable offers for positions at colleges and universities throughout the South, including the presidency of Wake Forest. But In 1856, Rev. Mell was offered a more prestigious position as Chair of the Department of Ancient Languages at the University of Georgia. After a one-year respite from the leadership of the Georgia Baptist Association, Rev. Mell was elected as President of the Association, a position which he held longer than anyone else in the organization’s history until his death more than three decades later. He was also named president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Mell served a total of 16 years as SBC president, the most of any person holding the office, doing so for two separate stints of eight years each. In 1860, Rev. Mell was selected to become Vice-Chancellor of the University of Georgia. As a Ph. D, Dr. Mell remained as Vice Chancellor until 1872. In 1866, Mell returned to his position as President of the GBA and served until 1886, making him the longest or one of the longest serving presidents of the 160-year-old organization, which is the largest of its kind. During the same period, Mell also served as President of the Georgia Baptist Church. As pastor he served the Baptist church at Greensboro for ten years and led the congregations at Bairdstown (in Greene County) and Antioch (in Oglethorpe County) for thirty and twenty-six years respectively. Mell resigned from the Antioch and Bairdstown churches in 1878, when he became chancellor of the university, but his influence continued. For years the Baptists from Greene and surrounding counties labeled their district “Mell’s Kingdom.”
Due to the ravages of the Civil War, and the Northern occupation of the South until 1877, the University needed a strong leader to rebuild. The Board of Trustees appealed to Mell to take over the Chancellorship/ Presidency of the University. So, from 1878 until his death in 1888 he was the Chancellor of the University of Georgia. During this time, he was also involved in the expansion of branch colleges. Branches of UGA colleges were established in Dahlonega, Cuthbert, Milledgeville, and Thomasville with only Dahlonega's still in existence. But another branch school that was an issue was the establishment of the School of Technology in the 1880s. Mell was a firm believer that it should be located at Athens with the university's main campus, like the Agricultural and Mechanical School. Yet despite Mell's arguments, the Georgia Institute of Technology (founded 1885) is today an entirely separate school located in Atlanta and is the chief rival of the Athens university. He also had a large family life. He and his first wife, Lurene Howard Cooper, had five sons and three daughters. He and his second wife, Eliza Elizabeth Cooper, had four sons and two daughters. Mell died on January 26, 1888, after months of failing health.
Mell Hall is named in his honor
Rev. Dr. William Ellison Boggs DD, LLD.
Rev. Dr. William Ellison Boggs DD, LLD., 4th Chancellor/ 10th Pres. (1889–1898; 9 years) Presbyterian Educator, clergyman, and writer. The son of a Presbyterian minister and missionary he was born and he grew up in India. He was an 1859 graduate of South Carolina College and received his Doctor of Divinity, (D.D.) from Columbia Theological Seminary in 1862. Dr. Boggs was appointed Chancellor after a career as a Presbyterian minister and a professor of ecclesiastical history, metaphysics, and law. Chancellor Boggs is considered the person who presided over the birth and early growth of the football program. Many firsts happened during Dr. Boggs’ tenure as Chancellor of the University of Georgia. He hired the first coach and the first athletic director. The University of Georgia played its first football game, began the "South's Oldest Rivalry" with Auburn in 1892, started the “Clean, Old-fashion Hate” series with Georgia Tech in 1893, had its first undefeated season in 1895, and won its first football championship as part of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association in 1896. Based on the accomplishments during his tenure, Dr. Boggs deserves some recognition. If Dr. Herty is considered the father of Georgia football, Dr. Boggs probably should be acknowledged as the grandfather. The coach, athletic director, and the chancellor all left after the 1898-1899 school year, but the foundation for a national program was set.
Boggs Hall UGA is named in his honor.
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