Andrew Dousa Hepburn

Who was Andrew Dousa Hepburn?

Andrew Dousa Hepburn was a Presbyterian pastor, professor and President of Miami University and Davidson College.

Hepburn was born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania to Samuel Hepburn, a lawyer and judge and Rebecca Williamson. Hepburn grew up in Carlisle, Pennsylvania before attending Jefferson College, Canonsburg; the University of Virginia; and Princeton University, from where he graduated with a degree in theology in 1857, the same year in which he married Henrietta McGuffey, daughter of William Holmes McGuffey. Together, they had two children: Henrietta Williamson Hepburn and Charles McGuffey Hepburn, an attorney who became dean of the Indiana University School of Law.

Hepburn became an ordained minister in the Presbyterian church the following year, 1858 before becoming a professor of metaphysics, logic and rhetoric at the University of North Carolina in 1860. He sided with the Confederacy during the American Civil War, and in his capacity as pastor to the First Presbyterian Church in Wilmington he led the delegation that surrendered the city to Union forces.