Erasmus D. MacMaster

Who was Erasmus D. MacMaster?

Erasmus Darwin MacMaster, D.D. was a 19th-century American Presbyterian pastor, academic and theologian who served as president of Hanover College and Miami University. Along with Henry Ward Beecher, MacMaster was one of the most vocal Presbyterian anti-slavery advocates in Indiana.

He was born in Mercer, Pennsylvania and graduated in 1827 from Union College. He was licensed as a Presbyterian minister by the Reformed Presbytery of New York in 1829 and served as a minister in Ballston, New York from 1831 until 1838 when he became the third president of Hanover College. He presided over the short-lived move of the college to Madison, Indiana where it was briefly renamed Madison College in 1845. Hanover quickly moved back to Hanover, Indiana and MacMaster left to become the third president of Miami University in Ohio. His Miami presidency lasted from 1845 until 1849 and in 1850 he became a professor of theology at the Theological Seminary in New Albany, Indiana. He was appointed professor of theology at Theological Seminary of the Northwest in Chicago, Illinois in June 1866 and died there in December of that year.