James Strong

Who was James Strong?

Dr. James Woodward Strong, theologian and scholar, was the first president of Carleton College. Despite lifelong illness and injury, Strong was a highly active man throughout his life, juggling multiple professional and personal occupations.

Strong was born on September 29, 1833 in Brownington, Vermont, one of three sons of Elijah Gridley Strong and Sarah Ashley Partridge. Despite ill health as a child, James began his working life at the age of fourteen with a yearlong assistantship in a printing office. He followed this service with two years in the Burlington bookstore of Edward Smith, during which time he also began studying Latin, a critical element of advanced study in a 19th-century education. At the age of 17, Strong took a position teaching school in a mountain school district, the start of his professional life in academia.

In 1851, he accompanied his family to Beloit, Wisconsin, where his parents opened the old Beloit House as a temperance hotel. On arrival there, James enrolled in the preparatory department of the Beloit Academy, continuing as a student in the college department in 1854. He graduated at the head of his class in 1858.