History of Franklin County, Pennsylvania, 1887
John Edgar Biography
Rev. John Edgar, PH. D., now (1887) and for the last four years president of Wilson Female College at Chambersburg, is the son of James Edgar, a Scotchman, who, with his wife, followed the profession of teaching before removing to this country in 1849.
The subject of this sketch passed his youth in the city of Philadelphia; went through its system of public schools, and graduated with credit in June, 1860, from its public high school, an institution having collegiate standing, and presided over during most of Mr. Edgar's course by Dr. John S. Hart, a graduate of Princeton, and afterward professor of rhetoric in Princeton.
Mr. Edgar, after graduating, taught for five years; first for two years near Dover, Del., and then gave up that position for one in Delaware County of his own State, and nearer his parents' home. While in this position. and holding it only for a few months, he was, though not yet of age, elected principal of the Twenty-fourth School in Philadelphia, and held it for nearly three years, until he determined to go to the Theological Seminary at Andover, Mass., in the fall of 1865, to prepare for entrance into the Presbyterian ministry.
After graduating from Andover in the fall of 1868, he was licensed by the former Philadelphia Fourth Presbytery then sitting in old Pine Street Church of that city, the church in which Mr. Edgar had been brought up, mainly under the long pastorate of Rev. Thomas H. Brainerd, D.D., and where Mr. Edgar's parents belonged as members.
His ordination the following spring was the act of the old Donegal Presbytery, now the Westminster, Mr. Edgar having accepted the charges of the Mount Joy and old Donegal Churches in Lancaster County, Penn. Shortly after leaving his first charge he was married, in 1870, to Elizabeth, daughter of Rev. Thomas M. Boggs, a former pastor of the old Donegal Church, and founder of the Mount Joy and Marietta Churches, a tablet in the vestibule of the latter church bearing testimony to the worth and labor of the founder, whose brother was also a pastor in the adjoining Paxton and Derry Churches, both brothers being thus prominent in the religious history of the central portion of the State, and holding in their lifetime these two old and historic churches of Donegal and Derry.
After marriage Mr. Edgar accepted the charge of the Presbyterian church at New Bloomfield, Penn., about twenty-five miles west of Harrisburg, and was pastor there for thirteen years, and until he resigned to take the presidency of Wilson College. This course had been suggested to him some years before, and was then pressed upon him by many of his fellow presbyters who knew his early training in educational work, and also that he had not lost his love for such work nor his connection with it, for while pastor at New Bloomfield he had been induced to reorganize its declining academy, and had for many years, with the assistance of good helpers, made it a successful work.
His feelings at the time that Wilson was first suggested to him, that he might seem as one who had put his hands to the plow and turned back, have been overruled by a gracious Providence, for, in the few years of Mr. Edgar' s work at Wilson, many of his pupils have each year sought church connection, and indeed, the proviso of Wilson's charter, that its president shall always be a minister, was inserted by those who recognized, as does Mr. Edgar now, that a college is a parish in itself, and such has been the aim of Wilson' s management, and the success has been not simply in mental and material progress, but in spiritual also.
Source: Biographical Annals of Franklin County, Pennsylvania : containing genealogical records of representative families, including many of the early settlers, and biographical sketches of prominent citizens; Chicago. Genealogical Pub. Co. 1905. Notes: Prepared in part by George O. Seilhamer.
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