Rev. George Douglas Black, D.D.
The Rev. George Douglas Black, D. D., present acting president of Antioch College, was born in Knox county. Ohio, February 12, 1858, and was educated in the public schools of Mt. Vernon. Having decided to make the Christian ministry his calling, he studied literature and theologv from 1876 to 1880 with Rev. J. W. Marvin, of Knox county. Doctor Black says of this incident in his lif : "I have never ceased to be grateful for the years of inspiration and intimacy spent with Mr. Marvin. After the blessing of a devout father and mother, no good has come to me in this world equal to the friendship and instruction of this man. I can say of him, as Garfield said of Mark Hopkins, my conception of a university is a log with a student at one end of it and Marvin at the other. To feed on such a life is an unspeakable good to any young man." Afterward he attended the Meadville Theological School at Meadville, Pennsylvania.
When quite a young man Doctor Black came to Yellow Springs as pastor of the Christian church, which was then the college church. At this place he had two pastorates, and he resigned in 1892 to accept the editorship of the Herald of Gospel Liberty, the organ of the Christian denomination, published at Dayton, Ohio. While at Yellow Springs he was made the head of the English department of Antioch College. It was while he was engaged in his editorial work at Dayton that Dr. Washington Gladden visited Minneapolis in 1893 and was asked by the committee of the Park Avenue Congregational church to recommend some one for their vacant pulpit, this church at that time being the largest of the thirty-seven Congregational churches in St. Paul and Minneapolis. Doctor Gladden enthusiastically recommended Mr. Black, who went to Minneapolis, preached one Sunday and was called to the pastorate and entered upon his work within a few weeks thereafter. The field was a large one and the demands upon the pastor's time and strength were incessant. He traveled all over the Northwest, giving lectures and addresses, and in addition to his work as a speaker was associated with a group of men, among whom were Doctor Gladden, Doctor Zeublin, President George A. Gates, B. Fay Mills and Prof. John Bascom, in the editorship of The Kingdom, a weekly publication devoted to the awakening of a new social consciousness in the church. For this paper Doctor Black wrote an editorial every week. After five years of this strenuous life he offered his resignation to his church, but it was unanimously rejected. He realized that the pace he was going was telling seriously on his strength, but, unwilling to leave a people whom he deeply loved and among whom he had a delightful uplifting work, he continued for another year, at the end of which time suddenly the physical break came. Suffering from a nervous breakdown and knowing that he could not take up continuous pulpit work again, Doctor Black moved with his family from Minneapolis to a farm near Yellow Springs, where he remained, slowly recovering his health, till in 1909 he was asked to take a chair in Antioch College devoted to teaching the New Testament and comparative religions. A few years before he had been elected a trustee of the college, and was chosen as secretarv of that body.
Soon after taking up his work in the college, owing to the long absence of the president, Dr. S. D. Fess, who was serving a term in Congress, Doctor Black was made the vice-president, a position in which he served until the resignation of Doctor Fess in 1917. Following Doctor Fess's resignation Doctor Black was made the acting president of the college, as he declined, on account of his health, to accept anything more than a temporary responsibility for the management of the college.
Doctor Black has contributed to the New England Magazine, The Outlook, the Christian Endeavor World, the Christian Register and the Biblical World of the University of Chicago. His deep interest in farming and animal industry has led him to write extensively on those subjects and he has contributed to the Breeder's Gazette and the Country Gentleman, while for fifteen years he has been a regular writer for the Ohio Farmer. In 1912 Merom College (Indiana) conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Divinity.
On January 1, 1870, Doctor Black was married to Flora Belle Hanger, daughter of Rev. Andrew C. Hanger, minister of the Christian church. Doctor and Mrs. Black have three children, Georgia Evelyn, Wendell Marvin and Russell Collins, the former of whom married Pierre W. Drake, of Yellow Springs, and has one child, a daughter, Virginia E. Wendell Marvin Black was graduated from Antioch College and afterward took his Master's degree there. He married Lydia Elder and has one child, a daughter, Eleanor D. Russell Collins Black also was graduated from Antioch College and has since given his life to music. He married Hazel Ashley, and has a daughter, Helen A.
From History of Greene County Ohio, Its People, Industries and Institutions, vol. 2. M.A.Broadstone, editor. B.F.Bowen & Co., Indianapolis. 1918