Rev. Ludlow D. Potter, D.D.
The Rev. Ludlow D. Potter, D. D., president of this institution, is a native of New Providence, Union county, New Jersey, born in 1823, upon a farm which now constitutes the site of the village of Summit. He is related by blood to the Ludlow family, of which Colonel Israel Ludlow, one of the founders of Cincinnati, and was from another of them originally named Benjamin Ludlow Day Potter, his parents dropping the first name, however, when he was baptized. He prepared for college at a boarding school in Mendham, and entered as a sophomore at Princeton college in 1838, graduating honorably in 1841. During the next two years he taught languages and mathematics at a classical school in Plainfield, conducted by E. Fairchild, A. M. In the fall of 1843 he entered the Union Theological seminary, in New York city, but the next year transferred his studentship to Princeton, where he was graduated as a theologue in the spring of 1846. Again during the next academic year he taught a classical school in Pennington, New Jersey, and then in the fall of 1847 he set his face westward, and became pastor of the Presbyterian church in Brookville, Indiana, where he remained about five years. He had been licensed as a Presbyterian minister in New Jersey in 1846, and was here ordained the second year thereafter. He was in 1853 elected principal of the Whitewater Presbyterian academy, and held the post for three years, when he removed to Glendale, and became associated, as above stated, with the Revs. Dr. J. G. Monfort and S. S. Potter, in the management and instruction of the female college. He was here head of the department of instruction; and in 1865, Dr. Monfort having resigned the presidency, he succeeded to that position, and has since remained president of the institution. Education is thus seen, in the length and prominence of his connection with it, to be his field of usefulness and honor, rather than the pulpit, although he has in the latter done reputable service, both as pastor aforesaid and as occasional preacher to congregations in Hamilton county and elsewhere. His academic honors have also approved his career, he having been made a master of arts by Princeton college in 1844, and a doctor of divinity by Hanover (Indiana) college in 1872.
From History of Hamilton County, Ohio, With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches, Compiled by Henry A. Ford, A.M. and Mrs. Kate B. Ford (Cleveland, 1881)