Early American Presbyterians -- K-L

Isaac Stockton Keith (pre 1755-1813)

Rev. Robert Keith (pre 1753-1784)

Rev. Isaac Kellar (1789-1867)

Mr. Kellar was one of the pioneer Presbyterian preachers of the western country. His preaching was chiefly doctrinal and exclusively extempore. He was not only decided in his views, but inflexible. No considerations of personal ease or emolument had influence to divert him from what seemed to him to be the path of duty. He preached often, and during many years, at different points, with but little, if any remuneration, counting it all joy to testify his love both for his Master and the souls of man.

Rev. James Kemper (1753-1834)

He was appointed to the office of Catechist at the second meeting of the Presbytery of Transylvania, on the nomination of David Rice, after a theological examination, in accordance with an agreement made at the first meeting that "catechists should be appointed for the purpose of instructing the young and ignorant." These catechists were nominated by a minister, examined and approved by the Presbytery, but were not to preach the Gospel or dispense sealing ordinances.  In his journal he notes:  "In the autumn of 1790 I visited Cincinnati, and agreed to move my family the following spring or fall."  At a meeting of presbytery, April 27, 1791, at the Dick's River Church, Mr. Kempter was fully examined and licensed, and he was immediately appointed to "supply in the settlements of the Miami at discretion."  In a list of applications for supplies there was a supplication from the settlements on the North Bend of the Miami (near the site of Cincinnati).  He was not present at the next meeting of the presbytery (October 4, 1791), at Jessamine, Kentucky,  because he arrived in Cincinnati with his family October 17, 1791.   When he arrived in Cincinnati, there was but one person of the congregation that he left in it on his first visit in 1790.  He was ordained pastor of the churches in Cincinnati and Columbia, October 23, 1792. (The Cincinnati Church was organized in 1791 by David Rice). The relation was dissolved and the churches were separated October 7th, 1796.

In Presbytery at Eagle Creek, October 1801, Mr. Kemper was appointed for "one third of his time at Duck Creek (now Pleasant Ridge) and one fourth at Sycamore, for one year; also to supply the forks of Mad river, Dayton, Turtle Creek, and Beulah. He attended the first meeting of the Synod of Kentucky in 1802. In Presbytery at Cincinnati, 1802, Duck Creek congregation through Mr. Joseph Reeder, petitioned for one half of Kemper's labors. Presbytery granted them one third, but granted the petition of Sycamore, presented by Mr. Uzal Bates, for one half of his time. When he was installed pastor of the above churches, at Hopewell, at a meeting of Presbytery 1805, Rev. Rice preached his installation sermon. The relation was dissolved in Presbytery, at Lebanon, 1807, but he continued to supply these churches for a time. In 1810, he accepted by letter a call from the churches of Johnston's Fork and Fleming and requested that he and the churches should be dismissed to the care of the Presbytery of West Lexington, which request the Presbytery judged it improper to grant, "because not presented in regular manner, ant that Presbytery had not power to alter bounds without consent of Synod." But, in 1811 Mr. Kemper was dismissed to the Presbytery of West Lexington after the presbytery boundaries had all been redrawn..

After remaining in Kentucky a year or so, he removed to his home on Walnut Hills, Cincinnati, which, after the formation of the Presbytery of Miami, was out of Washington's bounds. Several of his children were residing at Walnut Hills, and when, in 1819, the church was organized there, he became the pastor and so remained until his death, in 1834, August 20th, aged eighty years, nine months and three days. Mrs. Kemper survived her hyusband several years.  She died March 1, 1846, aged 89, 10 months and 6 days.  They had fifteen children. He was the second stated clerk of the Presbytery of Washington, having served in that capacity from October, 1804 until April, 1808.

Rev. Robert Kennedy (1778-1843)

He was one of the first advocates of Temperance in Franklin County and would never sell any of his grain to distillers.

Rev. Samuel Kennedy (pre 1729-1787)

Rev. Charles H. Kennon (1786-1816)

Rev. Jacob Ker (pre 1740-1795)

Rev. Nathan Ker (pre 1740-1804)

Hon. John Kerr (b. 1796)

Rev. William Kerr (1777-1823)

Rev. Abner Williamson Kilpatrick (1793-1844)

Rev. Andrew King (pre 1755-1815)

Rev. John King (b. pre 1756)

Barnabas King, D.D. (1780-1862)

Rev. Richard Hall King (d. 1825)

Walter King, Esq. (1786-1852)

He ws not satisfied with studying the scriptures in the King James Version, or with the help of popular commentators. He took them up in their original languages, and supplied himself with as large a critical apparatus as many Professors of biblical interpretation possess. He also prepared and published "The Gospel Harmony," based substantially on Newcombe's arrangement. It is divided into lessons, each of which is accompanied by questions. The book had quite an extensive circulation, and passed through several editions.

Rev. William Montgomery King (1796-1882)

Mr. King organized the Macedonia Church, in Woodford County, and supplied it for a number of years. He subsequently removed to Illinois, but returned after a few years to the Macedonia Church, remaining there till his removal to Texas, in January, 1851. Here he performed many years of active service in preaching and teaching. During his long ministry he preached to churches which he had organized himself--never building on another man's foundation.

For a number of years his health had been feeble, but he continued to work in Sabbath schools and to preach at times, until he was nearly eighty years of age. He retained the use of all his faculties to a remarkable degree--except the sense of hearing--and he was past fourscore years before that began to fail.

He was a man fond of his church and of his friend and devoted to reading and study and was fond of natural objects

Rev. Samuel Kirkland (b ca. 1745)

Jacob Kirkpatrick, D.D. (1785-1866)

Rev. John Kirkpatrick (1787-1842)

Rev. William Kirkpatrick (pre 1738-1769)

Rev. John Knox (1799-1880)

Rev. William P. Kuypers (b pre 1789)

Rev. Joseph Lamb (b. pre 1697)

Rev. Sylvester Larned (1796-1819)

On January 22d, 1818 he reached New Orleans, whither he consented to go as a coadjutor to his friend, the Rev. Elias Cornelius, who had undertaken a mission to the South, partly to enlist public attention to our Indian tribes, and partly and especially to ascertain the moral condition of the city just named. Immediately after his arrival there, Mr. Larned commenced his public labors, and it seemed as if the first sound of his voice thrilled, not only through the length and breadth but to the innermost heart of the city. Provision was made at once for erecting a new and splendid church, and the individuals engaged in the enterprise presented him a call to become their pastor, which he accepted. In April he started for the North, principally to complete the arrangements, already partially made, for the building of the new church, and returned to New Orleans the following December. The finished building was dedicated, July 4th, 1819. He remained at his post during the sickly season in the Summer, under the conviction that it was his duty to do so, was seized with the fever, and died, August 31st, the day which completed his twenty-fourth year.

James Latta, D.D. (1732-1801)

Mr. Latta was installed pastor of the congregation of Deep Run, in Bucks county, Pennsylvania, in 1761, the charge of which he resigned in 1770. On the second Tuesday of November, 1771, he became pastor of the church of Chestnut Level, in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania with this pastorate, and to aid in his support, he established a school, which was acquiring celebrity when its progress was arrested by the breaking out of the Revolutionary war. Subsequently the Principal of a school in the bounds of the congregation having been suddenly killed by a stroke of lightning, Mr. Latta was constrained to take charge of the school for a few years, and in it several distinguished men were educated. So deep was his interest in the cause of American liberty, that once, in the course of the war, when an unusual number of his people were drafted to serve in the militia, with a view to encourage them, he took his blanket and knapsack, like a soldier, and actually accompanied them on their campaign. At another time he served for a while in the army, as a Chaplain. He was a delegate to the meeting of the first General Assembly in 1789 for the Presbytery of New Castle.

Dr. Latta labored on in the ministry until very near the close of life. He died January 29th, 1801. As a teacher, he was remarkably well qualified. Without severity, he had the faculty of governing well, making his students both fear and love him.

Rev. James Henry Cosden Leach (1791-1866)

Rev. Samuel Leake (pre 1746-1775)

Rev. William States Lee (b. pre 1800-aft 1872)

Rev. Nash Legrand (ca. 1768-1814)

Rev. Lewis (b. pre 1734)

Rev. John Linn (1749-1820)

John Blair Linn, D.D. (1777-1804)

Besides his early poems, his published works were a "Poem of the Death of Washington," a "Poem on the Powers of Genius," a posthumous poem called "Valerian," a "Sermon on the Death of Dr. Ewing," and a "Reply to Dr. Priestly's Comparison between Socrates and Christ." The merit of this reply gained him the degree of D.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Linn's tastes were refined and poetic, and his sensibilities exquisite. This led him, though warm and generous in his nature, to a moody and melancholy state of mind, and a morbid dread of death, which was only held in check by a deep sense of religion. Please see, John Blair Linn, 1777-1805 by Lewis Leary in the William and Mary Quarterly (1947) p. 148-176.

Rev. William Linn (1752-1808)

Rev. Thomas Lippincott (1791-1869)

Mr. Lippincott was an elder in the Presbyterian Church at Edwardsville. He was licensed to preach October 8th, 1828, and ordained October 19th, 1829 at the first meeting of the Centre Presbytery of Illinois. His stated labors were exclusively with the churches within the bounds of the Synod of Illinois. He also acted for several months as Agent of the American Sunday-School Union. His last field was Dacoign, in Perry county. No man in the Synod was more universally loved and respected. He was the first Moderator of the Presbytery of Alton. He died April, 1869.

Rev. John Lodor (1796-1864)

Rev. James Long (pre 1756)

Eleazar Lord (c. 1784-c. 1865)

While he amassed a large fortune, he took a leading role in organizing the New York Sunday School Union in 1816, serving as president of that organization for many years. He was also a founder and director of the Young Men's Missionary Society, a flourishing home missions movement popular with transplanted New England born men of affairs. Together with Rev. Gardiner Spring of the Brick Church of Manhattan, Lord nominated Rev. Samuel Cox as a paid missionary of the society. Cox, a New England born man also, who tended to Hopkinsianism (after Rev. Samuel Hopkins -- a branch of Reformed theology rooted in the metaphysical speculations of Jonathan Edwards, but too parsed and arid for the New York born cosmopolitan Presbyterians.) The result was a theological shootout remembered for years in the Reformed Community with awe. Night after night at Brick church, Lord and Spring dueled with opponents among the Presbyterian and Congregational clergy, trying to force a recision of the vote. "It was a most exciting scene," Spring recalled of the congregation forty years later. Lord led a secession of a hundred of the younger members out of the society and formed a rival group, the Evangelical Missionary Society. Its first order of business was to appoint Samuel Cox as missionary.

In 1817 he embarked for Europe. His "Autobiography" presents a mildly pompous young American offering to correct the failings of the Old World. He had meetings there with William Hawley, the director of the London Jews Society, aimed at converting Jews to Christianity. Decades later, both he and his brother would be leading American authors calling not only for the conversion of the Jews to Christianity but also the recreation of a Jewish political state. While in London, he also investigated the emerging natural science of geology. Confronting a fossil of a fish, he had difficulty believing that they were relics of the flood, but was not willing to accept a hypothesis which granted it an extreme old age in contravention to the Mosaic account of creation. He and his brother spent 25 years attacking geology as a science, publishing the Epoch of Creation, first as an article in 1837, and as a book in 1851. From 1848 to 1861, the pages of the Literary and Theological Review, which he and his brother edited, were filled with articles and reviews on geology. The gist was that geology is a descriptive science and not an explanatory one.

In 1821 lived in Washington, D.C. as a lobbyist for the "Merchants of New York." There he made the acquaintance of William Crawford, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun and practically all the prominent politicians of the era. In the 1830's he founded the Erie Railroad. In 1841, the first steam engine of that line, the "Eleazar Lord," chugged down the track. He had insisted on a six foot gauge, which left the Erie marooned in the nations burgeoning rail system; and also on elevating the track on timber pilings. This was extremely popular with the local farmers, who profited first from selling him their timber, and a second time when they retrieved it for firewood, somewhat less formally. He forbade construction work on the Sabbath and also the passage of any traffic over the rails. This gesture, while gratifying to the strong Sabbatarian movement at the time, was ruinous to the shareholders.

Lord especially welcomed an opportunity to show Christian benevolence when he could simultaneously embarrass Andrew Jackson. During the Cherokee removal he called a meeting in New York to remonstrate on behalf of the Indians and damn the administration. He also arranged for a printing press and auxiliary equipment to be sent to the Cherokees so they might print the Bible in their own tongue. He was not as sanguine about the plight of the black man. In a series of articles in Leonard Wood's conservative Literary and Theological Review, Lord warned somewhat darkly that "there are institutions and customs, in every nation, the denunciation and resistance of which, in the name of Christianity, and by public and organized efforts, cannot fail to rouse the prejudices and evil passions of men against religion." He was a trustee of Princeton Seminary, the theological position of which most closely approximated his own. Lord helped to organize Auburn Seminary as yet another conservative bastion and sought the services of the noted Calvinist theologian Dr. James Richards of Newark.

"Eleazar Lord and the Reformed Tradition: Christian Capitalist in the Age of Jackson," by Robert Whalen, in American Presbyterians 72:4 (Winter 1994).
 

John G. Lowrey, Esq.  (b. 1780)

The records of the Bellefonte Presbyterian Church with which he connected himself early in it s organization, show him to have been one of its first ruling elders.  He continued to act in this capacity for many years, and likewise performed the duties of collector, treasurer, and secretary of the church, as well as superintendent of the Sabbath school from its organization until his removal to the West.  He was a conscientious and liberal contributor to the support and spread of the gospel in his day.  He was frequently in attendance on the courts of the Church as a member.  He died in St. Louis.
 

Hon. Walter Lowrie (1774-1868)

His conversion to God occurred in his eighteenth year.  With the view of becoming a minister of the gospel, he commenced a course of study under the direction of the Rev. John McPherrin, the first Presbyterian minister in Butler county.  Providential circumstances hindering the fulfillment of his purpose to enter the ministry he entered upon other pursuits.  His secular life was such as to win the confidence and esteem of the whole community in which he lived.  Accordingly, in 1811, at the age of twenty-seven, he was elected as the representative of that District in the Senate of Pennsylvania.  This honorable station he held for seven years, during which time he rose to such a position in the confidence of the people of the whole State that, in 1818, he was elected as the representative of Pennsylvania in the Senate of the United States.  In this high position he continued for six years, enjoying honorable prominence.  He was regarded as an authority upon all questions of political history and Constitutional law.  His influence in the Senate was not only that of a statesman, but also of a Christian.  He had been ordained a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church in Butler.  With other pious Senators and Representatives, he founded the Congressional Prayer-meeting.  He was the only one of the founders of the Congressional Temperance Society, and was, for as long time, a member of the Executive Committee of the American Colonization Society. At the expiration of his term of service as Senator, he was elected Secretary of the Senate of the United States, in which office he continued for a period of twelve years, and might, if he had chosen have retained it for life.

In 1836 he was elected Corresponding Secretary of the Western Foreign Missionary Society.  This office he accepted passing under the care of the General Assembly when the Board of Foreign Missions was constituted, in 1837.  He continued in the faithful discharge of its various duties until, disabled by the infirmities of old age, he laid it down, in 1868.  He had not drawn his salary for several years before that date, and would not retain even the office, after he felt himself no longer able to discharge its duties.  He had wise and able counselors in the Board and in the Executive Committee, but during the whole thirty years of his incumbency, he was himself the efficient head of the missionary work, and the controlling power of its administration.

Mr. Lowrie entered into his rest, December 14th, 1868.
 

Rev. George Lucky (pre 1750-post 1819)

Joseph Henry Lumpkin, LL.D. (1799-1867)

During his foreign tour the Supreme Court of Georgia was organized, and he was elected by the Legislature, without opposition, for the long term.  In 1824-5 he served in the Legislature of Georgia, but his singular success in this sphere of public life had the effect to disenchant his ambition of political aspiration forever.  He joined the Presbyterian Church in 1828, and for nearly forty years was an active and prominent member of her communion.  By  his exertions, and those of General T.R.R. Cobb and W.H. Hull, Esq., the Lumpkin Law School was established in Athens, Georgia; and in 1860 he was elected Chancellor of the State University, which he declined in order to remain on the Supreme Court Bench.  His death occurred June 4th, 1867.
 

Rev. Thomas Lumpkin (pre 1789-1810)

Rev. John Lyle (ca. 1756-1807)

Rev. John Lyle (1769-1825)

Rev. Matthew Lyle (1767-1827)

Rev. James Lyon (b pre 1741-post 1785)

Lyon came to Newtown, Long Island in 1783 and remained there for two years. During his pastorate at Newtown, he published a small Manual of Devotion. Lyon left Newtown in the spring of 1785. Nobody knows what happened to him afterwards.
From the information on the church of Newtown's website by Robert Singleton at http://www.fpcn.org/history/pastors/lyon.html