A. T. McGill, D.D., LL.D. (1807-1889)

The surnames of Alexander, Miller, Hodge, and Warfield are familiar as faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary, but despite his having served over twenty years in the seminary, McGill’s name is not commonly mentioned. This brief biography of Dr. McGill will be the first in a regular series on lesser-known Presbyterian and Reformed ministers, academics, and missionaries of the past. The purpose of the series is two fold, first, simply to inform readers of Reformed Forum about these forgotten personalities, and second, to encourage seminarians and other students to pursue research and writing about these lesser-known figures. In the case of Princeton Seminary, the quartet of surnames mentioned is certainly worth extensive study, but it makes sense that studies of them would be enhanced through excavating the lives of their lesser-known colleagues and friends.

Alexander Taggart McGill was born in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, February 24, 1807, to his Scotch-Irish parents, John, who was a weaver, and Mary (Taggart). He graduated valedictorian from Jefferson College, 1826, and continued there for two years as a tutor of Latin. Because of health problems, he moved to Milledgeville, Georgia, to be the principal of the Baldwin Academy. He studied law while in Georgia and was admitted to the Bar. He also served as a clerk in the Georgia legislature and was appointed to survey the state’s Cherokee Land Reservation.

In 1831, young McGill returned to Pennsylvania to pursue divinity studies for the purpose of ordination to the gospel ministry. David Calhoun comments regarding McGill’s call to the ministry that while he was visiting “Missionary Ridge, Tennessee, McGill was so impressed by the good work of the missionaries that he decided to enter the ministry” (1:362). He studied at the Theological Seminary of the Associate Church in Canonsburg. Licensed in 1834, he was ordained the following year for his call to three congregations in and around Carlisle. When Rev. McGill left the Associate Church to accept a call to the Second Presbyterian Church (Old School) in Carlisle, the Associate Church suspended him from the ministry, but the Old School presbytery refused to recognize the action (Calhoun, 1:362). McGill had changed his views with respect to three particular areas of Associate Church doctrine. Later, the Associate Presbytery apologized to A. T. McGill for their acting “hastily and with undue severity” in suspending him from the ministry. The new Old School minister was installed in the Carlisle church, December 29 1838.

Alexander McGill’s next change in call would take him from the pastoral ministry to Western Theological Seminary where he would serve as a professor of ecclesiastical history and church government, 1842-1852 and 1853-1854. During the first two years of his teaching, the seminary enrollment grew from seventeen to fifty-four students. The gap in his years of service was due to fatigue from his busy schedule and the hope that a Southern location would again rejuvenate him, so he served for only one year at Columbia Seminary in South Carolina. McGill returned to Allegheny until he was elected a professor at Princeton Seminary by the Old School General Assembly.

McGill had a difficult ministry ahead of him because he was to fill the shoes of Archibald Alexander who had died in 1851. The Assembly had already called E. P. Humphrey and then Henry A. Boardman to serve, but both declined their elections to the professorship. Charles Hodge was greatly concerned about the faculty situation at Princeton. At the Assembly in Buffalo, 1854, Dr. Hodge made an impassioned speech for the election of McGill swaying the house to elect Alexander McGill as the Professor of Pastoral Theology, Church Government, and Homiletics.

Dr. McGill died on the Sabbath of January 13, 1889. William Henry Green led the funeral service for his fallen colleague and described him as a passionate preacher, concerned for his students, and a true friend. Dr. McGill had been married twice. His first wife was Eleanor Atcheson McCulloch, daughter of Congressman and General George McCulloch of Lewistown, Pennsylvania. They had eight children together, one of whom died in infancy. Following Eleanor’s death in 1873, McGill married Catharine Bache Hodge, the daughter of Charles Hodge, in 1875. Catharine died on July 3, 1884.

Dr. McGill was the moderator of the 1848 Old School General Assembly and served as the stated clerk of the Assembly, 1862-1870. He was honored with the Doctor of Divinity by Marshall College, Pennsylvania, 1842, and the LL. D. by Princeton College, 1868. He was on the committee of the Assembly appointed to revise the Book of Discipline in 1857, which included Charles Hodge, R. J. Breckinridge, J. H. Thornwell, and James Hoge among others. Most of his publications are sermons, periodical articles, and lectures, but he did publish the book, Church Government, A Treatise Compiled from His Lectures in Theological Seminaries by Alexander T. McGill, Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, circa 1888.

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Sources: The biography has been compiled from nineteenth-century published sources except for David B. Calhoun’s two volume set, Princeton Seminary, Faith and Learning, 1812-1868, 1994, and Princeton Seminary, 1869-1929, The Majestic Testimony, 1996, both of which were published by Banner of Truth.