FISHER, DANIEL WEBSTER: 1838-1913.
" Daniel Webster Fisher … for twenty-elght years president of Hanover College, Ind. , was born at a place called Arch Spring , in Sinking Valley , then a part of Huntingdon County, Pa. His father, Daniel, was a well-to-do farmer of German descent who had married a woman of Dutch ancestry, Martha Middleswarth. When he was fourteen years of age young Daniel entered Milnwood Academy, located at Shade Gap, and later finished his preparation for college at Airy View Academy. He graduated from Jefferson College in 1857, and from the Western Theological Seminary three years later. In Apr. 1860, having been accepted by the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions for service and appointed to Siam, he was ordained by the Presbytery of Huntingdon . On the 25th of the same month he married Amanda D. Kouns, daughter of Michael Kouns of Ravenswood, Va. (now W. Va.). The illness of his wife as they were about to sail for their foreign station caused them to postpone the journey, and ultimately led him to resign his appointment. In the autumn of 1860 he took charge of the Thalia Street Church, New Orleans , but owing to the outbreak of the Civil War, he returned North in June of the following year. From 1861 to 1876 he was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Wheeling, W. Va. A trip abroad followed. Upon his return he supplied various churches, and had been ministering for a year and a half to the Second Presbyterian Church, Madison, Ind., when on July 8, 1879, he was elected president of Hanover College. The institution was financially embarrassed and its existence in jeopardy, but under his administrative skill it was kept alive through the crisis, and as the years went on it increased in endowment, buildings, and efficiency. During the twenty-eight years of his presidency, he continued active in the affairs of his denomination … After his resignation as president of Hanover he lived at Washington, D. C., and engaged in writing …"
Condensed from H. E. S., Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. VI.
- A Human Life, an Autobiography with Excursuses.
New York, 1909.
- The Unification of the Churches: a Present Day Study.
New York, 1911.
- Calvin Wilson Mateer, Forty-Five Years a Missionary in
Shantung, China: a Biography.
Philadelphia, 1911.
