Jeremiah Chamberlain

Jeremiah Chamberlain (January 5, 1794 – September 5, 1851) was an American Presbyterian minister, educator and college administrator. He was president of three institutions of higher education between 1823 and 1851, specifically Centre College (1823–1826), the College of Louisiana (1826–1828), and Oakland College (1830–1851).

Born in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to a former Continental Army colonel, Chamberlain studied under David McConaughy in his youth before enrolling at Dickinson College. He graduated from Dickinson in 1814 and later from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1817. Following a mission trip, he took his first pastorate at a Presbyterian church in Bedford, Pennsylvania, where he stayed from 1818 to 1822. He left upon his election as president of Centre College, which had been chartered nearly four years earlier and was struggling financially. During his time in Danville, Centre awarded its first five degrees and transferred governing authority to the church in exchange for financial support. Chamberlain left Centre in 1826 to become president of the College of Louisiana, a predecessor of Centenary College of Louisiana, and stayed until 1828. He then moved to Mississippi and made plans, later approved by the church, to open a school in Claiborne County. The school opened as Oakland College in May 1830; Chamberlain was its first president. He was strongly anti-slavery and helped to create the Mississippi Colonization Society during the 1830s.

Chamberlain was murdered at his home in 1851 by a local landowner named George Briscoe, who struck Chamberlain with a whip several times before fatally stabbing him in the chest. Most reports agree that the men were engaged in an argument, though the subject of the argument is disputed; some blame Chamberlain's anti-secession and anti-slavery views, while other reports make note of a student that was recently expelled from Oakland for a pro-secession speech as a possible motive. Chamberlain was buried two days later in Oakland College Cemetery, the same day Briscoe's body was found following his purported suicide. Oakland ultimately did not survive the Civil War and the death of another of its presidents; the campus was sold to the state of Mississippi in 1871 and reopened as what is now Alcorn State University.