John Jay Shipherd
Title
John Jay Shipherd
Description
John Jay Shipherd co-founded both the community and college of Oberlin in 1833. Shipherd, a x pastor, wanted to create a community and a college that would adhere to Christian values, simple living, and an ethic of service to others. He named Oberlin in honor of John Frederick Oberlin, an Alsatian pastor whose life embodied the values and practices that Shipherd wanted for his new settlement. Shipherd died in 1844 in Olivet, Michigan, where he had travelled to found another Christian community. The picture included here is that of his tombstone since there are no known surviving images of Shipherd.
Birth Date
March 28, 1802
Birthplace
Granville, New York
Death Date
September 16, 1844
Occupation
Minister
Biographical Text
John Jay Shipherd was born in New York and briefly worked for the marble business in Vermont before training as a minister there. In 1831, Shipherd heeded a call by the Congregational and Presbyterian churches to bring Christian practices to settlers in America's west, which at that time included Ohio.
Shipherd assumed a pastorship in Elyria, Ohio in 1831 but he was disillusioned by what he saw as immorality and selfishness among the city residents. After reading a biography of John Frederick Oberlin, a pastor from Alsace, France, who helped improve his community by building roads and schools, Shipherd decided that he wanted to begin his own religious community with an institution of higher learning where families could practice simple Christian living and students could train to be of service to the world.
In the summer of 1832, Shipherd and his childhood friend, Philo P. Stewart, left Elyria on horseback and rode eight miles south. Praying under an Elm tree in a wooded area in what is now Tappan Square, they decided this was where they wanted to build their new community and college. They named both in honor of the Alsatian pastor, J.F. Oberlin.
In the fall of 1832, Shipherd travelled to Connecticut to secure the land and was able to convince its owners to donate 500 acres of land for the school and to sell him 5000 acres of land at the price of $1.50 an acre for the town. Shipherd raised money for the colony, recruited families to join the community, and officially moved to the new settlement of Oberlin in September 1833. The college opened in December and attracted students by allowing them to pay for their tuition by doing manual labor for the school and community, a practice embodied in the college motto, "Learning and Labor."
Shipherd dreamed of founding similar communities and colleges farther west and embarked on several failed attempts to do so in the late 1830s. In 1844, with the help of faculty and students from Oberlin, Shipherd founded Olivet College in Olivet, Michigan. He died in Olivet that same year of malaria.
Both Shipherd and Oberlin's other co-founder Philo Stewart are remembered today with dorms at the college named in their honor and in the city street names of Shipherd Circle and Stewart Court.
Shipherd assumed a pastorship in Elyria, Ohio in 1831 but he was disillusioned by what he saw as immorality and selfishness among the city residents. After reading a biography of John Frederick Oberlin, a pastor from Alsace, France, who helped improve his community by building roads and schools, Shipherd decided that he wanted to begin his own religious community with an institution of higher learning where families could practice simple Christian living and students could train to be of service to the world.
In the summer of 1832, Shipherd and his childhood friend, Philo P. Stewart, left Elyria on horseback and rode eight miles south. Praying under an Elm tree in a wooded area in what is now Tappan Square, they decided this was where they wanted to build their new community and college. They named both in honor of the Alsatian pastor, J.F. Oberlin.
In the fall of 1832, Shipherd travelled to Connecticut to secure the land and was able to convince its owners to donate 500 acres of land for the school and to sell him 5000 acres of land at the price of $1.50 an acre for the town. Shipherd raised money for the colony, recruited families to join the community, and officially moved to the new settlement of Oberlin in September 1833. The college opened in December and attracted students by allowing them to pay for their tuition by doing manual labor for the school and community, a practice embodied in the college motto, "Learning and Labor."
Shipherd dreamed of founding similar communities and colleges farther west and embarked on several failed attempts to do so in the late 1830s. In 1844, with the help of faculty and students from Oberlin, Shipherd founded Olivet College in Olivet, Michigan. He died in Olivet that same year of malaria.
Both Shipherd and Oberlin's other co-founder Philo Stewart are remembered today with dorms at the college named in their honor and in the city street names of Shipherd Circle and Stewart Court.
Files
Citation
“John Jay Shipherd,” Oberlin Community History Hub, accessed May 3, 2024, https://megansmitchell.org/DH694/items/show/142.