TRUMBULL COUNTY OHIO - BIOS: NUTT, Cyrus, D.D., L.L.D. (published 1875)
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AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE STATE OF INDIANA
Richard S. Peale & Co., Publishers, 1875
Page 625-628

                        CYRUS NUTT, D.D., LL.D.
        He was born in Trumbull county, Ohio, September fourth, 1814. His
educational opportunities were necessarily limited in so new a country. His
parents were well versed in the common branches of education, and he was
taught reading, writing, arithmetic, geography and grammar at home during
such leisure hours as could be redeemed from manual labor. He however
attended the country school in his neighborhood, when in session, which was
about three months in the year. Such was young Nutt's desire for a liberal
education that he improved every opportunity for the acquisition of
learning; and when at the age of eighteen, his father proposed to deed him
a piece of land in consideration of his faithful labors on the farm, he
told him he would rather have a good education than any property. His
father first spoke discouragingly, but finally agreed to give him his time
and let him get an education by working his own way. He immediately went to
an academy to prepare himself for college, and in four years from that time
he graduated at Alleghany College, Meadville, Pa., having supported himself
by teaching during the winters and at the same time keeping up his studies.
He graduated in 1836, and was immediately appointed preceptor of the
preparatory department in the same institution; which position he filled
for six months, when he was elected to the charge of the preparatory
department of Indiana Asbury University, which had just been chartered by
the legislature of Indiana. Mr. Nutt was converted at a campmeeting when in
his nineteenth year. He was appointed to the charge of a class of young men
as class-leader while in college. He was licensed to exhort, and then to
preach; and he preached his first sermon at Greencastle soon after his arrival.
        The first meeting of the trustees of Indiana Asbury University was
held in March, 1837, at which time Dr. Nutt was elected preceptor of the
preparatory department, and arrangements were made to have that department
opened at an early day. It required seven or eight days at that time to
make the trip from Meadville, where Mr. Nutt then resided, to Greencastle,
by the most speedy mode of travel, which was stage and steamboat. Dr. Nutt
left Meadville about the seventh of May, and traveled by stage to
Pittsburg, and thence by steamboat to Cincinnati, and thence by stage to
Greencastle, where he arrived on the sixteenth of the same month -having
walked, however, from Putnamville to Greencastle, as there was, at that
day, no public conveyance from the outside world to Greencastle.
        Dr. Nutt entered upon his duties at Greencastle on the fifth of
June, 1837, commencing the preparatory department in a small, one-story
brick building, with only two rooms; the larger of which was occupied by
the town school. The smaller room was then the only place available; and
there Dr. Nutt began the literary instruction of this since renowned
university of the west. At the meeting of the board of trustee, in
September of the same year, he was elected professor of languages. In 1841
he was elected professor of the Greek language and literature, and Hebrew,
which position he held until 1843, when he resigned and took pastoral work
in Indiana Conference, and was appointed to Bloomington station. He had
been admitted into the conference at its session in Rockville, in 1838, and
ordained deacon by Bishop Soule, at Indianapolis in 1840, and elder by
Bishop Morris, at the conference in Centerville, in 1842. He remained in
charge of Bloomington station two years, and the year following was at
Salem. His ministry was eminently successful in both of these charges. In
the fall of 1846, he returned to the university, having been elected to the
chair of Greek language and literature, made vacant by the resignation of
Prof. B. F. Tefit, who took charge of the Ladies' Repository, at
Cincinnati. In 1849, Dr. Nutt was elected president of Fort Wayne Female
College, which he accepted and held for one year, when he resigned and
accepted the presidency of Whitewater College, which had been tendered him
by the trustees of that institution, the climate of northern Indiana not
agreeing with Mrs. Nutt, who was a native of Kentucky. He entered upon the
duties of the presidency of Whitewater College, at Centerville, Indiana, in
the fall of 1850. The school flourished under his administration, and the
number of students increased from one hundred and forty to more than three
hundred. During the whole of this time he held the position either of
trustee of Conference visitor to Indiana Asbury University, and took a
lively interest in all the affairs of the church. He remained five years at
the head of Whitewater College, when he resigned to enter again upon the
work of the ministry, and at the session of the North Indiana Conference,
at Goshen, in 1855, he was appointed presiding elder on the Richmond
district, where he remained two years; during which an almost constant
revival was in progress nearly all over the district.
        In the fall of 1857, he was elected to the chair of Mathematics in
Indiana Asbury University. He was also elected vice-president of the
Faculty. Hon. David McDonald, who had been elected to the presidency of the
university devolved upon Dr. Nutt for nearly two years, during one of the
most critical and important periods in its history, until Rev. Thos.
Bowman, D.D., took charge of the institution in the spring of 1859. The
university was conducted with great skill and success by Dr. Nutt and his
associates, and fully recovered from the disaster that had unfortunately
overtaken it in 1856-57. In 1839, he received the degree of A.M. from his
Alma Mater, Allegheny College. In 1859, he received the degree of Doctor of
Divinity from the Ohio Wesleyan University and in 1873, the degree of
Doctor of Laws, from Hanover College, and also from the University of
Missouri. In 1860, he was a delegate to the General Conference, held at
Buffalo, from Northern Indiana Conference leading his delegation, and
served in that memorable session as member of the committee on the
Epsicopacy, and also on the committees on Education, Judiciary, and Lay
Delegation, and proved himself an industrious and useful delegate. He also
served as a delegate from Indiana Conference to the General Conference,
which met at Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1872, and was elected secretary of the
committee on the State of Church, besides being a member and doing service
on several other important committees.
        In 1860, Dr. Nutt was elected president of the Indiana State
University at Bloomington, which position he still holds (1875) and under
his prudent and skillful management the State university has greatly
prospered. Five new chairs have been added to its course of instructions, a
medical department, and a department of civil engineering have been
created, the number of the faculty have been increased from six to
twenty-six, the number of students, from about one hundred, to three
hundred and fifty-eight, the annual income from five thousand six hundred
dollars, to thirty thousand five hundred, the number of the alumni from two
hundred and forty-two, to nine hundred and seventy three, the library from
one thousand five hundred volumes, to near eight thousand. The cabinet is
now one of the best in the west, and a new and beautiful building has been
completed, and all the facilities for instruction have been greatly
enlarged. The Indiana university now justly ranks among the very best in
the land.
        The Sate university has prospered beyond precedent since Dr. Nutt
has been at the head of its affairs. Dr. Nutt was elected president of Iowa
State University in 1842, but declined to accept. He was a member of the
State Teachers' Association, and established the Indiana School Journal. He
was elected and served as president of the State Teachers' Association in
1863, and has been a member of the State Board of Education for nine years.
Both as a minister of the gospel and an educator, Dr. Nutt has been
eminently successful, and will leave upon the generation that comes after
him an abiding impression for good.

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