BIO:  Rev. Edmund J. WOLF, D.D., Gettysburg, Adams County, PA

Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Kathy Francis

Copyright 2005.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/adams/
_______________________________________________ 

History of Cumberland and Adams Counties, Pennsylvania
Chicago:  Warner, Beers & Co., 1886
_______________________________________________ 

Part III, History of Adams County, Page 377

REV. EDMUND J. WOLF. D.D., professor of Biblical and Ecclesiastical History and 
New Testament Exegesis, in the Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, elected in 
1873, is a native of Center County, Penn., born near Rebersburg, December 8, 
1840, a son of Jacob (a farmer by occupation) and Mary (Gast) Wolf, natives of 
Pennsylvania, and of German origin.  Our subject, who is next to the youngest of 
nine children, attended the district schools of the neighborhood, and, for a 
time, the academy at Mifflinburg, and subsequently that at Aaronsburg.  He 
clerked for a period, and prepared himself for college during the two years he 
was engaged as a teacher in the academy of Bellefonte, Penn., and in 1860, 
entered the sophomore class in Pennsylvania College, and graduated in 1863, 
taking the first honors of his class.  During the invasion of the State that 
year by the Confederate troops, he served as a non-commissioned officer in the 
Twenty-sixth Regiment, Pennsylvania Militia.  Subsequently he took a course of 
theological study at the Seminary of Gettysburg; then pursued his studies in 
Germany, where he attended the Universities of Tübingen and Erlangen.  He 
returned to the United States in 1865, and was for two years engaged in 
ministerial work in Northumberland County, Penn., and for six years in the city 
of Baltimore.  In addition to the professorship above given, Dr. Wolf for 
several years taught Dogmatic Theology in the seminary, and since 1880 he is 
joint editor of the Quarterly Review of the Lutheran Church.  The degree of D.D. 
was conferred on him in 1876 by Franklin and Marshall College.  In 1871 he was 
the alumni speaker of the seminary.  He has twice visited Europe, and traveled 
extensively through England, Germany, France and Switzerland.  In 1877 he 
declined the presidency of Roanoke College in Virginia.  In 1865 Dr. Wolf was 
married to Miss Ella Kemp, of Reisterstown, Md., a daughter of John and Ellen 
Kemp, the former of German and the latter of Scotch-Irish descent, and to the 
marriage have been born M. Roberta, attending Wellesley College; Edmund J., now 
a sophomore in Pennsylvania College; Charles S., Carroll K., Robbin B. and Ethel 
S.  Among the Doctor’s publications are “the Christian Church” (translated); 
“Quarterly Review, XX., 418;” “Practical Expositions of the Scriptures” 
(translated); “Lutheran Quarterly, II, 179;” “The Retreat of Science on the 
Antiquity of the Human Race” (translated), Ib. III, 450; “Inaugural Address,” 
Ib. IV, 419; article on “Lutheran Church in America,” in the Schaff-Herzog 
Encyclopedia; “The Church’s Future;” “The Drama of Providence on the Eve of the 
Reformation;” sermons in the Homiletic Review” and the “Pulpit Treasury,” etc.  
Dr. Wolf is a frequent contributor to various religious periodicals, and is a 
member of the society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis.