Biography

Nathan Sidney Smith Beman, D.D., was born in Canaan, N.Y. on November 26, 1785. He was a son of Samuel and Silence (Douglass) Beman. When he was four or five years of age his parents moved to Hampton, Washington County, N.Y., then called Greenfield.

Beman commenced his preparation for college – in company with the late Hon. Rolin C. Mallory – in Poultney, VT. in 1801 with Mr. Bolles, an eminent teacher and graduate of the University of Dublin. In 1802 he studied with a private instructor at Williamstown, Mass. He entered Williams College in 1803, but the following year took leave to teach in Fairhaven, Vt. In the summer of 1804 he entered Middlebury College, graduating in the class of 1807.

After graduating he became preceptor, in the autumn of 1807 of Lincoln Academy in Newcastle, ME where he remained more than two years, at the same time pursuing the study of theology. He was licensed to preach June 14, 1809 by the Lincoln and Kennebec Association. About the same time he was appointed tutor at Middlebury but received an earnest call from the Third Presbyterian Church in Portland, ME. As a result, he resigned the tutorship and was ordained pastor on March 14, 1810. Rev. Beman’s health failed in a year or two, with decided symptoms of consumption, and in October, 1812, he was dismissed. He immediately went south and took up his residence in Hancock County, Georgia, at a place afterward called Mount Zion, where he organized a Presbyterian Church and established an academy. Under his superintendence, which continued about ten years, the academy acquired a high reputation and attracted a large number of students.

In 1818 he was elected President of Franklin College in Athens, Ga. He accepted the office, but held it for only one year and then returned to his academy at Mount Zion. In the summer of 1822 he preached on the first Sunday in September in the First Presbyterian Church in Troy, N.Y., and by invitation of the officers continued until the following November, when he was called to the pastorate. He accepted the call, and was installed June 14, 1823. In this pastorate he continued for forty years, during which time he received into the church 1,840 members, of which twenty-six became clergymen. He was dismissed June 17, 1863 at his own request, and the church voted him a life annuity of $1,000.

In 1824, he was elected a trustee of Middlebury College, and continued so until his death. In 1846 he was elected president of the college, but declined the office. He received the degree of doctor of divinity, from Williams College in 1824, and doctor of laws from Middlebury College in 1852. Dr. Beman was one of the vice presidents of Rensselaer from 1842 to 1845, and was president from 1845 to 1865.

Beman died in Carbondale, Ill. on August 6, 1871.

Excerpt from Nason, Henry B., ed. Biographical Record of the Officers and Graduates of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1824-1886. Troy, NY: William H. Young, 1887, pp. 30-33.

Chronology:

President of Rensselaer Institute

1845-1861

Chronology:

President Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

1861-1865

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