Welcome

I'm pleased to welcome you to my blog on Mercer University, started in 1833 in a log cabin at Penfield and now a full-fledged university on campuses in Macon, Atlanta, and Savannah.. During its first 37 years Mercer was essentially owned and operated by Georgia Baptist Association.

William T. Johnson

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Mercer University and its Acting President J. E. Willet


Joseph Edgerton Willet, Acting President 1893

Joseph Edgerton Willett
  • Educator, scientist (1826-1897); A.B., A.M., M.D., LL.D. degrees; married to Emily Sanders (1851)
  • Unexpectedly elected professor of natural philosophy and chemistry while attending commencement in 1847, a position he occupied for forty-six years, and becoming a mainstay of Mercer's faculty during the years immediately before and during the Civil War
  • Became acting president between Tucker and Battle, and then Nunnally and Gambrell
  • Known by Edwin S. Davis of Macon, a student in one of the last classes Willet taught at Mercer, as a "learned scientist, who was respected by the student body because of his abundant store of knowledge, and was admired for his genius to teach....With him a lesson in chemistry was also a lesson in courtesy."

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