John BRECKINRIDGE

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  General Notes:

Taken from the Biographical Encyclopaedia of Kentucky of the Dead and Living Men of the Nineteenth Century. Published by J. M. Armstrong & Company, Cincinnati, Ohio 1878.
Rev. John Breckinridge (July 1797 - August 1841)
Rev. John Breckinridge* lawyer, D.D., was born July 4, 1797, at Cabell's Dale, Fayette County, Kentucky, and was the second son of Hon. John Breckinridge and his wife, Mary Hopkins Cabell. He received his early education in Kentucky and graduated with high honor at Princeton College, in 1818. He united with the Presbyterian Church while at Princeton College and chose the ministry as his profession; he entered the Theological Seminary at Princeton, and in due time was licensed and ordained; in 1822 he acted as chaplain of the Lower House of Congress; from 1823 to 1826, was pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church of Lexington, Kentucky; from 1826 to 1831, was pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Baltimore; from the latter date until 1836 he was at the head of the Presbyterian Board of Education; he became professor in the Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey, in 1836; from 1838 to 1840, was secretary and general agent for the church board of foreign missions; at this time he wrote voluminously; he became exceedingly popular as a preacher, platform speaker and controversialist and carried on public debates with Archbishop Hughes on Catholicism. Failing in health he spent the winter of 1840 in New Orleans, and while there was elected to the presidency of Oglethorpe University in Georgia. He died August 4, 1841, at Cabell's Dale. "He was a man of extraordinary powers; gentle and refined in manners, jet ardent, intrepid, and vigorous; was universally admired, and was one of the most popular ministers of his church; was an orator of rare force and magnetic influence; was above middle stature, and possessing great activity and strength and in his personal, social, public and private character was a man of matchless excellence." Mr. Breckinridge was twice married, first to Margaret Miller, daughter of Rev. Samuel Miller, a distinguished professor of Princeton College, and afterwards to Miss Maley Babcock, born in Connecticut. He left but one son, Judge Samuel M. Breckinridge, a distinguished lawyer of St. Louis. One daughter, Mary Cabell, married Peter Porter and died of cholera in 1852, and another one, Margaret, nursed the wounded soldiers of the Union army and died from a malady brought on by those exhausting efforts.

John married.