A PRESIDENTIAL RETROSPECTIVE: NOAH CALVIN HIRSCHY

Bluffton's first president
1900 - 1908

Noah Hirschy was born February 25, 1867, near Berne, Indiana, and married Augusta Hunsberger of Wadsworth, Ohio, on September 5, 1895, three years after accepting a call to become minister of a Mennonite congregation in that same town. Early in his ministry, Hirschy was a leading voice in the movement to establish a school for the Middle District Conference. In 1896-1897 he was appointed to committees commissioned to draft plans for a conference college.

Noah Hirschy delivered the principal address at the laying of the cornerstone of the first building of Central Mennonite College on June 19, 1900. After being asked many times, he accepted the presidency in 1900 of what would later become Bluffton College but did not take up residence at Bluffton until 1901. He guided the college through the troublous initial years, resigning in 1908 to accept the presidency of Redfield College, Redfield, South Dakota. In 1906 he received his master's degree from the University of Chicago and in 1907 his doctorate of philosophy from the University of Bern in Switzerland. Following his time in South Dakota, and later in Minnesota and Texas, he joined the faculty of Berea College in Kentucky in 1920, where he served as head of the botany department until his death in 1925.

Quoted and adapted from "Hirschy, Noah Calvin." The Mennonite Encyclopedia. Volume 2. Mennonite Brethren Publishing House, 1955-1990.

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Artaxerxes III Ochus and his reign : with special consideration of the Old Testament sources bearing upon the period ... , published by University of Chicago Press in 1909. See this book in WorldCat.