Jesse Appleton

Jesse Appleton
2nd President of Bowdoin College
Term	1809 – 1819
Predecessor	Joseph McKeen
Successor	William Allen
Born	November 17, 1772
Died	November 12, 1819(1819-11-12) (aged 46)
Alma mater	Dartmouth College
Residence	Brunswick, Maine
Profession	professor
Website	http://library.bowdoin.edu/arch/mss/jag.shtml

Jesse Appleton (November 17, 1772 – November 12, 1819), son of Francis Appleton and Elizabeth Hubbard, was the second president of Bowdoin College and the father of First Lady Jane Pierce.

Life and career

After having graduated from Dartmouth College in 1792, Appleton taught at several institutions including Amherst College and then worked at a parish in Hampton, New Hampshire. In the early 19th century, he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity from both Dartmouth and Harvard University. In 1807, he was appointed president of Bowdoin, where he remained until he died of tuberculosis in 1819. A congregationalist minister and prominent Christian lecturer, Appleton was notably determined to make Bowdoin students more pious. He worked at the school, right before it reached its full prominence in the 1820s, when Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Franklin Pierce attended. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1810.^[1]

He married Elizabeth Means, daughter of Robert Means (Stewartstown, County Tyrone, Ireland, August 23, 1742 – Amherst, New Hampshire, January 24, 1823^[2]) and wife (m. November 24, 1774) Mary McGregor (December 6, 1752 – January 14, 1838), and was the father of five children who survived through infancy, including Jane who would become First Lady to President Pierce, and Frances who would marry famed Bowdoin professor Alpheus Spring Packard, Sr. In 1837, Packard went on to edit The Works of Rev. Jesse Appleton, D.D., with a Memoir of His Life and Character. His wife's sister was Mary Means (Amherst, New Hampshire, October 20, 1777 – April 12, 1858), married on November 6, 1799 to Jeremiah Mason.

References

1. ^ "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter A". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterA.pdf. Retrieved 19 April 2011. 
2. ^ Daniel F. Secomb, History of the Town of Amherst (1883), p. 689

External links

• Jesse Appleton Collection at Bowdoin Library (with biographical information)
• Jesse Appleton, Lectures, delivered at Bowdoin college, and occasional sermons, 1822 (at Google Books)
• Jesse Appleton, An address, delivered before the Massachusetts Society for Suppressing Intemperance: at their anniversary meeting, May 31, 1816, 1816.
•  "Appleton, Jesse". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900. 

Preceded by Joseph McKeen

President of Bowdoin College 1807–19

Succeeded by William Allen

Persondata
Name	Appleton, Jesse
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	November 17, 1772
Place of birth
Date of death	November 12, 1819
Place of death