Jeremiah Rankin

Who was Jeremiah Rankin?

Jeremiah Eames Rankin was an abolitionist, champion of the temperance movement, minister of Washington D.C.'s First Congregational Church, and correspondent with Frederick Douglass. In 1889 he was appointed sixth president of Howard College in Washington, D.C. Howard University's Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel was built during Jeremiah Rankin's tenure as president and named after his brother. Rankin is best known as author of the hymns "God Be with You 'Til we Meet Again" and "Tell It to Jesus." In 1903 Rankin published a fictional journal of Esther Burr.

Rankin was born in Thornton, New Hampshire and graduated from Middlebury College in 1848. After completing his seminary studies at Andover in 1854, he served as pastor of Presbyterian and Congregational churches in New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. He was awarded a doctorate from Middlebury College in 1869. From 1870 on he was closely associated with Howard College, as trustee, professor of homiletics and pastoral theology, and president. He served twice as delegate to general conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and once to the Congregational union of England and Wales.