Degree Recipient

Life Experience

Born in 1802 to Martha Evans, one of the surviving captives of the 1786 Abb’s Valley Massacre in Virginia, Michael Hummer was educated at the Academy of John I. Morris in Salem, Indiana, and in Oxford, Ohio. He was one of the first ten students to attend what would later become IU, when the Indiana State Seminary doors opened in April 1825. A member of Indiana College’s first graduating class in 1830, he later graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey.

Hummer was a minister of the Gospel. He served as stated supply (a traveling minister) in Lafayette, Indiana (from 1836 to 1837), as a pastor in Stevenson, Illinois, and at multiple locations in Iowa and Kansas. In June 1841, he organized the Scotch Grove Presbyterian Church in Iowa. In 1847, he co-founded Iowa City’s first Presbyterian church. From 1870 to 1877, he was a missionary preacher in Davenport, Iowa; Washington, Kansas; Lawrence, Kansas; and Wyandotte, Kansas; where he resided at the time of his death.

Also a supporter of education, Hummer was elected president of Des Moines College in Iowa, and served as superintendent of public instruction in Kansas.

Interesting Anecdote

During the Civil War, Hummer stood up to Confederate soldiers during a raid in Lawrence, Kansas.

References

1. Wylie
2. blog.icpl.org/tag/local-history/
3. iagenweb.org/jones/history/twpstowns/
4. Banta, David D. “The Indiana Seminary” within Wylie
5. Banta (1889)
6. Banta (1891)