Biographical Details
Date of Birth: April 8, 1821
Birth Location: Harrison County, IN, USA
Graduation Year(s): 1846
Degree(s) Earned: Bachelors
Date of Death: June 27, 1901
Death Location: Hartsville, IN, USA
Date of Birth: April 8, 1821
Birth Location: Harrison County, IN, USA
Graduation Year(s): 1846
Degree(s) Earned: Bachelors
Date of Death: June 27, 1901
Death Location: Hartsville, IN, USA
David Shuck was born to a pastor and his wife in Indiana in 1821. He was the fifth of seven children, but he was only the second to survive past infancy. He was educated in the common schools of Harrison County, Indiana. In 1834, his mother, Mary, died. His father remarried and had three more children, the last of which was born in 1846, the same year Shuck graduated from IU. In 1847, his sister, Susannah, named her son, David Shuck Riley, in his honor.
From 1852 to 1855, Shuck was president of Hartsville University. He took a course of lectures in medicine at Louisville University and entered the ministry in 1853. He worked as a preacher and a teacher in Louisiana, Mississippi, Indiana, Illinois, and Kansas. He was an elder in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ.
From 1855 to 1865, Shuck was a professor at Hartsville University. His niece, Celia Gibbs, who had earned a master’s degree in 1859, was hired in 1865 to teach at Hartsville University. She was one of the first female college instructors in the U.S. Hartsville University later awarded Shuck with a Doctor of Divinity degree.
In 1865, Shuck moved to Lecompton, Kansas. The town was in a period of decline, and the churches were no longer attended. The new church he began pastoring was the only active church in the area, and people would come from miles around to attend. He was president of Lane University from 1866 to 1870 and again in 1874. He died in 1901.
In 1866, Shuck’s wife, Josephine, gave birth to their only child, Sadie. In 1881, four of his niece Mary’s eight children died of scarlet fever over a three-week period. His father died in 1883. In 1884, the Shucks’ daughter, Sadie, married. Sadie gave him eleven grandchildren to dote on before his death in 1901.
Shuck’s tombstone monument bears the inscription, “A Powerful Preacher,” and the notation, “Erected by Students and Teachers.”