William Tennent

William Tennent 1673-1745, American Presbyterian clergyman and educator, b. Ireland, grad. Univ. of Edinburgh, 1695. He was ordained in the Church of Ireland in 1706. He emigrated to America c.1718; in 1726 he was called to a pastorate in Neshaminy, Pa., where he stayed the remainder of his life. Here, in a log cabin, Tennent established a school that became famous as the Log College. He filled his pupils with evangelical zeal, and a number became revivalist preachers in the Great Awakening . The educational influence of the Log College was of importance since many of its graduates founded schools along the frontier. Princeton Univ. is regarded as a successor to the Log College.

Bibliography: See T. Murphy, The Presbytery of the Log College (1889); A. Alexander, The Log College (1968).

Great Awakening, The, series of religious revivals, which began (c. 1734) with the evangelicalism of Jonathan Edwards. Revivalism was soon spread by such leaders as Theodore Frelinghuysen of the New Jersey Dutch Reformed Church; Gilbert Tennent, a New Jersey Presbyterian; and such lesser men as Benjamin Colman, Joseph Bellamy, George Whitefield, and James Davenport. Although the movement centered in New England, it extended throughout the colonies (c. 1740–50). After the emotional fervor had spent its force in New England, a controversy developed between the New Lights of western Massachusetts, who held to the theology of Edwards, and the Old Lights of Boston, who were led by Charles Chauncy, and developed a liberalism that culminated in Unitarianism. A similar division in the Presbyterian Church split into a New Side and an Old Side, the former led by William and Gilbert Tennent, being instrumental in the founding of Princeton University. The original frenzied revival occasioned renewed missionary work among the Indians, in which Eleazar Wheelock was active, and which led to the founding of Dartmouth College.