Hillary Asbury Gobin papers

Hillary Asbury Gobin was born in Terre Haute, Indiana on March 25, 1842. He served in the Union Army during the Civil War and graduated from Indiana Asbury University, now DePauw University, in 1870. After 10 years in the Methodist ministry he returned to his alma mater as professor of Greek and then became president of Baker University in Kansas in 1886. Four years later DePauw recalled him to become dean of the School of Theology. Gobin was also named university vice president in 1894 and served as acting president for a year following John's resignation. In 1896 he succeeded to the presidency, an office he filled with quiet competence for the next seven years.

The mild-mannered, highly respected Gobin gave the university the conservative, conciliatory leadership it needed after the turbulence and innovation of the presidency of John Price Durbin John. He had to decree the closing of his own School of Theology in 1898 as part of a general retrenchment and to preside over the demise of the popular military department the next year, when the federal government ended its support for the program during the Spanish-American War.

The Gobin administration proved to be a transitional one in many respects. It was the last administration to make a serious effort to enforce the traditional compulsory attendance at daily chapel and Sunday morning church services, though students were still "expected" to attend these functions for some time to come. Hillary Gobin himself was also the last president to make his presence felt in the classroom on a regular basis, continuing to carry on the old-time presidential responsibility for the teaching of philosophy and religion.

In 1903 Gobin resigned the presidency but remained on the faculty as professor of theology and English Bible until his retirement in 1922 at the age of 81. He died in Greencastle the following year on March 18, 1923. A few years after his death, plans were made for the erection of a building bearing his name to be used by both the Methodist Church and DePauw classes in philosophy and religion, but this project did not materialize. Instead the neo-Gothic church constructed on Locust Street in 1929 was named for him and remains today his chief monument as the Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church.