<< Back

Joseph Tingley, a graduate of Indiana Asbury in the class of 1845 who began his career at his alma mater as tutor in mathematics, held the professorship of natural science for 30 years, from 1849 to 1879. An energetic and enterprising teacher, he dabbled in photography and drawing and campaigned in the classroom and on the lecture platform against the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin. After 1860 he also served as vice president of the university. One of his students recalled that:

Dr. Tingley was a man to be loved and honored; a man of fine presence, high quality of nature, lofty aspirations, marked dignity of character and of sweet spirit, a person of singular equipoise of faculties, with a genius for scientific investigation and inventive insight, refined in manners, a cultured Christian gentleman, with a warm heart and a deep and broad soul.

Another student, not long before being killed in battle, wrote of him in his diary for June 6, 1862: "I went out from his presence, having found him to be a real honest, sensible, civilized being."

_________________________________________________

Joseph Tingley, a graduate of Indiana Asbury, was professor
of Natural Science at the university from 1847-79.

_________________________________________________

In 1879 Tingley was forced to resign his university posts by President Alexander Martin and the board of trustees under circumstances that remain very mysterious. The faculty extended him a vote of appreciation, however, and some years later a room was named for him in East College, where his portrait hangs today. After leaving Greencastle, Tingley served as a professor at various normal schools and as a civil engineer for the Kansas City Cable Railroad. Both a brother and son graduated from Old Asbury, and Tingley himself apparently harbored little or no resentment against the institution.
Upon his death in 1892 his body was brought back to Greencastle and buried in Forest Hill Cemetery, which he had plotted south of the city limits in 1855.

Back to Top

<< Back