Gunn, Thomas Morris

Thomas Gunn was a Kentuckian, from Shelby County, the son of a Presbyterian elder, and himself with a long future as a clergyman ahead of him. Soon after graduation from Dickinson in 1860, he became a professor of languages at a Methodist college in Clarkesville, Texas. Within a year, though, he was enlisted as a private in the Union army.

Life Span
to
Dickinson Connection
Class of 1860
    Full name
    Thomas Morris Gunn
    Place of Birth
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    North
    Origins
    Slave State
    No. of Spouses
    1
    No. of Children
    4
    Family
    William Gunn (father), Francis Adams Gunn (mother), M. Catherine Waggener (wife, 1864)
    Education
    Dickinson (Carlisle College)
    Occupation
    Clergy
    Educator
    Church or Religious Denomination
    Presbyterian
    Military
    Union Army

    Thomas Gunn (Dickinson Chronicles)

    Scholarship
    Thomas M. Gunn was born in Shelbyville in Shelby County, Kentucky on March 17, 1840. He was the youngest son of William and Francis Adams Gunn.  William Gunn, a presiding elder of the Lexington District of the Presbyterian Church, died when his son was only thirteen years old.  Thomas Gunn was still able to enter Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1858 with the class of 1860.  While at the College, he was elected to the Belles Lettres Society and graduated with his class in the early summer of 1860.

    Straight from Dickinson and still only twenty years old, Gunn took the post of vice-president and professor of languages at McKenzie College in Clarkesville, Texas.  At the time, this Methodist institution was one of the largest in the state, although the Civil War brought its demise and it closed permanently in 1868.  Gunn had already left teaching by that time, however, for he enlisted as a private in the Union Army's 21st Kentucky Infantry as soon as the war broke out.  He gained a commission and served later as a unit chaplain.  Following the war, Gunn embarked on a lengthy and extensive career as a Presbyterian clergyman.  He was the pastor in Louisville, Kentucky in 1867. He then moved to Illinois, where he had congregations in Grand Ridge and Braidwood in the 1870s and served at Joliet from 1877 to 1885.  In 1885, Gunn moved west to Walla Walla, Washington, where, in 1887, he became superintendent of missions responsible for certifying new congregations in Washington, Idaho, Oregon, and Alaska.  He held this post until 1899 and then served again as a pastor in Cashmere, Washington from 1901 until his retirement.

    In February 1864, Gunn married M. Catherine Waggener of Greensburg, Kentucky, and the couple had four children.  On June 1, 1917, Thomas Morris Gunn died at his home in Seattle, Washington.  He was seventy-seven years old.

    John Osborne and James W. Gerencser, eds., “Thomas Morris Gunn,” Dickinson Chronicles, http://chronicles.dickinson.edu/encyclo/g/ed_gunnTM.htm.

    How to Cite This Page: "Gunn, Thomas Morris," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/5803.