Back

Reverend John Burns Weston

Prominent Early Craigville Intellectual Leader

Reverend Carlyle Summerbell once quoted Reverend Dr. J. B. Weston saying at one beautiful sunset meeting at Craigville that “Craigville was a place that the devil had not yet discovered.” Summerbell continues: “Why was it that Dr. Weston kept so young? Perhaps one reason was that he never failed to visit Craigville, for many, many years, and gathered into the physical man the fragrance of the pines, the vastness of the ocean, and the good cheer of fellowship.”

During the early camp meetings Weston was a dominant intellectual and theological presence, sometime speaking and preaching several times during the week. In 1888, he presented the dedication prayer for the new Tabernacle.

The Reverend J.B. Weston, a member of Antioch College’s first graduating class in 1857, remained in Yellow Springs at the request of Horace Mann to be the principal of its preparatory department.  He was a scholar of Greek, a subject he taught in the college until 1881, when he left to become president of the Christian Biblical Institute in Stanfordville, NY, succeeding J. Austin Craig.  He returned to Ohio when that institution became affiliated with Defiance College in 1902, and served as president there until his death in 1912. Weston held three interim presidencies at Antioch (where he also succeeded Austin Craig). This service earned him the nickname “Old Interregnum.” His association with Horace Mann and Austin Craig had been close, and all through life he embodied their principled traits of character and making improvements to education and community life.

After his death in Defiance, OH in 1912, the local newspaper reported: “Dr. Weston was one of God’s noblemen.  He was a man of God, if any ever was.  His noble life was an unbroken, devoted effort to serve the world in the interest of the kingdom of heaven.  He worked tirelessly, unselfishly, effectively.  Those who knew him, and could appreciate a pure, clean, splendidly noble type of a man, were ready to rise up and call him blessed.”

The Yellow Springs News obituary (August 30, 1912) closes with these words: “Dr. Weston was twice married, and his two wives and two infant children by his first wife are buried at Glen Forest, and there between his two wives according to his request, his body lies, his dust a permanent possession of this place.”

John Burns Weston-Obituary

By Robin Heise On November 23, 2014

As published in the Yellow Springs News on August 30, 1912.

Dr. J. B. Weston died suddenly at Defiance Ohio, Saturday evening the 24th.  He was  Born in Main 91 years ago.  During all his life he had almost unbroken good health, and he came to the last days with mental faculties undimmed, still going on with his life work, still interested in everything that pertained to the world’s betterment.He came to Antioch and graduated under Horace Mann in the first class, and for sixty years he has been more or less connected with the College as professor, as acting president, and as trustee.

About thirty years ago he left Yellow Springs to take the presidencey of the Stanfordville Christian Biblical Institute at Stanfordville, New York.  When the Christians started the college at Defiance the Institute was brought to that place, in order that the work of the college and that of the theological school might be brought into a closer relationship.

Dr. Weston continued as the president of the theological department, and at his extreme age he went on with the class work and with his lectures before the students.

His continued mental virility was most remarkable. Last June he was in Yellow Springs to attend the commencement, offered the prayer at the graduating exercises, and made an interesting and forceful speech at the dinner.

It was his desire to be buried from the house he built and in which he lived a great many years and which now owned by Mrs. T. M. McWhinney, and this desire was carried out, the services being conducted there at 3 o’clock Wednesday afternoon.  When the college is again in session a memorial service will be held in the chapel, at which time addresses will be given by persons who knew him well and are competent to estimate his life and work, and to this service the public will be invited.

G.D.B.