Asa Drury

Asa Drury (1801–1870) was an American Baptist minister and educator primarily teaching at Granville Literary and Theological Institution (today's Denison University) in Granville, Ohio, and the Western Baptist Theological Institute in Covington, Kentucky, and establishing the public schools in Covington. He is best known for his antebellum abolitionist views and his role in establishing the Underground Railroad in Ohio.

Early life, education, and family Asa Drury was born July 26, 1801, in Athol, Massachusetts, as the fifth of eleven children of Joel Drury and Ruth (Hill) Drury. Drury studied at Yale University, earning his A.B. degree in 1829. Upon graduation, he served as rector of the Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven, Connecticut, from 1829 to 1831. He earned his A.M. degree at Brown University in 1832, followed by his D.D. from the same institution in 1834. He was ordained as a Baptist minister in Providence, Rhode Island, on September 14, 1834. Drury married Hannah Perry of Brookfield, Massachusetts, on January 17, 1832, but she died within a year. He and Elizabeth had two sons. Alexander G. Drury (b. 1844) and Marshall P. Drury (b. 1846).

Academic and ministerial career

Shortly after ordination in 1834, Drury was recruited by fellow Brown University alumnus and President of Granville Literary and Theological Institution, John Pratt, to teach Latin and Greek. Drury taught there for two years, but he was best known for his abolitionist activism and establishing a station of the Underground Railroad on the Granville campus and working to organize the 1836 Ohio Abolitionist Convention to be held in Granville. In 1836 possibly as fallout from the Granville Riot, Drury accepted a position as a professor of Greek at Cincinnati College where he remained until 1845, except for a year of teaching Latin and Greek at Waterville College in Waterville, Maine, during the 1839–1840 academic year. The Judsonia Seminary did not survive beyond 1861 when the seminary building was used as a hospital during the American Civil War.

Beginning with his commissioning as an officer on February 8, 1862, Drury served as chaplain for the 18th Regiment Kentucky Volunteer Infantry in the Union Army during the Civil War. He was captured at the Battle of Richmond in Kentucky on August 30, 1862, and sent home on parole, officially mustering out of the service on October 4, 1863. In 1864 he moved to Minnesota and taught private school for a year. In 1865, he accepted a position as the pastor of the First Baptist Church in St. Anthony, Minnesota. He died there on March 18, 1870. Drury's second son, Marshall, was an insurance broker in St. Louis, Missouri. Asa Drury was a direct descendant of Hugh Drury and Lydia (Rice) Drury, the daughter of Edmund Rice, an English immigrant to Massachusetts Bay Colony, as follows:

Asa Drury, son of Joel Drury (1768 – ?), son of John Drury (1742–1831), son of John Drury (ca 1692 – 1754), son of Thomas Drury (1668–1723), son of John Drury (1646–1678), son of Hugh Drury (1616–1689) and Lydia (Rice) Drury (1627–1675), daughter of Edmund Rice (1594–1663)