Story of the Old Log College and the
Reverend Charles Beatty, Born
January 22, 1715
The pioneer seminary for aspirants to the Presbyterian ministry nearly two hundred years ago, was long known as “The Old Log College.” It stood at Neshaminy in Warwick Township, Bucks County.
When the celebrated evangelist George Whitefield came to America in 1739, he preached here to three thousand persons.
The deed for the land upon which this early educational institution was built, was dated 1728, and was given by Hon. James Logan, the secretary of the Province and one of the most illustrious of the early officials of Pennsylvania, to his cousin, Reverend William Tennent, an Irish emigrant, who shortly after his arrival in America renounced his allegiance to the Church of England and united with the Philadelphia Presbytery.
The gift consisted of fifty acres of land and the part of it on which the college stood is believed to have been an ancient Indian burying ground. The log college, twenty feet by thirty feet in size, was for many years the only institute south of New England where young men could be prepared for the ministry.
The Log College flourished under Mr. Tennent for twenty years, when its place was eminently supplied by kindred institutions thereabouts. From its walls came many noted preachers of Scotch-Irish descent, among them four of his own sons. One of the latter, Gilbert Tennent, preached most eloquently to stir up patriotism during the French and Indian War.
It is said that a carload of these sermons were very opportunely discovered in an old lumber room of Dr. Benjamin Franklin’s when the American patriots were hunting for paper to make cartridges, after the British evacuated Philadelphia, June 17, 1778. The sermons were utilized as cases for cartridges, and told effectively afterwards on the retreating British in the battle of Monmouth. Thus these eloquent sermons served the country in two great wars, more than is usually the case.
The Reverend Charles Beatty, an Irish Presbyterian, who was chaplain with Colonel Benjamin Franklin in his army on the Lehigh and later with Colonel William Clapham in his regiment which marched to Fort Augusta at the Forks of the Susquehanna, was a student here.
The Rev. Mr. Beatty was the son of an officer in the British Army, and was born in Ireland, January 22, 1715. He obtained a fairly accurate classical education in his own country and when he emigrated to America in 1740, his circumstances being meager, he employed several of the first years of his residence as a peddler.