Laurens Perseus Hickok was born in Bethel Connecticut on December 29th, 1798. Hickok attended Union College, and he graduated from the school in 1820 when he took his first job as a minister at the Congregational Church in Kent, Connecticut. In 1829 he succeeded Dr. Lyman Beecher as minister at the First Ecclesiastical Society of Litchfield (Congregational Church.) He left this position in 1836 to become a professor of theology at Western Reserve College in Hudson, Ohio. In 1844 he left Ohio to become a professor of theology at Auburn Theological Seminary in Auburn, New York. He then returned to his alma mater in 1852 to become a professor of mental and moral philosophies at Union College in Schenectady, New York. For some time at Union College he undertook much of the roles of the president while Eliphalet Nott was still president of the college, and in 1865 he was elected to become president. He retired from Union College in 1868 to Amherst, Massachusetts allowing Hickok to work on his literary and theoretical pursuits. He published sermons while in Litchfield such as “The Sources of Military Delusion and the Practicability of their Removal” and “A Sermon Preached at Litchfield, Conn., at the Funeral of Benjamin Tallmadge, March 12, 1835.” He has a decent corpus which helped build his career as professor and theorist from his roots as a minister. Some of his works include Rational Psychology in 1849, A System of Moral Science in 1853, Creator and Creation in 1872, and The Logic of Reason in 1875. Hickok passed away in 1888.

Note written by Benjamin Bradley