That teacher that won’t cancel classes during a blizzard or a major national event, that ensures you always get the homework assignment . . . that was Henry Louis Baugher. If Christ’s Church (Lutheran) was the physical object that brought Gettysburg College, the Lutheran Theological Seminary, and religious worship together, the force behind them was the Reverend Henry Louis Baugher. At the end of his life, he would be remembered for his incisive theological mind, his powerful speeches, and his force of personality. In history, he would be remembered for being the reverend who didn’t run, the man who stayed throughout the battle, ministered to the wounded, and reopened his church for services in record time.

Early Life and Education

Henry Louis Baugher was born July 19, 1804, in Abbottstown, Adams County, Pennsylvania. His father, Christian Frederick Baugher, was a tanner by trade, and Henry was educated in the local schools (notably by Rev. David McConaughy, uncle of the renowned attorney David McConaughy, in Gettysburg) before entering Dickinson College in Carlisle in 1822. After graduating Dickinson in 1826 (he received secondary honors and delivered the Latin salutatory address), Baugher initially planned to study law with Francis Scott Key. The death of his mother, however, led him to enter the Presbyterian Princeton Theological Seminary in 1826. Within two years he had a “religious change of heart” and transferred to the new Gettysburg Lutheran Theological Seminary in 1828. After a year at Gettysburg, he was licensed to preach in 1829 and briefly led a Lutheran congregation in Maryland.

Academic Career and Gettysburg College Presidency

Early in 1831 Baugher joined the faculty of the Gettysburg Gymnasium (a college preparatory school under the seminary). In 1832 the Gymnasium became Pennsylvania College (later Gettysburg College), and Baugher became Professor of Greek and Belles Lettres, a post he would hold for 18 years. He was ordained as a Lutheran minister in 1833. When President Charles P. Krauth resigned in 1850, the 46‑year‑old Baugher was unanimously elected the college’s second president.

The trustees even built a new President’s House for him on campus in 1860; the Baugher family moved into that modest brick home by December 1860. Baugher remained an active teacher (he switched from Greek to “Mental and Moral Science” in 1850) and continued as pastor of Christ Lutheran Church even during his presidency. By many accounts he was an energetic, forceful administrator: a Cincinnati reporter later described him as “a man of firm will,” and colleagues noted that he was a commanding leader – “wise and just and sympathetic,” though sometimes “too impulsive.”

Family and Personal Life

In October 1829, while still a young minister, Baugher married Clara (often called Clarissa) Mary Brooks of Carlisle. The couple had seven children, five of whom outlived him. By 1860 their household (in the old home at 444 Harrisburg Road) included Clarissa and children Leyh (b.1834), Alice (b.1842), Wilmer (b.1846) and others. Two sons figure prominently in Baugher’s story. Henry Louis Baugher Jr. (b.1840) followed his father into a career in the church and academe, later serving as a professor of Greek.

The older son, Alexander Nesbitt Baugher (b.1836), became a lawyer in Illinois by the time the Civil War began. In April 1862 Nesbitt was mortally wounded at the Battle of Shiloh; Henry L. Baugher personally traveled to Illinois to reclaim his body. Nesbitt’s funeral was held in Gettysburg and he was buried at Evergreen Cemetery there.

Baugher’s own health declined in later years. He suffered a chronic illness for some time before his death on April 14, 1868. He was interred at Evergreen Cemetery alongside his wife and several children. Reflecting on his ministry, contemporaries praised Baugher’s powerful preaching: even as college president he was regarded as “the most effective preacher in Gettysburg,” noted for carefully prepared, eloquent sermons.

Civil War and Gettysburg 1863

As a Pennsylvania clergyman and college leader, Baugher lived the Civil War intensely. After Lee’s invasion in June 1863, dozens of his students joined state militia ranks. Baugher reportedly tried to dissuade them, urging students to remain in school, even as he made clear that his own “loyalty and patriotism was ‘unquestioned and unquestionable.’” On July 1, 1863, classes were in session when the Battle of Gettysburg opened. According to recollections, it was only after Union artillery seized the college’s cupola as an observation post that Baugher dismissed students. That evening Confederate troops overran Pennsylvania Hall and converted it into a field hospital. Baugher and his family stayed safely at home. In the days that followed he tended to about eighteen wounded Federal soldiers quartered in his house and even hid a Union officer from the Confederates. Notably, he also entertained a captured Confederate officer (a former student) as a guest – a gesture that reflected both his Christian charity and the complex loyalties of the time.

Because Reverend Baugher remained at home during the fighting, he was also able to help at the Christ’s Church, which enabled the church to restart normal worship services in just a matter of months.

On November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery, Baugher gave the solemn closing benediction immediately after President Lincoln’s Address. In his prayer Baugher asked God to “Bless the President of these United States . . . and the Representative of the States” and to deliver the nation “from treason and rebellion at home.” In this way Baugher publicly aligned his faith with the Union cause.

Theology and Political Beliefs

Baugher was a devout and conservative Lutheran, trained in the eastern synod tradition. He followed in his grandfather’s footsteps as a parish pastor and remained active in church affairs. His graduation sermons and college addresses often wove together religious and civic themes. For example, his Gettysburg benediction invoked Christian providence over the nation’s leaders and cause. Though he was widely respected as an earnest Christian, Baugher was not known as an abolitionist agitator; rather, he appealed for national unity through a moral framework. (A student later charged that Baugher privately sympathized with some Northern reform causes like the Wilmot Proviso, but firm evidence is sparse.) What is clear is that during the war Baugher saw the conflict in providential terms and supported the Union, while also emphasizing reconciliation in Christ – as in his role in raising money and sympathy for wounded Confederate prisoners during the winter of 1863-64.

Personality, Discipline, and Conflicts

Contemporaries remembered Baugher as a complex figure: a warm pastor and an exacting disciplinarian. As president he insisted that students exhibit “reverence for superiors, submission to authority, and obedience to the rules,” and he enforced discipline rigorously. Edward Breidenbaugh (his 1882 biographer) noted that Baugher was “proficient in detecting those guilty of misdemeanors and violations of the college laws”en.wikipedia.org. At the same time, later college president Samuel Hefelbower commented that Baugher’s severity was “tempered with Christian love.” Alumni gave mixed sketches of him: he had a “hooked Roman nose,” clear blue eyes and “a decidedly clerical face,” projecting an aura of resolve. The Gettysburg Daily recalls that he was energetic, commanding and sometimes “impulsive,” yet also “wise and just.”

Baugher did engage in at least one notable controversy. In 1860 a southern alumnus, Judge James Crocker, recalled that Baugher personally revised his valedictory address to remove a prophetic line: Crocker had warned that “unless patriotism should triumph over sectional feeling . . . we, classmates, might in some future day meet in hostile battle array.” Baugher struck this sentence from the speech. Ironically, the Battle of Gettysburg would soon demonstrate just how “prophetic” Crocker’s line proved to be. In another incident during the war, Baugher rejected Union salute parades on campus as unseemly, even declining to meet President Lincoln during the 1863 dedication ceremony (one contemporary quipped he was “more pious than politic”). These episodes show Baugher balancing his stern principles with a pastoral concern for propriety and the peace of the church community.

Death and Legacy

Rev. Henry L. Baugher died on April 14, 1868, after several years of ill health. His tombstone in Evergreen Cemetery bears witness to both his academic and clerical titles. He left behind a strengthened Gettysburg College (which he led through its Civil War ordeal), a congregation that remembered his sermons, and a family that continued his intellectual legacy. Even as historians of the college have noted his strictness, they also acknowledge the breadth of his efforts: under Baugher, Gettysburg College expanded its curriculum, survived war and financial strain, and maintained a commitment to both faith and learning. By all accounts, he was neither an unblemished saint nor a mere disciplinarian but a fervent man of faith, patriotism and complexity – a Lutheran pastor shaped by the tumult of his times.