Thomas Ralston
Elements of Divinity
Historical encyclopedia or collection description, reproduced from the supplied edition.
Editorial note: The source places Florence Wesleyan University in Kentucky. The institution was in Florence, Alabama, and is a predecessor of the University of North Alabama. This note corrects the location; it does not independently verify the degree or other career details in the historical excerpt. The additional Appletons transcription repeats the D.D. award in 1857 and the mistaken Kentucky location. It corroborates the inherited claim, but no university degree register was located or collated; the degree remains unverified here. University of North Alabama: institutional history; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia, Thomas Neely Ralston, Wikisource transcription.
Editorial note: The collection’s attribution “Appleton’s 1886 Encyclopedia” is not a reliable date for this particular article: the excerpt itself mentions an 1887 book. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, volume 5, is catalogued as 1888. The exact impression used by the collection has not been established; the inherited attribution is preserved with this bibliographic qualification. The additional Wikisource transcription also includes an 1891 death date. It therefore does not identify the exact impression used by the collection, and the volume’s catalogue date should not be treated as proof of that impression. Columbia University catalogue, Appletons’ Cyclopaedia, volume dates; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia, Thomas Neely Ralston, Wikisource transcription.
RALSTON, Thomas Neely, clergyman, born in Bourbon County, Kentucky, 21 March, 1806. He was educated at Georgetown college, Kentucky, joined the state conference of the Methodist Episcopal church in 1827, and was its secretary for twelve years. He was a member of the convention that met in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1845, to organize the Methodist Episcopal church, south, and secretary of that body in 1850, subsequently becoming chairman of the committee to revise the discipline of the church. He was president of the Methodist female collegiate high-school in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1843- 7, and in 1851 edited the Methodist Monthly. Wesleyan university, Florence, Kentucky, gave him the degree of D. D. in 1857. His publications include Elements of Divinity (Louisville, Kentucky, 1847); Evidences, Morals, and Institutions of Christianity (Nashville, Tennessee, 1870): Ecce Unitas, or a Plea for Christian Unity (Cincinnati, 1870); and Bible Truths (Nashville, 1887).
Excerpted from Appleton’s 1886 Encyclopedia
Wesleyan Heritage Collection, Authors, pp. 21–21