The youngest but one of six children of John and Agnes McGaw, I was born at Fair Haven, Preble county, Ohio, February 4, 1835. In the fall of that year my parents removed to Oquawka, Illinois, where they died in the summer of 1838, leaving a family of orphan children, the oldest a girl of twelve years, the youngest an infant daughter. After being cared for awhile by my grandfather, I was taken into the family of Daniel M. Gordon, who was married to a sister of my mother. I remained with him, receiving a careful and conscientious religious training and enjoying such opportunities for acquiring a common school education as the country then afforded. According to the best of my recollection, I was admitted to communion in the Church in the early part of the year 1849.

From my earliest recollection it had been my desire to be a minister of the gospel. Through the kindness of friends in South Henderson Church, and through the self-sacrificing efforts of my brothers, Samuel and John, means were provided me to complete a regular college course.

I look upon South Henderson Church as having been to me a cherishing mother, and I shall ever regard her with the utmost gratitude and veneration. I hope always to act so that South Henderson shall never be ashamed to own me as one of her sons, and shall never experience a pang of regret for having aided an orphan boy to fit himself for the gospel ministry.

I commenced studies in Knox College, Illinois, in October 1849. After two years at Knox and one year in teaching, I entered Freshman in 1852, and graduated with the second honor in 1856. I studied theology at Oxford, under Rev. Dr. Young; was licensed by the First Presbytery of Ohio in April, 1857. In the spring of 1858 I received, very unexpectedly, a call to South Henderson, and was ordained at Harmony, Peoria county.

On September 21, 1858, I was married to Miss Rebecca J Irwin, of Oxford, Ohio. One month and one day after we were married, she died of diphtheria, leaving me in the deep sorrow of a sudden and most bewildering bereavement. On January 3, 1860, I was married to Miss Mary A. Scott, of Collinsville, Butler county, Ohio.

I remained pastor of South Henderson for nearly nine years, resigning in 1867 to accept the professorship of English Literature in Monmouth College.

On account of a state of feeling in the United Presbyterian Church, growing out of the McCune controversy, with which I was identified as one of the editors of the Union Presbyterian, I felt it was most expedient for me to resign my professorship, which I accordingly did. My view on the subjects of Psalmody and Communion have undergone a change, I felt it was best that I should sever my connection with the U. P. Church. I obtained a letter of dismissal, and on this was received by the Presbytery of Cincinnati (O.S.), and in December, 1868, received and accepted a call to the First Presbyterian Church of Urbana, Ohio, where I have been laboring in word and doctrine for seven years and a half.

The lord has blessed my unworthy labors here so that the Church has increased in numbers. I can truly say as I look back over my pleasant fields of labor, “The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.”