Presbyterian clergyman, educator, and missionary to the Cherokee Indians.

He became a Presbyterian minister about 1794 and was stationed at the military post that later became Maryville, Tenn. He was active in the second Great Awakening (1800–03), an evangelical religious movement in the southeastern U.S. After the revival he argued before the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in favour of evangelical work among the Cherokee Indians. He opened a school for Indian children in 1804 and for the next seven years worked with the Cherokees preaching, teaching, and introducing new agricultural methods. When his health began to fail, he left missionary work for a position as a schoolteacher near Nashville, Tenn. In 1827 he became president of Centre College, Danville, Ky. Invited in 1833 to Illinois, he raised funds for Illinois College at Jacksonville and later bought land for a theological school near Carlinville. Opened in 1857, it was known as Blackburn Theological Seminary until the theological curriculum was discontinued, and it was renamed Blackburn College.