This article is about the founder. For the dormitory, see Horton Hall.
Thomas Corwin Horton (August 3, 1848- ) was one of BIOLA's founders.
Personal Background
Horton was born August 3, 1848, in Cincinatti, Ohio. He accepted Christ as a young man and had a career in business. At age 27, he entered full-time Christian service, first as Secretary of the Indianapolis Y.M.C.A. He was invited to take this job by future president Benjamin Harrison. In 1883, Horton moved to St. Paul, Minnesota to direct rescue mission work for the House of Hope Presbyterian Church (later known as the Goodrich Avenue Presbyterian Church).
In 1884 Horton began serving as Associate Pastor at Bethany Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, under Dr. A. T. Pierson. Horton worked primarily with young people and evangelistic projects, and also organized what would later become the John Chambers Memorial Church.
In 1888 Horton returned to St. Paul as Secretary of the Y.M.C.A., and organized the Northwestern Bible Training School. The Y.M.C.A.'s board of directors was interested in becoming less evangelical and developing a more liberal social program, which led Horton to resign in May 1892. For the next eight years he organized a number of evangelistic and teaching ministries, including the Gospel Tabernacle independent church.
In 1900 Horton moved to Dallas, Texas. For three years he served as pastor of the Scofield Congregational Church, and for three years he was Secretary of the Dallas Y. M. C. A. In 1906 he moved to Los Angeles to serve as the Assistant Pastor (under Dr. William J. Chichester) of the Immanuel Presbyterian Church. Horton had been recommended to ruling elder Lyman Stewart by several prominent ministers including Wilbur Chapman.
The Formation of Biola
Stewart, an oil tycoon who had recently written his own book on proper Christian living, _The Fundamentals_, and was seeking to found an institute based on this fundamentalist system. Stewart and Horton joined forces to found the Bible Institute of Los Angeles on February 25, 1908.
Horton and his wife Anna Horton shared a genius for organizing groups of committed workers. Horton was the guiding spirit of The Fishermen's Club, as Anna was of the Young Women's Lyceum Club and The Bible Women.
Later, when Biola was a more firmly established Bible Institute, Horton was listed as the faculty of "Practical Methods of Work, Pastoral Theology" and "Work for Young Men."The King's Business, Vol. 10.10, October 1921, http://www2.biola.edu/kingsbusiness/view/10/10/20
Many of Biola's founders were buried back east in ancestral plots, but despite their extensive work in major cities east of the Mississippi, Thomas and Anna were buried in southern California.
After his death, a short handwritten poem entitled "Give Me a Heart Like Thine\!" was found among Horton's things in his desk. The poem was published in the 1939 Biolan.
Publications
The Wonderful Names of our Wonderful Lord
Names of Christ
The Gospel of John the Apostle
Every Day with Jesus
Personal and practical Christian work (Los Angeles : Biola Book Room, 1922?)
Sources
The Henry Manuscript, which says "All that is available of the story of his early life is a brief summary furnished by his daughter, and much of this summary was constructed from memory."