![\"Otts](\"http:\/\/davidsonarchivesandspecialcollections.org\/aroundthed\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2010\/11\/Otts2.jpg\")
<\/a>The lecture series was founded by John Martin Philip Otts, class of 1859. He was born in Union County, South Carolina and was a member of the Eumenean Society while at Davidson.\u00a0 He attended Columbia Theological Seminary and received a Doctor of Divinity from William and Mary College in 1873.\u00a0 He served as a pastor to several churches in Alabama, Tennessee and Delaware and was editor of the Southern department for the Presbyterian Journal. His marriage to Lelia McCrary of Greensboro, Alabama in 1863 enabled him to later endow the lecture series at Davidson.\u00a0 He died in 1901.<\/p>\nThe lectureship was founded in 1893 with a bequest of $2500. By 1939, the endowment had grown to $10,000. Davidson College president Walter Lingle explained the intention of the donor, “It was stipulated by Dr. Otts that the lectures on this foundation should always be on some Christian theme and,\u00a0 as a rule, they should constitute a defense of Christianity against some current heresy.”<\/p>\n
<\/a>Dr. Otts not only founded the series –he gave the first lecture in 1893, speaking on ” Unsettled Questions Touching the Foundations of Christianity.”\u00a0 In addition, Dr. Otts expected that the lectures would be published with full recognition of his endowment– if not with actual funds from the endowment.\u00a0 Not all of the lectures have been published.\u00a0 Of the 22 lectures given between 1893 and 1968, 13 were published either as pamphlets or incorporated as chapters in books.<\/p>\n