Dr. Nevin was born in Franklin County, Penn., on February 20, 1803.[3] His paternal grandmother was a sister of Hugh Williamson, one of the framers of the Federal constitution. He was gradated in 1821 from Union College. For two years after leaving college ill health compelled him to cease from labor and he passed his time mostly in the fields and woods, acquiring a taste for botany. In 1823 he entered the theological seminary at Princeton, where he soon became distinguished as the best Hebrew scholar in the institution.
In 1826 he was invited to supply temporarily the Chair of Oriental and Biblical Literature at Princeton. While holding this position he wrote his "Biblical Antiquities." In 1828 he was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Carlisle. From 1829 to 1840 he was Professor of Biblical Literature in the Western Theological Seminary at Pittsburgh. In 1840, he became Professor of Theology in the Seminary of the Reformed Church at Mercersburg, Penn., and for a time he acted as president of Marshall College in the same place.
He became involved in the "anxious bench controversy" by the publication of a tract called "The Anxious Bench." From 1849 to 1853 he edited The Mercersburg Review, and he was also a frequent contributor to The Reformed Church Messenger. He resigned his position in the seminary in 1851 and the presidency of Marshall College in 1853.
For the next eight years he lived in retirement, nearly worn out physically. In 1861 he returned to Marshall College, of which he was again president from 1866 t6o 1876, when he retired from all work of public instruction. Dr. Nevin published many important theological treatises and sermons.
Mrs. Nevin and two sons and two daughter survived him. One son is Captain W. W. Nevin, formerly Editor of The Philadelphia Press, and another is the Rev. Dr. l R. J. Nevin,known during the war as the commander of Nevin's Battery. His daughter Alice is known as a musical composer and his daughter Blanche has done some creditable work as a sculptor and painter.