1850–1933
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Born: Feb­ru­ary 15, 1850, Pres­ton Coun­ty, West Vir­gin­ia.

Died: No­vem­ber 27, 1933, Mor­gan­town, West Vir­gin­ia.

Buried: Oak Grove Ce­me­te­ry, Mor­gan­town, West Vir­gin­ia.

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Biography

Daniel was the son of Jes­se Mar­tin Pur­in­ton and Nan­cy Ald­en Ly­on, and hus­band of Flo­rence Ab­bie Ly­on.

He was edu­cat­ed at West Vir­gin­ia Uni­ver­si­ty, Mor­gan­town (WVU) (BA 1873, MA 1876), and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Nash­ville, Ten­nes­see (doc­tor­ate).

At WVU, he taught in the Pre­pa­ra­to­ry De­part­ment (1873–78), lo­gic (1878–80), ma­the­ma­tics (1880–84), me­ta­phy­sics (1885–89), and vo­cal mu­sic (1873–89). Pur­in­ton sup­port­ed the edu­ca­tion of wo­men, and in 1889 pro­posed that WVU ad­mit wo­men as de­gree can­di­dates. His sister-in-law, Har­ri­et Ly­on, was the first wo­man to gra­du­ate from WVU.

Purinton be­came vice-pre­si­dent and act­ing pre­si­dent of WVU in 1881. In 1890, he left to be­come pre­si­dent of De­ni­son Col­lege in Gran­ville, Ohio.

He re­turned to WVU in 1901, and served as both pre­si­dent and dean of the Col­lege of Arts and Sci­enc­es un­til Ju­ly 31, 1911. He was al­so pre­si­dent of the West Vir­gin­ia Bap­tist Ge­ne­ral As­sem­bly and the Ohio Bap­tist Edu­ca­tion So­ci­ety.

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