John Leadley Dagg (1794–1884) born in Loudoun County, Virginia, lived to be over 90 years old. He died in June of 1884, as one of the most respected men in American Baptist life and remains one of the most profound thinkers produced by his denomination. Dagg overcame extraordinary problems – a limited education, near-blindness, and being crippled – to become a great pastor in Philadelphia and elsewhere and then an educator both in Alabama and as president at Mercer University in Georgia. He was a convinced Calvinist of an evangelical kind who wrote a winsome English prose.