Rev. Robert Davidson

b. Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 23 February 1808; d. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 6 April 1876.
 

Biographical Background

He graduated at Dickinson College in 1828, and at Princeton theological seminary in 1831. He was pastor of the second Presbyterian Church in Lexington, Kentucky, between 1832 and 1840, and in the latter year became president of Transylvania University.

After his resignation in 1842 he held pastorates in New Brunswick, New Jersey (1843-1859), New York City in (1860-1864), and Huntington, Long Island (1864-1868), moving then to Philadelphia.  Davidson was for a quarter of a century a member of the American board of commissioners for foreign missions, permanent clerk of the general assembly (1845-1850), and in 1869 was a delegate to the general assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, Edinburgh.

Involvement with Hypogean Fish Research

In October 1836 he visited Mammoth Cave in Kentucky accompanied by Stephen Bishop (1780-1850), a self-educated black slave who guided visitors through the cave.  He reported that ‘white fish (italics in the original) were found here without eyes’ whose existence was already known by some of the locals (Davidson 1840, pp. 54-56).  Others have pointed out that it was on 20 September 1838 that the Echo River in Mammoth Cave was discovered, and in it, a blind fish (Soulè 1982).