John H. (John Hill) Aughey

Born in New Hartford, New York, on May 8, 1828, he moved with his family to Ohio as a child and graduated from Franklin College in New Athens in 1851. He later went south to teach in Mississippi, married Mary J. Paden in 1857, and served as a Presbyterian minister there.

During the secession crisis and Civil War, he became known for his strong pro-Union views. Accounts of his life say he was arrested and imprisoned in Mississippi because of those views, experiences that later shaped his writing. He published The Iron Furnace; or, Slavery and Secession in 1863, a vivid narrative attacking slavery and secession, and later returned to the same material in Tupelo.

Library records also list other works by him, including The Fighting Preacher. He died in 1911, remembered as a minister and author whose books joined personal testimony with fierce political conviction.