Guide to the Addison H. Leitch Papers

Addison Hardie Leitch was born in 1908 in Ben Avon, Pennsylvania, to lawyer Robert Hardie Leitch and Mary Stirling Leitch. He grew up in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area and attended Muskingum College from 1926 to 1931. In 1931 he was appointed by the Board of Foreign Missions of the U.P.C.N.A. to Assiut College in Egypt, where he taught science until 1932. From 1933 to 1936 Leitch attended the Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary, where he received his B.D. and Th.M. degrees. In September of 1936, Addison Leitch married Margaret Brown Heslip (1908-1968) of Rochester, New York. He received his Ph.D. from Cambridge University in England in 1938.

Dr. Leitch began his career as a professor of theology at Pikeville College in Pikeville, Kentucky in 1938. From 1940 to 1946 Dr. Leitch served as Dean of Men and College Pastor at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania. He then returned to Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary as a professor until 1961, and as president from 1955 to 1959. He began teaching at Tarkio College in Tarkio, Missouri in 1961. From 1969 until his death in 1973, Dr. Leitch taught theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. During his many years of teaching, Leitch was an editor of and contributed regularly to the journal Christianity Today. He also wrote a number of books, including Meet Dr. Luke (1957), Interpreting Basic Theology (1962), and A Reader's Introduction to the New Testament (1970).

Dr. Leitch had four children by his first wife, Margaret: Elizabeth Leitch Bonkovsky, Marian Leitch, Helen Leitch Mullan and Katherine Leitch Scamman. Margaret Leitch died in 1968. One year later, Dr. Leitch married Elisabeth Howard Elliot, a widow whose husband, Jim Elliot, was murdered in 1956 by Auca Indians while the couple served as a missionaries in Ecuador. She wrote the book Through Gates of Splendor about this experience. Dr. Leitch died of cancer in 1973.