Born to a farmer family on February 15, 1843 in South Worthington, Massachusetts, Russell Herman Conwell was an American Baptist minister, orator, philanthropist, lawyer, and writer. He was the founder and first president of Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is widely known as the Pastor of The Baptist Temple, and for his inspirational lecture, Acres of Diamonds.
Conwell left home to attend the Wilbraham Wesleyan Academy and later Yale University. In 1862, before graduating from Yale, he enlisted in the Union Army during the American Civil War. From 1862–1864, Conwell served as a captain of a volunteer regiment. After the Civil War, Conwell studied law at the Albany Law School. Over the next several years, he worked as an attorney, journalist, and lecturer first in Minneapolis, then in Boston. Additionally, during this period, he published about ten books—including campaign biographies of Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, and James A. Garfield. In 1880, he was ordained as a Baptist minister and took over a congregation in Lexington, Massachusetts.