John Monteith (minister)

John Monteith (August 5, 1788 – April 5, 1868) was an American Presbyterian minister and educator.

Monteith was born near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in 1788. He received his formal education at Jefferson College and worked as a schoolteacher in Cumberland, Maryland. He later continued his education at Princeton Theological Seminary and was licensed as a Presbyterian missionary in 1816. He was proficient in French and Latin and had knowledge of Hebrew and Greek, which facilitated his missionary work.

In 1817, at the behest of Augustus B. Woodward, Chief Justice of the Michigan Territory, Monteith became the president of the Catholepistemiad (now the University of Michigan), an entity created by an Act to reorganize the territory's education. He served from 1817 to 1821 before leaving Detroit for a professorship at Hamilton College. During his time in Detroit, he organized the First Protestant Society of Detroit in 1818, which initially served all Protestants in the city, including Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, and Baptists, before they separated to form their own congregations. In 1825, the remaining members of the Society established the First Presbyterian Church of Detroit. In 1820, he founded the First Presbyterian Church in Monroe, Michigan.