Aaron Lucius Chapin, first president of Beloit College, was born in Hartford, Connecticut, February 6, 1817.

He was educated at the Hartford grammar school and in Yale College, from which he graduated in 1837. During 1838 to 1843 Mr. Chapin served as professor for the deaf in the New York Institute while studying theology at the Union Theological Seminary in 1842. In 1844 he was called by the American Home Missionary Society to become pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Milwaukee.

In February, 1850, Rev. Chapin was called to Beloit College as its first president, assuming office officially in July of that year and serving until 1886. In Beloit he observed a steady and firm administration, open-minded and always ready to accommodate educational methods to new phases of social needs as they arose. He imbued the students by occupying the chair of History and Civil Polity. His reputation was such that Williams College conferred on Rev. Chapin the degree of Doctor of Divinity. Dr. Chapin was also made a life member of the American Home Missionary Society, elected to the Board of Trustees of the state Institution for the Deaf at Delavan, and elected to the Board of Examiners at the U.S. Naval School at Annapolis and at West Point in 1873.