Born: Kentucky, 1833.
Died: Iowa, 1899.
Mr. Bruner was of German ancestry and rugged pioneer progenitors. His boyhood and youth were passed upon his father's farm in Illinois. He graduated from Knox College in 1857 with the honors of his class. He went to Europe in 1858, where he spent three years at the Universities of Halle in Prussia and ‘l Ecloe de Paris in France. Some time was also passed in the great libraries, the museums and art galleries of Berlin and London.
He was a diligent student and an indefatigable worker, so that he came to a strength of intellect, breadth of scholarship and greatness of character that made him the peer of the best men of his time. He was captain of Company A of the Seventh United States Colored Infantry one year, during which time he contracted the germs of relentless disease from which he was never thereafter free.
In 1866-67 he was a member of the Illinois Legislature, serving with high honor. In 1870 he became president of Oskaloosa College, Iowa, where he served efficiently as executive, teacher and solicitor for six years. He was induced to accept the presidency of Abingdon College in 1877. Into his efforts to restore the school to its former prosperity and usefulness he threw the indomitable energy of all his splendid faculties; but the seeds of its death had already been sown.
With the union of Abingdon and Eureka Colleges he became the head of the Bible Department. The ripest fruit of his whole life was there gathered by the young men who sat in the shade of this great tree. After four years there, failing health compelled his resignation.
Mr. Bruner was a great teacher of the word of God. His much learning did not make him mad in either mind or heart. Intellectual pride and self-righteousness had no place in him. Cast in a heroic mold, he was genuinely humble and loving. In health and sickness, in prosperity and adversity, in appreciation of his worth or its lack, he was a great soul who moved forward unwaveringly to his high aims.