Leonard Woods was born to Samuel and Abigail Whitney Woods in Princeton, Massachusetts, on June 19, 1774. He graduated from Harvard College in 1796 and was ordained a pastor in Newbury, Massachusetts, in 1798. During his career, he served as a mediator between the Hopkinsians (who were extreme Calvinists) and the Old Calvinists, taught at the Andover Theological Seminary, and helped to found the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and the American Tract Society. Woods married twice: once to Abigail Wheeler (1776–1846) in 1799 and once to the widow of Dr. Ansel Ives. He died in Andover, Massachusetts, on August 24, 1854.

Charles Coffin was born on August 15, 1775 in Newburyport, Massachusetts, to Charles Coffin and Hepzibah Carnes. He graduated from Harvard College in July 1793 and later received an honorary Doctorate of Divinity from Williams College. He was licensed to preach on May 14, 1799 and ordained an Evangelist on September 11, 1804. Coffin moved to the southeast in 1799 and became Vice-President of Greeneville College in 1801. He married Susan Woodbridge Ayer of Maine on October 9, 1802 and moved his family to Tennessee in 1805. He became President of Greeneville College in 1810, where he remained until he became President of East Tennessee College (now the University of Tennessee) in 1826. He resigned this post in 1832 and returned to Greeneville, where he died on June 3, 1853.