Joseph Estabrook served as the fifth president of the institution (1834–50) as East Tennessee College and East Tennessee University. A native of New Hampshire, he was a graduate of Dartmouth (1815) and a man of scientific interest and training. He had served as principal of Amherst Academy and as a professor at its successor, Amherst College. He moved south for his health and, at the time of his appointment to the presidency, was serving as the president of the Knoxville Female Academy.
Under his leadership at UT, regular classes for instruction were instituted in 1837; the first college catalog was produced (1837–38); literary societies flourished; on-campus dormitories (East College and West College, 1842) were built; the first librarian was appointed (1836); an alumni association was founded (1836); and UT loaned the City of Knoxville $30,000 to build a waterworks. Estabrook moved the college away from the dominance of classical studies and added courses such as chemistry, mineralogy, geology, trigonometry, and civil engineering. By 1838 East Tennessee College graduates were required to have taken chemistry, mineralogy and geology, astronomy, and to have mastered the calculation and projection of eclipses.
He petitioned the legislature for enabling legislation to move the college to university status, and on January 29, 1840, the legislature changed the name of the institution to East Tennessee University. Called Old Joe (out of earshot), he was “given to elegant ruffles and fine boots, to the prodigious use of snuff, and to shooting, even on Fast-Day.”
He was married twice—first to Nancy Dickinson, (probably of Amherst, Massachusetts, and sister of Perez Dickinson), who died during his presidency in 1846 in one of the epidemics that periodically swept the area. He later married Matilda Wiley, daughter of Henry H. Wiley of Oliver Springs.
Upon leaving the UT presidency, he retired to Anderson County, where he farmed and tried (unsuccessfully) to produce salt by drilling for saline water.