Educator and Leader for Abolishing the Central Jurisdiction Thomas was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina, and was ordained and became an elder in the South Carolina Conference of the Central Jurisdiction in 1944. After serving as a pastor, he taught at Gammon Theological Seminary. He became associate director of the Department of Education Institutions of...
Civil Rights Leader and Short-Term Missionary to India Lawson was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, in 1928, one of nine children of a U.S. Methodist pastor and a Jamaican mother. He took much of his attitude toward others from his mother, who did not believe in violence. Lawson grew up in Massillon, Ohio, where he became...
Family of Founder of Methodist Mission The following is based on a submission by Anthony D. Smith, a descendant of John Stewart, founder of Methodist mission. All pictures are courtesy of Mr. Smith. John Stewart is rightly recognized for his role in building America and Methodist mission. There are many descendants of the Stewart clan...
Leader of Southern Methodist Missions Edmund Sehon was a member of the Ohio Annual Conference at the time of the dissolution of the bonds between Northern and Southern Methodism in 1844 and probably intended to remain in that connection. But the manner of the Ohio Conference’s dealing with Bishop Joshua Soule in 1845 (it would...
Founder of Woman’s Missionary Society of the Evangelical Association At age twenty, Minerva Strawman was invited to a missionary tea given by the Woman’s Missionary Society of the United Brethren Church. Delighted with what she saw and heard, she asked her father, a minister and member of the Board of Missions of the Evangelical Association,...
Mission Bishop and Founder of Relief Agency Herbert Welch (1862-1969), the longest serving Methodist bishop, played multiple roles of lasting significance in the mission and social history of the church. His accomplishments included: Originator and first executive (1940 to 1948) of what is today the United Methodist Committee on Relief, the disaster response and development...
Heritage Landmark for early mission to Native Americans The Wyandotte Indians moved into Ohio in the mid-eighteenth century from Canada and Michigan. They settled on the Sandusky Plains. Their encounter with Methodism came in 1816, in the person of John Stewart. Stewart (1786-1823) was a mulatto, of African and probably East Indian descent. He was...
First resident MEC bishop in China Born in Fayette, Wisconsin, Bashford studied at the University of Wisconsin and Boston University School of Theology. After serving first as a pastor, then for 15 years as president of Ohio Wesleyan University, he was elected a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles and in 1904...
Teacher, nurse, & administrator who spent more than 50 years ministering to lepers in India Mary Reed was born in 1854 in Lowell, Ohio, to Wesley W. Reed and Sarah Ann (Henderson) Reed. After graduation from Ohio Central Normal School in Worthington, Ohio, she began a teaching career. When she was 30, she applied to join...
Methodist Mission Educator Soper was born in Tokyo, Japan, of American Methodist missionary parents. Following graduation from Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and Drew Theological Seminary, Madison, New Jersey, he first expressed his lifelong interest in fundamental problems of the Christian world mission as field secretary of the Missionary Education Movement (1906-1910). Beginning in 1910 as...
