Advocate of Integration in Methodism Born August 24, 1912, in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Golden received degrees from Clark College and Gammon Theological Seminary, both in Atlanta. He was ordained an elder in the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) in 1938. He served several congregations in the South before becoming professor in the Department of Religion and...
Leader of Deaconesses and Women’s Mission Work Ewing came out of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, although it became part of The Methodist Church when she was a teenager. As she was growing up, she planned to go to Scarritt College. She not only completed her education there but stayed on for fifteen years to...
Mission Educator and Administrator Howell was born in New Jersey in 1874 and earned her Ph.D. degree in sociology from Cornell in 1896. She completed her formal education with a seminary degree from University of Chicago. She taught in Richmond, Kentucky, for four years, coming under the influence of Belle Bennett. In 1903, Bennett persuaded...
Missionary to Mexico and among Mexican-Americans Onderdonk was born in Mission Valley, Texas, in 1871. He received his higher education at Southwestern University and then joined the West Texas Conference. From the beginning of his ministerial career, he felt a call to Spanish-language ministry. He served congregations along the Rio Grande. In 1897, Board of...
MECS Mission Board Leader Pinson was born in Cheathan County, Tennessee, in 1854. He joined the Tennessee Conference in 1878. After serving pastorates in Tennessee with great success, he transferred to the Texas Conference to serve pastorates in Gonzales and Austin. Just before the turn of the century, he went to the largest church in...
Leader of Southern Methodist Missions John B. McFerrin, aside from bishops the most significant figure of the MECS in the nineteenth century, was born in 1807 near Nashville. Licensed to preach at age eighteen, he received appointment to be missionary to the Cherokees from 1826-1828. After pastoring several churches, he was named presiding elder in...
Missionaries and Mission Supporters David Kelley was born in Tennessee to a prominent Methodist family in 1833. A precocious lad, he was graduated from college at eighteen, entered the Methodist ministry at nineteen, and received a medical degree at twenty. His mother, Margaret Lavinia Kelley, founded the first women’s missionary support group in her minister-husband’s...
Leader in and Student of Mission Following graduation from Dillard University in New Orleans, Emma Wilson Strother went to work with her mother, Clara J. Wilson, who was one of the superintendents of the National Friendship Home in Cincinnati. Emma later became superintendent of the Mother’s Memorial Center (now Wesley Child Care Center), which was...
Missionary, Mission Board Staff, and Mission Advocate From her early years of growing up in a parsonage to her years as a professional person, and later a lay woman active in church affairs, Kathryne Bieri Sears was devoted to mission. At age twenty-four, she was the first single woman appointed by the Methodist Episcopal Board...
Advocate for Women’s Roles in Mission Evelyn Riley Nicholson was born in Minnesota. She was president of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society from 1921 to 1940. In 1923, she gave a major address at the International Missionary Council on “The Place of Women in the Church on the Mission Field.” One of the first women...
