First Ordained Latino Methodist and Missionary to Mexico In 1873, the first train on the new line out of Vera Cruz carried a Methodist bishop and Alejo Hernandez, the first Latino to be ordained in Methodism, who was the bishop’s choice to establish a mission in Mexico City. But the throbbing power in the locomotive’s...
Leader in Settlement Work When the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (MECS), began its foray into settlement work at the turn of the twentieth century, it asked Sara Estelle Haskin to take up the post in Dallas. With no equipment and no real pattern to follow, she plunged into the work and began a very successful...
Korean Evangelist, Teacher, and Bishop J. S. Ryang was born in Korea in 1879. He was educated and converted in the MECS mission schools in Shanghai. In 1906 he went to the United States and pastored a Korean church in San Francisco for three years. In 1909, he entered Vanderbilt, received his degree, and went...
First Brazilian Methodist Bishop Cesar Dacorso (Filho, which means ‘junior’) was born to a French-Italian father and a Portuguese-Brazilian mother in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state in 1892. He attended the Methodist mission Sunday school in Santa Maria and was educated at Instituto Granbery and Dom Pedro College. Dacorso entered the South Brazil Conference...
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...
Congolese Chief and Supporter of Methodist Mission Head of a village of the same name in the Belgian Congo, noted as a warrior and enemy of Europeans in his early days, Wembo Nyama received Bishop Walter Lambuth and his party in his village in 1912. Impressed by Lambuth as a man of his word, the...
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...
First President of the WFMS of the MECS Julianna Gordon was born in 1813 in Northumberland County, Virginia. She married the Reverend Thomas C. Hayes, a member of the Baltimore Conference, in 1843. She became active in the Baltimore women’s missionary groups and was president of one of them, the Trinity Bible Mission, when the...
First Single Woman Missionary of MECS Lochie Rankin was the first unmarried woman to be sent abroad as a missionary by the MECS. She was also the first missionary supported by the Woman’s Foreign Mission Society of the church. She was born in Milan, Tennessee, in 1851. Upon reaching young womanhood, she volunteered herself for...
