First Priciple of Chicago Training School and “Archbishop of Deaconnesses” It is said of the first college in the United States to award degrees to women, Oberlin (1841), that it is peculiar in that which is good. A compliment equally applicable to an Oberlin graduate, Lucy Jane Rider. She became a physician when most medical...
Advocate for Missions and Education in the Evangelical Association Distinctive bulges on the bridge of Bishop Orwig’s nose appear in Orwig family members to this day, testifying to the persistence of genetic traits. The bishop himself stood out in a debate over another persistent human trait: sin. He defended the position that only those who...
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...
Leader of Board of Foreign Missions Diffendorfer claimed that as a Sunday school student he was inspired with such a passion for mission by British missionary David Livingstone that it lasted his whole life. But his mother claimed that his personality had elements of P. T. Barnum as well. The passion and the leadership became...
First Executive of Methodist Episcopal Missionary Society Nathan Bangs, 1778 -1862, was the primary organizer and first administrator of the Methodist Episcopal Missionary Society, founded in 1819. He was concurrently for almost a decade the head of the denomination’s Book Concern. Thus, Bangs had a major impact on the origins of two of the United...
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...
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...
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...
