Lyman T. Miller (1867-1947) was the eldest of nine children. He was a graduate of Westfield College, the United Brethren institution of higher education in Westfield, Illinois. He worked in that community as a teacher, farmer, and carpenter. He also appears to have been a prolific writer, though it is unclear rather his manuscripts were ever published. His younger sister, Bertie (1889-1962), also attended Westfield College but later transferred to the Charleston Normal School. She had a long and active career as a teacher, first in her hometown and later in the Chicago School system. In later life she traveled extensively in the United States and South America. Throughout her life, Bertie was active in the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Mellony Turner (1901-1949), Methodist missionary, was born on April 9, 1901 at Erin, New York. Turner graduated in 1919 from the Cazenovia Seminary located in Cazenovia, New York. In 1924, Turner began to teach at the American School for Girls in Lovetch, Bulgaria for the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1930 she had became the principal of the school.
During World War II, Turner was able to continue teaching at the school. Her problems became worse after the war when the Communists took over the country. The official communist paper of Bulgaria, Rabotnichesko Delo, repeatedly mocked Turner and her work in the paper.
Forced out of Bulgaria, Turner relocated to Athens, Greece, and taught at Pierce College. After her departure from Bulgaria, false accusations of espionage were made against her after the torture of fifteen Bulgarian Methodist pastors with whom she had closely worked. Turner never returned to Bulgaria.
On Sunday, November 20, 1949, Mellony was scheduled to give a missionary message at Baldwinsville, New York, Methodist Church. On the way to the church a truck hit her and her father, W. Cleon Turner, a Methodist minister, and both were killed instantly. Turner is buried with her father and mother on a hilltop in Cato, New York.
Ralph T. Templin (1896-1984), an American missionary, educator, publisher, and social activist, married Lila Horton in 1920. Templin was a missionary in India from 1925 to 1940.
While working in India, Templin created a cooperative education method that allowed senior boys to help build various structures for local villages.
Templin was a founding member of the Peacemakers' movement, after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. When he returned to the United States, he continued Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence in all areas of his active ministry. Templin was the director of the School for Living, Suffern, New York from 1941 to 1945. Later he became the professor of sociology at Central State University, at Wilberforce, Ohio, from 1948 to 1968. Central State University was historically black, and Templin was the first white faculty member.
In 1954 he was the first white clergyperson to be received in full connection within the Central Jurisdiction. Another expression of his social activism was his fast to protest suppression of Puerto Rican independence nationalist movement.
Other avenues that Templin used to promote his belief in social justice included a refusal to pay taxes, did not register for the draft during World War II, and refused to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities during the McCarthy era. He published, Democracy and Non-Violence, in 1965. Templin died in 1984.
Douglas Dutro Woodard (1916-2007), an educator, attended the University of Chicago and the Art Institute of Chicago. During World War II he served four years in the United States Army in the Pacific. He received a B.A. from Brigham Young University and in 1948 an M.A. from Georgetown University. Woodard taught U.S. and world history in secondary schools for eleven years in Arlington County, Virginia, one year in Petersburg, Alaska, and many years in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Edward W. Bauman (1927-2021), United Methodist minister, writer, producer and educator, earned his Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from Boston University Graduate School. Bauman began his church career in 1951 as a probationary minister with the North East Ohio Annual Conference. By 1952, he was appointed beyond the local church to attend school. In the following year, North East Ohio ordained him as an elder in full connection. The Utica church became Bauman's first pastoral appointment from 1954 to 1956. The next year saw Bauman appointed as a chaplain to American University in Washington, D.C., a post he would keep until 1960 when he started teaching at Wesley Theological Seminary. He continue to teach full time at Wesley until 1965. During this time period Bauman moved his clergy credentials from North East Ohio to the Washington Annual Conference in 1958. In the Spring of 1965, the Washington area bishop appointed him to Foundry Church where he served as senior pastor until his retirement in 1991.
Bauman was an excellent communicator and in 1979 Time magazine recognized this fact by naming him as one of the most outstanding ministers in the United States. Part of this recognition by time centered on his weekly Sunday morning WMAL-AM radio broadcasts which spanned more than thirty years. Radio, however, was not the only medium by which the public could listen to Bauman’s sermons. His career in television and film lasted thirty-five years (1958-1992). Televison stations across the United States broadcasted his shows from WMAL-TV studios. The films, which were based on the televison shows, were shown by military chaplains on bases or ships around the world.
Audiovisuals were not the only medium by which Bauman reached out to the public. He wrote eight books. The titles are The Life and Teaching of Jesus, An Introduction to the New Testament, God’s Presence in My Life, We’re Spreading the Good News, John’s Gospels in the Modern World, Beyond Belief, Intercessory Prayer, The Bible and New Life for the Church and God of Our Fathers and A Study Guide for the Film and TV Course. Other forms of ministries outside the local parish and after retirement included a variety of retreats and church renewal seminars.
In 1993, Bauman headed to Calcutta, India, to spend time working with Mother Teresa with a focus on her Home for the Dying located in Khaligat. The experience made such a lasting impression that Bauman started to work with hospices in the Washington, D.C. area upon his return.
Later Bauman would serve as an associate minister at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. The Washington National Cathedral named him a member of the Associate Faculty of The College of Preachers.
Charles Samuel Braden (1878-1970) was a Methodist Episcopal Church missionary and educator. He received his B.A. (1909) and Doctor of Divinity (1943) degree from Baker University in Kansas. In 1912, Braden earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1926. He also studied at Columbia from 1911-1912. In 1911 he married Grace Eleanor McMurray.
Braden was appointed a missionary in July 1912 and a month later arrived in Cochabamba, Bolivia. In 1914 he was ordained into the ministry. Braden left Bolivia in 1915 and went to Santiago, Chile, where he was a professor and president of the Union Theological Seminary. In addition, he managed the Union Book Store and was the editor of El Heraldo Christiano. While Braden was in Chile (1916-1922), he pastored several churches including First Church in Santiago.
Upon his return to the United States, he became the assistant secretary of the Methodist Episcopal Church Board of Foreign Missions and the secretary of the Methodist Life Service Commission. He taught in the department of religion and literature of religions at Northwestern University from 1926 until his retirement in 1954. Braden was active in several professional organizations and the author of numerous articles and books.
Grace McMurray Braden (1888-1951) was a Methodist Episcopal Church missionary to Bolivia and Chile with her husband, Charles S. Braden. Grace Braden received a B.A. from Baker University in Kansas in 1909 and taught high school in Cheney, Kansas, from 1909 to 1911 before her missionary appointment.
Roger Stillman Guptill (1888-1973) was born in Berwick, Maine on July 20, 1888, the second son of Frank Stillman and Hila Pinkham Guptill. He was educated in Berwick and graduated from Berwick High School in 1907. He recieved a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bates College in 1911, a Bachelor of Sacred Theology from Boston University in 1914, a Master of Arts degree from Hartford Seminary in 1927, and a Doctor of Divinity degree from LaGrange College in 1967.
He was ordained a deacon in the Maine Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1912. After graduating from Boston University, he served as a missionary in the Belgian Congo for twelve years, until a serious illness forced him to return to the United States. The next twelve years, he served with the Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church and several pastorates in New England. In 1938, he became the Stewart Missionary Foundation Professor of Missions at Gammon Theological Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia, where he taught for a period of twenty-two years. Guptill was also the secretary for the Stewart Missionary Foundation for Africa. After retirement, he taught several years at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia, before moving to the Penney Retirement Community at Penney Farms, Florida. Guptill died on June 15, 1973 and was buried on the grounds of Penny Farms.
In 1914, Dr. Guptill was married to Constance Sanborn, who died in 1960. He then married Ethelyn Cook. Guptill was survived by three birth children and a stepson.
Ivan Lee Holt (1886-1967), American minister and bishop, was born in Dewitt, Arkansas, on January 9, 1886 to Robert Paine and Ella (Thomas) Holt. He received an A.B. degree from Vanderbilt University in 1904 and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1909. He began his career as professor of Greek and Latin at the Stuttgart Training School in Arkansas, where he served from 1909-1911. Following that, he became pastor of Centenary Church, Cape Girardeau, Missouri and served for four years. In 1915, he joined the faculty of Southern Methodist University as professor of Old Testament Literature, chair of the theological faculty and chaplain of the University.
In 1918, Holt returned to the pastorate at Saint John's Church in St. Louis. He was elected bishop at the last General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (1938), serving in Texas and New Mexico for a year, and then in Dallas until 1944. He was a bishop in Missouri until his retirement in 1956.
He is the author of the Babylonian Contract Tablets; The Return of Spring to Man's Soul; The Search for a New Strategy in Protestantism; The Methodists of the World; Eugene Russell Hendrix, Servant of the Kingdom, and The Missouri Bishops.
Holt was deeply concerned with ecumenism. He was delegate to the first assembly of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam, and to the second assembly in Evanston, Illinois. He was president of the Federal Council of Churches from 1935-1936 and a member of the committee which drew up the charter for the National Council of Churches. He was also active in world Methodism, and was elected president of the World Methodist Council, holding that position as president-emeritus while he lived.
Holt married Leland Burks on June 6, 1906. They had a son, Ivan Lee Jr., who became a judge in St. Louis, Missouri . After the death of this first wife in 1948, Holt married Starr Carithers of Georgia in 1950. After she died in 1958, he married Modena McPherson Rudisell of Duluth, Georgia. He died in Atlanta, Georgia on January 12, 1967 and is buried in St. Louis.
K. James Stein (1929-?), a theologian and professor. Stein was born in Grand Forks, North Dakota, the son of Gustav and Anna (Sommer) Stein. He was educated in the rural areas of the Red River Valley. Stein acquired a temporary teaching certification following high school and taught in rural schools of Pembina County, ND from 1947-1950. Stein received his bachelor's degree at Westmar College in Iowa (1953). He attended seminary at Evangelical Theological Seminary of the Evangelical United Brethren Church in Naperville, Illinois. Subsequently he received a masters of sacred theology and his PhD at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. His dissertation title was "Church Unity Movements in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ until 1946" Stein married Loretta Bahr of Grand Forks, North Dakota.
Ordained as an elder in 1956, Stein served appointments in the Dakota Conference in Kidder (1952), Casselton- Chaffee (1953), and at Patterson Christ in New Jersey (1956). Prior to finishing his PhD at Union (1965), Stein became a Professor of Church History at Evangelical Theological Seminary (ETS) in Ilinois in 1960 and became a dean at the seminary in 1972. In 1973, while serving as president of ETS, Stein oversaw its merger with Garrett Seminary and served as the first dean of the new Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Stein retired in 1995, continuing to function as a "senior scholar" at Garrett-Evangelical.
Stein numerous multiple articles, and two books, "Phillip Jakob Spener: Pietist Patriarch" (1986) and "Spiritual Guides for the 21st Century: Faith Stories of the Protestant Reformers" (2000).
Andrew Daniel Gramley (1873-1958), American minister, was the son of William L. and Amanda R. Gramley. He was born July 30, 1873 in Sugar Valley, Clinton County, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Lock Haven High School in 1891. Gramley entered Central Pennsylvania College in New Berlin and received his bachelor's degree in 1894 and his Master's degree in 1897. Several years later, in 1911, he earned his bachelor of divinity degree from Temple University in Philadelphia, from which he also earned a doctorate in sacred theology.
Gramley was licensed to preach by the Central Pennsylvania Conference on March 9, 1895. He was ordained elder in 1899 and served appointments at Cumberland Circuit, (Junior Preacher); Penns Creek, Bellwood, McClure, Loganville, East Prospect, Baltimore (Christ), York (Christ), Williamsport ( First), York (Trinity), Milton (First), and Marysville. He also served on the faculty at the School of Methods at Central Oak Heights, and as Secretary of the Educational Aid Society, Chief Conference Reporter. He was on the Board of Ministerial Training, and was a Trustee of Albright College.
Gramley was also a Trustee of the Bible Conference Society and member of the program committee. He served as Secretary of the State of Missions Committee, and delegate to the Joint Committee for the Centennial Celebration in 1916. He was also co-editor of the Centennial Celebration volume and co-historian of the "History of the Central Pennsylvania Conference."
Gramley married Ada Laura Meals of Mt. Holly Springs, Pennsylvania, on October 13, 1898. They raised two sons, George Heil and Dale Hartzler. Gramley died December 2, 1958, and is buried in the Mt. Holly Springs Cemetery.