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Coleman Clark Hartzler (1887-1976) and his wife, Lucy, were missionaries to the Congo.

Coleman Hartzler was born on July 24, 1887 in Brookfield, Missouri. He graduated from Missouri Wesleyan College in 1910 and received his M.A. degree from the University of Southern California in 1914. The following year he graduated from Garrett Biblical Institute.

Lucinda Lee Padrick was born on November 19, 1890 in Escondido, California. She graduated from the State Normal School at Los Angeles, California and attended the University of Southern California from 1914 to 1915.

The Hartzlers sailed for Africa in December of 1916 with their infant son, James. They spent over twenty-five years in the Congo at five different stations: Kambove(1917-1918), Mulungwishi(1918), Kabongo(1919- 1933), Kanene and Jadotville(1933-1942). While there, the Hartzlers helped to build and establish schools and ministered to the people. Lucy gave birth to three more sons, one of whom died in infancy. The others, Omar and Lynn, assisted them in their missionary work. In 1934, in recognition of his services, the Belgian monarch conferred upon Coleman Hartzler the " Order of the Lion." In about 1942, Coleman Hartzler suffered medical problems which forced their return to the United States.

The Hartzlers were never able to return to the Congo. For the remainder of his career, Coleman served as a pastor and preacher in various places, primarily in Southern California. Their son, Omar, returned to Africa as a missionary. Lucy Hartzler died on June 27, 1970 in Los Angeles. Coleman Hartzler died on July 4, 1976.

Jacob Hartzler (1833-1915) was licensed to preach with the Evangelical Association, Central Pennsylvania Conference, in 1856. He served several pastoral assignments before his assignment as editor of the Evangelical Messenger in 1870. In 1880 he moved to Japan where he learned Japanese and was assigned to the Bible Translating Committee. In 1886 he was elected president of the Japanese branch of the Evangelical Alliance, and in 1887 he served as pastor of the Union Church in Tokyo. In the split of the Evangelical Association Hartzler moved with the United Evangelical Church and became an elder in 1894. Hartzler was superannuated in 1911 and died at York, Pennsylvania, 1915.

Gilbert Haven, (1821-1880), a minister, an educator and later Bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church and was an active abolitionist and radical throughout the Civil War and Reconstruction Eras. The issues of temperance and women’s rights in the church were of interest as well. Haven was born and raised in Malden, Massachusetts, who was descended on both sides of his parent’s family from the New England Puritans. He was the son of Gilbert Haven Sr. and Hannah Burrill Haven. Prior to his birth, Haven's parents still belonged to the Congregationalist Church until joining the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1821. Haven stated he embraced a more evangelical faith in 1839 while attending the coeducational Wesleyan Academy in Wilbraham, Massachusetts. By the fall of 1842, Haven headed to Middletown, Connecticut, to enroll in Wesleyan University which was one of the premier Methodist Episcopal Church colleges at that time. As a Wesleyan student he attended services and worked at "the African Church" which served Middletown’s free black population. In 1846, Haven began teaching ancient languages at Amenia Seminary in Dutchess County, New York and remained there four years, eventually becoming its principal.

Haven obtained a local preacher's license in 1847 which officially began his long ministerial career in the Methodist Episcopal Church. During his tenure at Amenia, Haven declared his intent to join the New England Annual Conference in 1850. At this same time he became a dedicated and active abolitionist following the Compromise of 1850 and the passage of the stricter Federal Fugitive Slave Law that was part of the Compromise. That same year Haven preached his first abolitionist sermon appealing to the "Higher Law" and encouraging a noncompliance with the Fugitive Slave Law. The New England Annual Conference appointed Haven to serve in the following churches: Northampton (1851-1852), Wilbraham (1853-1854), Westfield (1855-1856), Roxbury (1857-1858), and Cambridge (1859-1860). Haven ministered to the free black communities near his church appointments which provided a chance to treat blacks as full social equals. This action caused some friction with his parishioners. The annual conference granted Haven supernumerary status in 1861 so he could travel abroad and serve as a Civil War chaplain. Within the New England Annual Conference, Haven served on the general committee on education and examination board, co-founded the Church Extension Aid Society, supported the Boston Irish Mission, and worked on the Preacher's Aid, and Temperance committees. In the late 1850s, Haven was active in attempts to add anti-slavery planks and prohibitions to New England Conference rules and platforms for its members and denominational standings.

By October 1861, Haven took the position as temporary minister to the Clinton Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church in Newark, New Jersey, while at the same time working as the Boston correspondent for the Christian Advocate and the unnamed New York contributor for Zion's Herald. Haven journeyed to Europe in 1862 for rest and recuperation, returning in 1863 when he was appointed the pastor of North Russell St. Church (later First Methodist Church) of Boston. In 1867 Haven was elected the editor of Zion's Herald.

The 1872 General Conference elected Haven a bishop and assigned to Atlanta, Georgia, during the latter period of Reconstruction in the American South. Haven's views on anti-slavery translated into strident opinions on political and social equality among the races, and he heavily involved himself in efforts to expand educational opportunities for freedmen. However his status as a pro-Unionist New Englander and his vocal opinions on race made him decidedly unpopular among the white population in former Confederate territory.

In the mid 1870s, following his 1873 trip to Mexico with William Butler to attempt to spread the Methodist Episcopal Church into Mexico with a 1876 trip to Liberia, while in coastal West Africa he contracted a fever (apparently malaria) from which his health never fully recovered. Active as a Bishop in the M. E Church throughout the late 1870s, Haven remained a vocal and uncompromising proponent of Reconstruction and advocated for stronger civil rights laws even after the political climate of the 1870s shifted away from Reconstruction. This resulted in his marginalization in political circles and put him in conflict with much of the Methodist Church hierarchy. After his return from Liberia, his health problems and political ostracism resulted in his status as a Bishop without an appointment. Haven was plagued by increasing health difficulties and recurring problems from the tropical fever. He died on January 3, 1880 in Malden, Massachusetts at the Haven family home. Over his career, in addition to writing for the "Christian Advocate" and writing for/editing Zion's Herald, Haven also wrote The Pilgrim's Wallet (1866), National Sermons (1869), Father Taylor, The Sailor Preacher (with Thomas Russell, 1872), Our Next Door Neighbor: A Winter in Mexico (1875), and the posthumous Christus Consulator (1893). While in Europe, Mexico, and Africa, Haven also produced accounts and opinions on his experiences-- which were published in newspapers

While at Wesleyan University, Haven adopted anti-slavery views in response to reading abolitionist tracts and the poetry of John Greenleaf Whittier. He appears to have absorbed the reform zeal that was active throughout New England during the 1840s and 1850s. Haven supported the single-issue anti-slavery Liberty Party as early as 1844. In a contemporary letter to his mother, Haven states he was viewed by his peers, many of whom were opposed to his views, as a ranting, fanatical abolitionist. Haven responded to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) with a sermon titled, The Death of Freedom, following the caning of Charles Sumner on the floor of the United States Senate. Haven declared the senator a "martyr for truth in history" (1856). He was active in the interdenominational Church Anti-Slavery Society from 1859 until the Civil War.

Haven often criticized other abolitionists, particularly William Lloyd Garrison and his followers (Garrisonians) for directing their anti-slavery radicalism toward other causes without reference to religious viewpoints, or room for difference on non-slavery issues. He strongly felt this led to an alienating effect on other abolitionists or non-radicals who were otherwise sympathetic to the anti-slavery movement, but not in favor of radically remaking the American social order on a number of other issues. Haven believed that the unorthodox religious views of Garrison and many of his followers undercut support among Evangelicals for abolitionist aims - particularly the views of such figures as Theodore Parker, on whose death Haven referred to as, "the first great American infidel."

In 1859, Haven met John Brown who made a lasting impression on him. He referred to John Brown's Raid in an essay called The Beginning of the End of American Slavery (1859). Haven was prevented from giving a further endorsement in a sermon to Brown's insurrection on the day of Brown's execution.

During the late 1850s, Haven supported the Free Soil Party, and later, the Republican Party despite its anti-slavery focus being too moderate for his preference. He hailed Abraham Lincoln's election to the presidency in a sermon that later appeared as a pamphlet titled, The Cause and Consequence of the Election of Abraham Lincoln. (1860). Haven was a believer in the Slave Power thesis in regards to sectional tensions. Personally, Haven advocated openly that he was in favor of social, business, and political equality and was in favor of the removal of all laws against interracial marriage, any law promoting segregation, and laws denying black voting. He disapproved of colonization schemes for freed blacks.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Haven enlisted in the ninety-day regiment, the 8th Massachusetts Militia Volunteers as its Chaplain, and was commissioned by the Governor of Massachusetts, John Albion Andrew, on April 18, 1861. The 8th Massachusetts shipped down to Washington, D.C. in the aftermath of the Firing on Fort Sumter and eventually spent its short existence garrisoning areas around Baltimore while the Union Army organized. During his time in Washington and the Potomac regions of Maryland and Virginia, Haven recorded conversations with freed slaves and other free blacks and reported his findings back to Zions Herald, New England Methodism’s weekly newspaper. These same findings appeared in the Christian Advocate which was the denominational newspaper. Haven's three-month enlistment ended in the summer of 1861 and he returned to civilian life.

Gilbert Haven married Mary Ingraham of Amenia, New York, in 1851. She bore him four children, of whom two survived to adulthood: Mary Michelle "Mamie" and William Ingraham Haven. Mary Ingraham Haven died due to complications from childbirth on April 3, 1860. William Ingraham Haven ( c.1856-1928) became a Methodist minister in his own right in the New England Annual Conference. Gilbert Haven is the cousin of Bishop Erasmus Otis Haven (1820-1881). The two cousins often corresponded. After Mary Ingraham Haven's death in 1860, Gilbert Haven maintained regular correspondence and a close relationship with Mary's sisters, brothers, and in-laws throughout the rest of his life. Bishop Haven died on January 3, 1880, at the home of his mother. Haven is buried in the Salem Street Cemetery, Malden, Massachusetts.

Reverend Edward Pearce Hayes (1895-1979) was a missionary who spent thirty years in China. He was born on July 18, 1895, in Hazen, Maryland, to Reverend Edward and Ella Pearce Hayes. He attended Johns Hopkins for both undergraduate and graduate degrees, graduating with a Bachelors in 1916 and a Masters in 1921. He also received a Bachelors of Divinity (B.D.) from Drew Theological Seminary in 1917 and an honorary Doctorate of Divinity (D.D.) from Western Maryland College in 1945.

In 1917, he was appointed to organize a YMCA at Fort Howard. He later established a YMCA headquarters at Fort McHenry and opened branches at smaller posts around the Baltimore Harbor. He was the YMCA War Work Secretary from 1917 to 1919 and then the first full time YMCA Secretary at Johns Hopkins, from 1919 to 1921. He was also licensed to preach in the First Church Baltimore, now known as Lovely Lane Church.

Lily May Anderson Hayes (1895-1988) was married to Reverend Edward Pearce Hayes and a missionary who spent a little under thirty years in China. She was born on November 6, 1895, to Charles Horace Anderson and Clara Amelia Nixdorrf Dowell. She attended Peabody Conservatory of Music after graduating from Western High School in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1914. Edward Pearce met Lily around 1914. They were married in 1917 at the First Church Baltimore. They had three children, Ann Dowell Hayes (Valois), Edward Bruce Hayes, and Donald Pearce Hayes.

In 1921, the Methodist Episcopal Church Board of Foreign Missions sent both Edward Pearce and Lily to Foochow, Fukien Province in China. He was appointed as the District Missionary of the same area. Edward Pearce Hayes supervised the development of churches, schools, and hospitals, including raising funds for their support. He also served as a middle man in negotiations between bandit bands and lawful authorities; was on the committee serving one million lepers in the province; and was the superintendent to three hospitals and the head of three schools. Lily Anderson Hayes taught English and music at the local high school while in China, in addition to entertaining guests and hosting traveling missionaries.

From 1936 to 1952, Edward represented Chinese churches at General Conference. He stayed in China throughout World War II, while Lily did not. Lily rejoined him in 1947 for the Centennial Anniversary of Methodism in China and they stayed in there until January 1951. While most missionaries left China during the Communist Revolution in 1949, they stayed for two more years to serve as liaison to government officials in order to assure an orderly transfer of educational, medical, and social institutions. After their time in China, Edward Pearce took two study trips around Asia, in 1952 and 1955.

In 1952, he raised money to open the Japan International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan. Later, he helped to raise funds for many different projects in Southeast Asia. In 1965, he became the West Coast representative for the Ludhiana Christian Medical College and Hospital in Northwest India. In 1962, he was the recipient of the Freedoms Foundation Award. He retired fully in 1971 due to illness and on June 27, 1979, he passed away of a stroke before his 84th birthday. Lily Anderson Hayes passed away in her sleep on January 23, 1988 at the age of 92.

Elmer Ellsworth Higley (1867-1931), American Methodist minister, was born on July 6, 1867 in William County Ohio. His family moved to Crawford Country, Pennsylvania where he attended Conneautville High School, the Edinboro Normal School, and Allegheny College. Higley was later called to ministry and served his first appointment in Centerville, Pennsylvania. There, he met his wife Alice C. Dowler and they were married on August 16, 1892. Together they had five children, two of which were twin boys who died during infancy.

Higley attended Drew Theological Seminary and completed his degree at New York University. Later he completed pastorates in Sherman, New York; Kane and Newcastle, Pennsylvania; Grace Church, Denver, Colorado; and Grace Church, Des Moines, Iowa.

He then gained charge of the Department of Indian Work under the Board of Home Missions and Church Extension, and the Woman’s Home Missionary Society. Higley was part of a committee that was called to confer with President Coolidge on Native American matters. Through his work, he was recognized as an authority on Indian Life and customs, and was adopted into the Mohawk and Cherokee tribes.

Higley accepted a call at the College Church in Ames, Iowa, and from Iowa he transferred to Park Ridge, Illinois where he gave services and planned Passion Week and Easter. Besides the many poems, songs, cantatas that he wrote, he was also the author of “Homespun Religion” and “The Sterile Soul”. On March 22, he was giving a service when he fell unconscious and was taken to Evanston Hospital. On Tuesday, March 24, 1931 he died without regaining consciousness.

Benjamin Franklin Hill (1872-1959), American Minister, was an ordained clergy member of both the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Church, who served in a number of churches in the Southern United States, Canada, and California. Hill was born in West Virginia, possibly in Nicholas County, which was where he met his future wife, Georgia Moffeit Summers. He taught for ten years before becoming an ordained minister in the West Virginia Conference. Hill also authored various newspaper articles and a book entitled, "Morning Star" which was a paraphrase of the Bible.  Part of his ministry was to the Pottowattomi Tribe in Kansas and the Osage and Cherokee Tribes in Oklahoma where he built schools and churches. Hill homesteaded in Canada and struck oil in Texas.  He finally retired to California after thirty-three years of service to the church.

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.

John Gordon Howard (1899-1974), American bishop, college president and editor, was born to missionary parents in Tokyo on December 3, 1899. His father, Alfred Taylor Howard, was a bishop of the Evangelical United Brethren Church. He graduated from Otterbein College in 1922 with an A.B., Bonebrake Theological Seminary in 1925 with a B.D., and New York University in 1927 with an M.A. Licensed by the Miami Conference in 1924 and ordained in 1925, Howard served as Youth Director in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ for thirteen years (1927-1939).

Howard then spent five years as editor of Sunday School literature. In 1945 he was elected president of Otterbein College. During the next twelve years, he greatly strengthened that institution. On August 1, 1957, Howard was elected a bishop of The Evangelical United Brethren Church and assigned to the East Central Episcopal Area. After the merger with the Methodist Church he was assigned to the Philadelphia episcopal seat. He had two daughters with his first wife, Rhea McConaughy, who died in 1965. In 1967 he married Katherine Higgins Shannon. Howard died on December 24, 1974.

Matthew Simpson Hughes (1863-1920) was a Methodist Episcopal Church minister and bishop. He was educated at Linsly Institute in Wheeling, West Virginia, and at the University of West Virginia. At the university, Hughes studied law and medicine, but did not graduate with a degree. Instead, he became the city editor of the Parkersburg Daily Journal.

In 1887, Hughes was ordained and joined the Iowa Conference, where his first appointment was to the Ewart circuit. A year later, he married Harriet Francis Wheeler. During the Spanish-American War, Hughes was chaplain of the First Minnesota Regiment.

Hughes held pastorates at Chestnut Street Church in Portland, Maine (1890- 1894); Wesley Church in Minneapolis (1894-1898); Independence Avenue Church in Kansas City, Missouri (1898-1908); and First Church in Pasadena, California (1908-1916). From 1908-1911 he was also a professor of theology at the Maclay College of Theology of the University of Southern California. In 1904, he was chosen as a fraternal delegate to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, meeting. In 1916 Hughes was elected bishop and assigned to the Portland, Oregon area. He died there at the end of his first quadrennium, on April 4, 1920.

Hughes published The Higher Ritualism, a collection of sermons, in 1907. He also wrote The Logic of Prohibition in 1915, as well as numerous articles in magazines.

John Ingerslew (1887-1985), American Methodist minister and missionary to Denmark, was born on Dec. 31,1887 in Asaa Jutland, Denmark, to Martinus Pederson and Dorthea Ingerslew Lauritsen, and immigrated to the United States in 1904. While in the United States he attended Garrett Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois. He worked as a pastor from 1913 to 1917 at the Norwegian Methodist Episcopal Church, Berlin, New Hampshire, and worked with the Seaman's Mission as pastor of the Scandinavian Methodist Episcopal Church of Baltimore, Maryland from 1917 to 1919. He was married to Anina Fladborg in 1910.

Ingerslew returned to Denmark to be with his dying mother in 1919. On the voyage, he met Bishop William Anderson, who insisted that he move to Copenhagen to assist Anton Bast. Ingerslew returned to the United States for a short time and in November of 1919 moved, with his two children, to Copenhagen. His wife, Anina (Nina) delayed by pregnancy and ill health, joined him nine months later. Ingerslew began work immediately as Bast's secretary and instructor of the Theological School.

Reservations about Bast's behavior had been expressed long before Ingerslew's arrival. Concerns had been raised as early as at the 1912 General Conference about possible financial misconduct. Ingerslew thought the charges might be true, but he wasn't responsible for finances, and therefore didn't occupy himself with the charges.

However, Ingerslew was responsible for the translation of Anton Bast's book, The Central Mission Through Ten Years, for presentation to the General Conference in 1920. Ingerslew was troubled by misrepresentations in the book and the allegations that Bast was selling the book for personal profit. Bast presented the book to the General Conference and returned as Bishop. Ingerslew then succeeded Bast as pastor of the Jerusalem Church in Copenhagen, gaining responsibility for the finances of the Central Mission In 1921 tensions about the financial management, private enterprises and moral conduct of Bishop Bast arose. Ingerslew became the spokesman of the charges brought forward by the trustees of the Jerusalem church. In Denmakr, the duicial process within the Church was blocked and in the United States the authorities did not take seriously the complaints in an early stage. The affair grew to a major crisis. At the end of 1924, when Bast came back frfom a visit in the United State, he was arrested by the police and released after ten days. The Danish Conference in 1925 expelled Ingerslew and eight trustees who continued to carry charges against Bast before Danish courts. Inglerslew also had legal troubles with the new Trustees of the Jerusalem Church. Some of his charges were received by the court, but the Jerusalem church appealed to the Supreme Court where it was finally defeated in 1929. Ingerslew went back to the United States. Bishop Bast was tried in the Court of Copenhagen upon several charges for misappropriation of funds in 1926. All but one were dropped. The jury found Bast guilty on the charge of having made profit from the Missions' weekly paper. Bast had mainteained that the paper made no profit when it did. Bast was sentenced to three months in prison. Only after the State Court decision was there an investigation by the church. The church trial was held at The Hague, Holland, in1927. Bast was permanently suspended from the exercise of the office of bishop

Ingerslew returned to America in April 1929, but was unable to get an appointment, and was forced to live in tents with three of his four children for four months before being appointed to the church at Grant City, Missouri, where he stayed until 1932. In 1929 he was married to Lissa A. Madsen.

Ingerslew served in Edina, Missouri, from 1932 to 1937; Morberly Missouri, from 1937 to about 1939; Milan, Missouri, from 1939 to 1942; and Trenton, Missouri, from 1943 to 1946. After Trenton, he moved to Hannibal, where he worked with the First Methodist Church. In 1951 he transferred to Washington, Missouri and then Eureka, Missouri, where he stayed until 1960. In May 1960 he retired to Hannibal, Missouri. From 1963 to 1970,he served part-time with the Oakwood Methodist Church in Oakwood, Missouri. He later moved to Nebraska and died in Seward, Nebraska on June 4, 1985 at the age of 97.