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Daniel Kumler Flickinger (1824-1911) was an American United Brethren preacher and missionary bishop. He was largely self-educated. Beginning in 1846, he taught several terms in a rural school in Ohio. He married Mary Litner on February 25, 1847. His pastor recommended him for a quarterly conference license to preach, which was granted in April, 1849. He was then licensed by the Miami (Ohio) Conference, United Brethren in Christ, in 1850.

After serving as a junior preacher for a year, he resigned to enter Miami (Ohio) University. After the death, in 1851, of his wife he never returned to the university.

Flickinger accepted an appointment in 1851, but his poor health kept him from taking an assignment in 1852. Instead, he accompanied Bishop J. J. Glossenbrenner to Virginia and married the bishop's daughter Catherine on January 9, 1853.

Flickinger was ordained at the 1853 session of the Miami Conference and assigned to the Dayton Circuit. His second wife died in August 1854. He then offered himself to go to Africa to establish a mission, and departed on January 4, 1855. While in Sierra Leone, he married Susan Woosley, a missionary for the Congregationalists, on October 30, 1855. He and his wife returned to America in 1856, but Flickenger made a return trip to Africa in 1857 to help in the settlement of two missionaries.

Upon his return he was elected secretary of the missionary work for his denomination, but resigned a few months later due to poor health. In 1858 he as reelected to the post and continued in this office until 1885 when he was elected the first missionary bishop for the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. His tenure as bishop lasted four years. He died on August 29, 1911 at Columbus, Ohio, and was buried at Oxford, Ohio.

Edwin Ronald Garrison (1897-1995), an American bishop, was born to R. Eliot and Susie Enright Garriosn in Frankford, Indiana, on December 26, 1897. Garrison married Edith Heritage on January 20, 1922. They had two daughters, Helen Carolyn (Mrs. Lewis Kauffmann) and Marion Ann (Mrs. J. H. LoPrete). Edith Garrison died July 14, 1971. Edwin married Marion Thompson in 1973. Edwin died on January 3, 1995.

Garrison attended Depauw University (B.A. 1921) and Drew Theological Seminary (B.D. 1925) as well as receiveing other honorary degrees. He was ordained to the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1927. Between 1928 and 1942 he served churches in Sheridan, Elkhart (St. Paul's), and Bluffton, Indiana. He was District Superintendent of the Wabash District for five years. Between 1950 and 1960 Garrison served as the administrative assistant to Bishop Richard C. Raines. In 1960, he was elected to the episcopacy by the North Central Jurisdiction and assigned to the Dakotas Area. He retired at the North Central Jurisdictional Conference in 1968. In 1992, Garrison received the Drew University School Distinguished Service Award.

Costen Jordan Harrell (1885-1971), American Bishop, was born on February 12, 1885 in Gates, Colorado. Harrell was a Methodist Bishop and Seminary Professor. He began his ministry as student sully pastor at Park Avenue (Nashville, Tennessee). In 1910 he joined the North Carolina Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Harrell was ordained deacon in 1911 while serving the Epworth Church (Raleigh, North Carolina). He served the Trinity Church of Durham, North Carolina (1916-1919); First Church, Wilson, North Carolina (1919-1920); First Church, Atlanta, Georgia (1920-1925); Epworth Church, Norfolk, Virginia (1929-1933); West End Church, Nashville, Tennessee, 1933-1944. Harrell was fraternal messenger from the Methodist Episcopal Church, South to the General Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church, Columbus, Ohio (1932). He served as a member of the Commission on Budget and the Commission on Course of Study of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. He was an alternate to the World Conference on Faith and Order. Harrell was the secretary of the General Commission on World Service from 1940-1944; In 1944 he was elected to the Episcopacy by the Southeastern Jurisdictional Conference and assigned to the Birmingham area. As Bishop he beceame the Chairman of the Commission on the Study of the Local Church (1948-1952). He was also a member of the Board of Pensions and chairman of the Legislative Committee (1948-1952). Harrell was assigned to the episcopacy of the Charlotte area in 1949. Bishop Harrell was the vice-chairman of the Advance For Christ and His Church (1948-1956) and the Week of Dedication Program. He was elected as a member of the Executive Committee of the Council of Bishops (1952-1953). Bishop Harrell retired in 1956 from the Episcopacy and accepted a position as visiting professor of Homiletics and Methodist Polity and Discipline (1956). His parents were Samuel Isaac and Isa Costen Harrell. He received an A. B. degree in 1906 from Trinity College (Duke University). He then went on to receive a Bachelor of Divinity and Master of Arts Degree in 1910. Randolph-Macon College awarded him the Doctory of Divinity Degree in 1929. He also earned a Litt. D. from Birmingham-Southern in 1945 and the LL.D. Degree from American University in 1953. He married Amy Patton Walden of Athens, Georgia on June 6, 1917. They had one son. Bishop Harrell passed away in 1971.

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.

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.

William Horn (1839-1917) was born in Germany, May 1, 1839, and came to the United States in 1855. He settled in Wisconsin. He was ordained an elder in 1866. In 1871, Horn was elected editor of the Evangelische Magazine. Eight years later he was elected editor of Der Christliche Botschafter, the oldest German church paper in America. In 1891 he was elected bishop. Horn died April 27, 1917.

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.

Eben Samuel Johnson (1866-1967), Bishop and chaplain, was born in Warwickshire, England on February 8, 1866. He is a direct descendent from one of John Wesley's original helpers. Johnson was raised and educated in England. He married Sarah Tilsey (born August 4, 1863) in 1884. At the age of sixteen he was preaching on an English Methodist circuit and later spent several years as a newspaper reporter in London.

When Johnson was ten years old he was admitted to the Queens Hospital in Birmingham, England. During his twelve week stay a number of events happened which shaped the rest of his life. The first was the impact of the amount of sickness, suffering, and dying of those who were around him. This created such a compassion for others within him that he knew then and there that the ministry was to be his life's calling. The second and third events happened simultaneously when his brother sent young Johnson two books. The first was a book on Pitman shorthand. Johnson quickly learned this type of writing and subsequently used it throughout his ministry. The second book was about David Livingstone. After reading this biography Johnson felt a strong conviction to serve the church in Africa. Later, when his mother was visiting him in the hospital, Johnson expressed this high calling to her. To which she replied that if God wanted him to serve in Africa, then it would come to pass. To his dying day Johnson felt that his mother's reply was his confirmation to serve as a missionary in Africa. All of these influences are elucidated in this collection.

In 1889 Johnson moved to the United States and was admmitted on trial sight unseen with the Northwest Iowa Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. While serving various churches within the conference he attended Mornnigside College in Souix City, Iowa.

When the Spanish-American War broke out Johnson became the chaplain for the Iowa 52nd Volunteers. He was mustered out of active service within a year but remained active in the National Guard until he was elected a bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church. his final rank was that of major.

After recieving a degree from Oxford University in 1906, Johnson returned to Iowa to take up his pastoral duties. By 1915 he had become the district superintendent of the Souix City District. During this time period he was appointed secretary of the Northwest Iowa Annual Conference which lasted for twelve consecutive years. Johnson was elected a delegate to the General Conference in the years of 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1916. Being a proficient stenographer, he served as journal secretary to the General Conference in those four above mentioned sessions.

At the 1916 General Conference, Johnson was elected missionary bishop for Africa. His childhood dream being fulfilled, he quickly moved into the episcopal residence at Umtali, Rhodesia. The 1920 General Conference voted to empower him as a general superintendent. Johnson then moved the episcopal residence to Cape Town, South Africa to establish a new mission work. To his credit Johnson overcame many odds and established a firm work that included many indigenous pastors in key leadership roles.

Bishop Johnson retired in 1936 and took up residence in Oregon. He died on December 9, 1939, in Veteran's Hospital, Portland, Oregon and is buried in Riverview Abbey, Portland. He was survived by his wife, Sarah, and their three children. Sarah Tilsley Johnson died on March 29, 1967. Children include Samuel Darlow Johnson (Methodist minister in Oregon), Arthur Holmes Johnson (medical doctor in Alaska), and Dorothea Spears (who was married to an archivist in Cape Town, South Africa).

Bishop Leontine Turpeau Current Kelly (1920-2012) was born on March 5, 1920 in Washington, D.C., to the Reverend David DeWitt Turpeau and Ila Mashall Turpeau.

The Washington Annual Conference elected Matthew Clair a bishop, the second African American to be elected bishop. Bishop Clair baptized Leontine Turpeau that day.

According to family narratives, Bishop Clair stated on this day, "Oh, how I wish you were a boy so that my mantle might fall upon you." Sixty years later, it did.

Leontine Kelly's life is rooted in Methodism. Her father and brother were both Methodist ministers. Kelly attended West Virginia State College for three years, but left to marry Gloster Bryant Current in 194l after her junior year. They had three children together before their divorce in the early 1950s.

In 1956,Leontine Kelly married Methodist minister James Kelly. She returned to college and completed her B.A. in 1960 at Virginia Union University, and took a position as a social studies teacher. Though Kelly was a certified lay speaker, she did not become a pastor until the death of her husband in 1969, when she accepted an invitation from Galilee Church to be his successor. In 1976 she obtained her master's of divinity degree from Wesley Theological Seminary, thus becoming an ordained minister.

From 1977 to 1983, Kelly was pastor of Asbury-Church Hill United Methodist Church in Richmond, Virginia. In 1983 she became the assistant general secretary of evangelism for the United Methodist General Board of Discipleship in Nashville.

Kelly received her doctor of divinity degree in 1984 from the Garrett Evangelical Seminary in Evanston, Illinois. In July 1984, Kelly and the Methodist Church made history when 64-year-old clergywomen was elected bishop of the California-Nevada Conference. Kelly thus became the first African American woman to be elected bishop, not only in the Methodist Church, but in any major denomination.

She also became the first woman to preach on the National Radio Pulpit, the first woman to serve as assistant general secretary of the Board of Discipleship's Evangelical Unit, and the only woman bishop to participate and be arrested in the Good Friday Livermore Weapons Laboratory protest in 1985. In 1956, Kelly became the first African American female bishop to address an international meeting of Methodists - the World Methodist Council in Nairobi.

Kelly retired in 1988 at the age of 68. She continued her work as a preacher, teacher, and social activist. Some of her numerous post- retirement activities include, serving as visiting professor of evangelism and witness for two years at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, and serving as adjunct professor at Pacific School of Religion and Hartford Seminary.

Continuing her social activism, Kelly became the president of the AIDS National Interfaith Network (ANIN) and president of the Interreligious Health Care ACCESS Campaign. On top of these numerous responsibilities Kelly maintained a full speaking and preaching schedule. Due to her active and historic service Kelly received more than ten honorary degrees, the Martin Luther King Drum Major for Justice award, the Grass Roots Leadership Award for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Ebony Magazine's Black Achievement Award in the area of religion. She was featured in Brian Lanker's book I Dream A World: Portraits of Black Women who have Changed America, as well as in Diana Hayes' book , And Still We Rise. Kelly was her inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York in October 2000.