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Charles Bayard Mitchell (1857-1942) was a Methodist Episcopal Church bishop. He graduated from Mt. Union College (1877) and received a B. A. (1879), a M.A. (1882), a Ph.D. (1892), and a D.D. (1893) from Allegheny College. In July 1882 he married Anna Aull.

Mitchell entered the South Kansas Conference in 1880 and was a charter member of the 1881 Southwest Kansas Conference. He transferred to the Kansas Conference in 1884 and served as its financial secretary for two years. Mitchell served in the following locations: Smithfield Street, Pittsburgh (1886); Plainfield, New Jersey (1888); Grand Avenue, Kansas City (1892); Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis (1897); Cleveland (1901); and St. James, Chicago (1908)

Mitchell was a delegate to the General Conferences of 1904, 1908, and 1916, and was an alternate for the 1912 General Conference. He also attended the Ecumenical Conferences of 1901 and 1911. In 1916 the General Conference elected him to the episcopacy and assigned to the St. Paul, Minnesota area, where he served for eight years. While he was in Minnesota he was instrumental in raising substantial monies for several Methodist educational institutions in the region including Lawrence College, Hamline University, Parker College, Dakota Wesleyan, and the Wesley Foundation at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Mitchell was appointed to the Philippine Islands in 1924. He remained there until 1928 when he retired.

Mitchell was a thirty-second degree Mason and a member of several professional honor societies. He wrote three books: A Little Bundle of Letters from Three Continents (1895), The Nobelest Quest: and Other Sermons Preached in the First Methodist Episcopal Church, Cleveland, Ohio (1905), and The Way of a Man (1912). Mitchell died on February 23, 1942 and is buried Forest Lawn, Glendale, California.

Judith Craig (1937-2019) was a United Methodist Church bishop. Craig was born in Lexington, Missouri on June 5, 1937. Her education started at William Jewell College (B.A., 1959), then Eden Theological Seminary (M.Div., 1961), and finally at United Theological Seminary (M.A., C.E., 1968). Baldwin-Wallace College bestowed an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree on her in 1980. Bishop Francis E. Kerns ordained her a deacon in 1972 and elder in 1974 within the East Ohio Annual Conference. Craig served at Cleveland's Epworth-Euclid United Methodist Church from 1972 to 1976 as a religious education minister and later as an associate pastor. Her next appointment from 1976 to 1980 came as the pastor at Pleasant Hills United Methodist Church. In 1980 she was appointed the Director of the East Ohio Conference Council on Ministries. Craig was elected to the episcopacy in 1984 by the North Central Jurisdiction and assigned to the Michigan Area until 1992. Afterwards she administered the Ohio West Episocpal Area until her retirement. Post retirement work includes the Office of Bishop in Residence and visiting professor at Methodist Theological School of Ohio. Craig has served on the General Commission on the Status and Role of Women ( 1984-1988), the General Council on Ministries (1988-1992), and the General Board of Publication.

Cyrus Jeffries Kephart (1852-1932), American Bishop was born in Decatur, Pennsylvania on February 23, 1852 to Reverend Henry and Sarah Kephart. He attended Western College from 1869 to 1874 where he graduated the valedictorian. During his time at Western he entered the ministry in 1871 and married, Sarah Perry, in 1873. He began his ministry in Toledo, Iowa but quickly moved to Dayton, Ohio where he entered Union Biblical Seminary. During this period of his ministry he served as pastor of the Ludlow Street United Brethren Church in Dayton. He graduated Union Biblical Seminary in 1878 and was ordained by Bishop Milton Wright the following year.

Following his completion of training at Union Biblical Seminary he became the principal, and later president, of Avalon Academy (College) in Avalon, Missouri. He remained here until 1885, when after a sabbatical, he and his family returned to Toledo, where he became employed by Western College. For the next twenty years Cyrus Kephart moved back and forth between the clergy and academe. During this time he served as pastor of the East Side United Brethren Church, Summit Park United Brethren Church, in Des Moines, Iowa and in Lisbon, Iowa. He also served as the General Secretary of the Pennsylvania State Sabbath School Association from 1894 to 1897. In academe, Kephart for a second time was president of Avalon College and Western College, which during his time became Leander Clark College in 1905.

In 1908, Cyrus Kephart became the pastor of the First United Brethren Church in Dayton, Ohio. Serving with distinction, he was elected to the office of Bishop in 1913 by the United Brethren General Conference, held in Decatur, Illinois. Afterward he was supervisor of the Southwest District from 1913 to 1925. He retired from active ministry in 1825 and continued to live in Kansas City, Missouri until his death on July 20, 1932.

His published works include: Jesus the Nazarene (1894), The Life of Jesus for Children, The Public Life of Christ, What is a Christian? (1910), Jesus Lord and Teacher (1913), Christianity and the Social Weal (1914), with Dr. W.R. Funk, The Life of Isaiah L. Kephart (1909), and numerous other articles.

*Biographical Information from:

Koontz, Paul Rodes and Roush, Walter Edwin. The Bishops: Church of the United Brethren in Christ. Dayton: Otterbein Press, 1950.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Cornelio M. Ferrer (1908-1988) Filipino pastor, editor and bishop, was born in Ligayen, Pangasinan, Philippines, on September 16, 1908. He attended Union College of Manila, receiving a B. A. in 1937, while serving student appointments. On February 23, 1935, he was ordained deacon and on November 28, 1937, an elder.

Ferrer was a member of the Phillipine Annual Conference. He married Emilia V. Rosario on April 14, 1934. From 1940 to 1946, Ferrer was a district superintendent. Shortly thereafter he was named a Crusade Scholar and attended Drew University, from which he received an M.A. in 1948. After his graduation he returned to the Philippines for a rural pastorate. From 1950 to 1968 he worked for the National Council of Churches in the Philippines while earning a B.D. degree from Union Theological Seminary in the Philippines. For years he was the Filipino correspondent of The Christian Century. During the 1950's, Ferrer served as the business manager of the Philippine Christian Advance.

On November 28, 1968, Ferrer was elected to the episcopacy by the Philippines Central Conference and served the Manila Area until 1974, when he retired. He then was a volunteer worker in rural missions. Ferrer died on November 23, 1988.

Raymond J. Wade (1875-1970), American Bishop, was born in LaGrange, Indiana, on May 29, 1875. He was educated at DePauw University and held honorary degrees from DePauw University, Taylor University, and Albion College. Wade joined the North Indiana Conference in 1894 and had pastorates in several Indiana churches. From 1915 to 1920 he was district superintendent of the Goshen District. Wade also served as corresponding secretary of the Commission on Conservation and Advance (1920-1924), was executive secretary of World Service Commission (1924-1928), and was secretary of the Methodist Episcopal General Conference (1920-1928).

Elected bishop in 1928, Wade was assigned to the Stockholm area which included the entire Kingdom of Sweden at that time. While in Europe, he was president of the University of Scandinavia's School of Theology at Gothenburg, Sweden, from 1928 to 1939. Wade supervised the work of the Methodist Church in several European countries until his return to the United States in 1940. He retired in 1948 after eight years of service to churches in the Detroit area. Wade died in 1970.

Myrtle L. Wade (1889-1969) was president of the World Federation of Methodist Women during the time her husband, Bishop Raymond J. Wade, was in Sweden. Myrtle Wade was the second wife of Bishop Wade. They were married in 1913.

Emily Smith (1865-1963) was an English born missionary who served in northern Africa. She began her mission work in 1892 with Dora Welch under the auspices of the English Society North Africa Mission. In 1908 they transferred to the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Smith and Welch did evangelistic and educational work with Moslems in Kabylia and Algiers until their retirement in 1933 whereupon they returned to England. The history of their work is recounted in Stranger Than Fiction: Adventure in a Moslem Land, a book they co- authored.

The idea for the World Federation of Methodist Women (W.F.M.W.) began in 1923 when Ohio Wesleyan University student Helen Kim, later President of Ewha University in Seoul, Korea, was asked to speak before the Des Moines, Iowa, branch of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society. During her preparation she had a vision of a world fellowship of Christian women. When she presented her address entitled, "To the Women of the World," Kim outlined her plan to bring together delegates from all kinds of women's international organizations.

In 1927 during the tenth anniversary celebration of the China Woman's Society, Chinese women began to develop plans for an international organization. Two years later the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society acted on the plan and organized its International Department. On October 26, 1939, the first assembly of the W.F.M.W. met with delegates from twenty- seven lands signing the charter and constitution. The W.F.M. W. was officially recognized by the 1940 General Conference of the Methodist Church. Other assemblies were held in 1944, 1948, and 1952. Reorganization took place in 1956, and a new constitution was signed by forty-one units. At that time the W.F.M.W. became affiliated with the World Methodist Council and continued to advocate for women and provide leadership and training.

Philip William Otterbein (1726-1813) was born June 3, 1726 in Dillenburg, Germany. In 1748 he was approved a candidate for ministry and was ordained in 1749. He volunteered to go to American to fill vacant pulpits among the German Reformed in 1752. He was soon called to the congregation in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He married Susan LeRoy of Lancaster, in 1762. She died in 1768 and he remained a widower for the rest of his life. In 1767 he attended a meeting where he heard Martin Boehm, Mennonite bishop, preach. This occasion began a friendship which furnished roots for a religious movement that eventually was to culminate in the formation of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. Perhaps at the urging of Francis Asbury, Otterbein assumed charge of an independent Reformed congregation in Baltimore, Maryland in 1774. A close friendship developed between Asbury and Otterbein. Never intending to begin a new church, Otterbein and a group of laymen and ministers began to meet regularly for greater spirituality and inward piety. This eventually resulted in a breakaway and the formation of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. Otterbein and Boehm became its first bishops. Otterbein participated in Asbury's consecration and ordination as bishop December 27, 1784 in Baltimore, Maryland. Otterbein never fully recovered from a serious illness in 1805. He remained in Baltimore until his death on November 17, 1813.