Showing 64 results

Willard Edwin Graves (1880-1966), an American missionary and educator, was born in Oak Hill, Clay County, Kansas, on April 5, 1880. His wife, Almyra Alford Graves was born in Beloit, Kansas, on May 31, 1884. Both graduated in June 1907 from Kansas Wesleyan University and were married that same month.

Willard and Almyra Graves were commissioned by the Board of Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church to serve as teaching missionaries in Rangoon, Burma beginning in 1908. Willard taught and later served as principal of the Methodist Episcopal Church School for Boys in Rangoon. Almyra suffered ill health and returned home for a year. She returned to Burma, but her health deteriorated again, which necessitated their final departure for the United States in 1913. She died on July 7, 1914.

Following his wife's death, Graves earned his master of arts degree at the University of Chicago. He never returned to the mission field, though he remained an ardent supporter of missions all of his life. He married Edna B. Murphy in 1915. They had four children. He continued to teach in Kansas and Colorado, and later became a sales representative for a company that published textbooks in New York. He died in Milwaukee on December 10, 1966.

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.

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.

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.

Anne E. Herbert (1897-2002) was a Methodist Episcopal Church, South, missionary to China from 1925-1940. She received her B.A. in 1917 from Lander College (South Carolina) and a diploma from Scarritt Bible and Training School in 1921 (Missouri). She also attended Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in 1925. In 1946 she earned a M.S. in nursing from Western Reserve University.

Prior to becoming a missionary, Herbert taught high school in Denmark, South Carolina, from 1917 to 1918, and was an assistant in the English department at Lander College (1918-1919). In 1925 she began her mission work as a teacher and supervisor of nurses at the Margaret Williamson Hospital School of Nursing in Shanghai, China. She held these positions until 1940 when she began work with the Women's Division of Christian Service, part of the Board of Missions of the Methodist Church.

Esther Laura Hulbert (1894-1993), American Methodist Church missionary, served in Korea and Cuba for a total of thirty-eight years by the time of her retirement on July 1, 1961. She was born in Colebrook, Ohio, on September 17, 1894 to Newel Eugene Hulbert and Emma Jane Hardy Hulbert. Esther was the third of five siblings, two girls and three boys; both she and her older sister, Jeanette Charlotte Hulbert, became Methodist Episcopal Church missionaries with the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society. Her father was a minister and she was parsonage-raised with her sister Jeannette and their brothers. Esther was educated at Bellaire High School, graduating in 1912, and Ohio Wesleyan University from which she earned a BA in 1917. She completed a masters degree at Teachers College Columbia in 1930 with short courses at Kent State Normal (1919), University of Southern California (1935) and Chicago Theological Seminary (1937). Prior to becoming a missionary, she taught at Thompson High School, Willoughby High School and Madison High School — all in Ohio — and Bethesda High School at which she was both a teacher and principal.

Home church for Esther was Methodist Episcopal church, Geneva, Ohio where she was active as a Sunday School teacher, president of the Young Woman’s Missionary Society and Epworth League president. Later her home church was recorded as Methodist Church, Cienfuegos, Cuba. Esther was commissioned in 1923 and set sail for Korea in November of that year. While in Korea, Esther was at Ewha College where she was engaged in language study and teaching in Seoul at Ewha High School from 1923 to 1928. During those years, she also spent time in Pyenyang at Chung Eui School doing similar work. Esther remained in Korea until November of 1940 when she was evacuated via the S. S. Mariposa. In 1942, she was sent to Cienfuegos, Cuba where she remained, except when on furlough, until 1960 teaching at Eliza Bowman School.

Furloughs were taken from December, 1928-August, 1930, January, 1936-March, 1937, November, 1940-August, 1942, July, 1948-August, 1949 and June, 1954-September, 1956. Esther was in Cuba during the take-over by Fidel Castro. She served for a total of thirty-eight years. Her pre-retirement furlough beginning in 1960 included speaking engagements in Wisconsin, Illinois and Ohio. Upon leaving full-time missions work, she settled in Cleveland where she moved into a municipal housing project and helped to register African-American voters to support the successful mayoral candidacy of Carl Stokes. In 1967, Esther moved to Brooks-Howell Home in Asheville, NC where she remained until her death on November 13, 1993. Like her sister Jeanette Charlotte Hulbert, Esther decided to donate her body to science. After death, her remains were taken to Bowman Gray Medical School, Wake Forest University. Later her body was cremated and the ashes spread around Brooks-Howell’s Memorial Tree.

Jeanette Charlotte Hulbert (1889-1978), American missionary, was born in 1889 on October 17th, Jeanette was the oldest of five children. Her sister Esther was third with brothers Roy Truman, Frederick Leo and Howard Hiram. Her father was a Methodist minister named Newell Eugene Hulbert who served in the North-East Ohio Conference and her mother was Emma Jane Hardy. Jeanette was only fourteen when her mother died and she, as the eldest, assumed considerable responsibility for the care of her siblings. In time, she went on to Ohio Wesleyan University and graduated in 1912. A bout of typhoid fever caused a nine month delay in her deployment, but by 1914 she was on her way to Korea as a missionary.

Jeanette’s years in Korea were spent teaching mathematics, Bible studies and science at Ewha College, later to become Ewha University, in Seoul. The year 1919 marked a tumultuous era in Korea as the country exerted its independence from Japan. Students from her college were jailed and being a Westerner became even more perilous than usual. She was sent home on furlough that year and used the time to complete a master’s degree in education at Columbia Teacher’s College and also attend classes at Union Theological Seminary. She returned to Korea and remained until 1940 when the threat of World War II loomed and forced an evacuation. Furloughs offered opportunities for additional education and she took advantage of this with more study at the University of Chicago and Chicago Theological School.

Jeannette traveled a third time to Korea in 1947 and worked there until the Korean War threatened; she was again evacuated in 1950. Following her years in Korea, Jeanette worked at the ACLU office in Cleveland and for the Women’s Society. Always, she continued to be active in church affairs with speaking engagements and presentations. In time, she moved to Brooks-Howell Home in Asheville, NC where she died on June 14, 1978. She chose to donate her body to Duke University Medical School. Eventually, her remains were cremated and her ashes scattered near the Memorial Tree at Brooks-Howell.

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.

Amanda Johnson (?-1901) was a Methodist Episcopal Church missionary in India. She married Dr. Thomas Johnson in 1855 and for awhile was stationed at Lucknow in the North India Annual Conference.