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Walter Linwood Crowding (1894-1980) was born October 4, 1894 to Walter W. and Alice Rosebery Crowding. He grew up on his parents' farm in Kent County, Maryland, and was educated in the local public school system.

When he was 16, the family moved to Camden, New Jersey. There Crowding put himself through Strayer's Business College and attended night classes at Temple University, across the Delaware River in Philadelphia.

Having received the call to preach, he enrolled in Drew Theological Seminary and completed his studies in 1921. Crowding then entered Dickenson College in the fall of 1921, graduating in 1925 with A.B. and M.A. degrees. In June of 1946 Dickenson acknowledged his successful ministry by awarding him a D.D. degree.

Walter was married to Catharine Fredrick on June 2, 1928. The two raised three daughters: Viola, Catharine, and Barbara. During his time at Drew he had served two appointments in New Jersey. As a student at Dickenson, he was minister of the West Fairview-Summerdale appointment and the Dillsburg- Wellsville charge.

In 1922, Crowding joined the Central Pennsylvania Conference. Later, as a YMCA secretary, he served as a morale officer on troop trains during World War II. He held pastorates at Calvary Church, Berwick; Trinity Church, Harrisburg; Lewisberg; Waynesboro; First Church, Altoona; Sunbury, as district superintendent; and Shippensburg. Following retirement in 1963, he became the associate minister of Allison Church, Carlisle.

Among other things, Crowding served seven years as conference secretary and a number of years as dean of the Epworth League Institute at Newton Hamilton, Pennsylvania.

He was a member of various conference boards and commissions, including the boards of ministerial training, missions and trustees, and the Commission on World Service and Finance. Interested in furthering ecumenical efforts, Crowding participated in local church councils and in the Pennsylvania Council of Churches. Crowding was also a contributing writer for The Grit magazine.

Crowding's social conscience pervaded his life's work. In his student days he became a conscientious objector. Throughout his ministry, he involved himself in the causes of peace, world hunger relief, civil rights, and brotherhood. He regarded his participation in the civil rights march on Washington in August 1963 as a high point of his later years. Crowding died at his home in Carlisle on June 23, 1980.

Richard Heber Bennett (1866-1945) was a pastor, moral reform leader, and author. He attended private schools in Richmond and Ashland, Virginia. He received a B.A. in 1883 and am M.A. in 1885 from Randolph- Macon College. From 1883 to 1885 he was an assistant professor at Randolph- Macon. Hebrew was his field of post graduate work. In 1895 he married Mamie Bruce. They had four children.

Bennett was the principal of Woodbourne Academy in Louisa, Virginia from 1885 to 1888. During 1889, he was principal of Spring City, Tennessee, High School. Later that year he was licensed to preach. In November 1889, he joined the Virginia Conference and was assigned to Washington Street in Richmond.

Between 1892 and 1893 Bennett attended Princeton Theological Seminary. He returned to Virginia in the summer of 1893 and worked in the West Mathews Circuit. He was then assigned to Trinity Church in Richmond. After a brief time in the Baltimore Conference, Bennett returned to Richmond in 1894. Later that year he was transferred to Farmville and Norfolk.

Bennett pastored the McKendree Church in Norfolk from 1894 to 1899 and the St. James Church in Richmond from 1900 to 1901. In 1901 he was re-assigned to Norfolk. At the Conference of 1902, he was appointed presiding elder of the Richmond District. Bennett held this position for a year, and then went to Randolph-Macon College to become professor of moral philosophy. During his four years at Randolph- Macon, Bennett became the Virginia State Superintendent of the Anti-Saloon League.

In 1907, he left his administrative post and returned to the pastorate at the Court Street Church in Lynchburg. After four years he left that church and became the conference's missionary secretary for three years.

During his time at Lynchburg the donated $20,000 to their missionary offering which went to the construction of a building at Soochow University in China.

In 1914, the General Board of Education of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, elected Bennett secretary of ministerial supply and training. During this time, he also oversaw the correspondence school at Emory University in Atlanta.

In 1926, he was elected field agent for the southern states of the Anti- Saloon League of America. A year later he was elected president of Lander College in Greenwood, South Carolina, a position he held for five years. He returned to his pastoral duties in 1932 at Portsmouth, Virginia. This was followed by appointments at Norfolk and Lawrenceville, Virginia. He retired in 1936.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1867, Laura Marsden White (1867-1937) was a missionary to China for about 43 years of her life. Her work there included teaching, translating, writing, editing a magazine, and organizing schools.

Before her work as a missionary, White taught in public schools in Philadelphia for five years, then attended Wellesley and Chicago Training School, graduating in 1890 with a B.H.

She sailed for China in 1891 under the auspices of the Philadelphia branch of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, and taught school in Chinkiang. Then in 1907 she moved to Nanking, where she was given the task of turning the school there into a college. In 1912, the first building for the junior college in Nanking was dedicated. In 1915, this school merged with several different denominational mission institutions to become Ginling College.

White was chosen in 1912 by the Christian Literature Society in China to edit The Woman's Messenger, one of the first missionary literary projects developed for women. In 1915, she moved to Shanghai to work full-time with the Christian Literature Society. White retired from mission work in 1934, and died in 1937.

Charles A. Merrill (1826-1896) was a Methodist Episcopal Church minister. He graduated from the Theological Institute in Concord, New Hampshire in 1855. Later that year he joined the Providence ( later New England Southern) Conference and served churches in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. In 1867 he was transferred to the New England Conference and pastored churches in Springfield ( 1867- 1868), Ipswich (1869-1870), Rockport (1871-1873), Woburn (1874- 1875), Holyoke (1876-1877), Easthampton (1878), Monson (1879-1881), Winchendon (1882-1884), Oakdale (1885), Tapleyville (1886- 1887), and Maynard (1888-1890). He resigned from active work in 1890 due to health reasons.

Merrill married twice. His first wife, Sarah A. Foster, died in 1852. They had one child, Charles F. In 1855 he married M. Sophia Truesdell. They had three children, Elmer T., Clifton S., and Effie A.