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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.

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.