Biographical Sketch of David Patterson Henderson


Text from Haynes, Nathaniel S. History of the Disciples of Christ in Illinois 1819-1914, Cincinnati: Standard Publishing Company, 1915. Page 529. This online edition © 1997, James L. McMillan.

Born: Lexington, Fayette Co, Kentucky, May 18, 1810.
Died: Canton, Lewis Co, Missouri, September 2, 1897.

It is humiliating to the writer that such a fine character and useful life fails of a befitting mention from a lack of the facts. Mr. Henderson was, at different times, actively associated with the churches of Christ In Illinois for fifty years. He was a successful pastor and evangelist and a resourceful leader in co-operative missionary work and Christian education.

He was a writer and editor as well. He worked in the thirties in Morgan County and one of his pastorates was in Chicago. T. T. Holton says of him: "He was a model of grace for an old man and very winning and persuasive in his address. I think in his youth he could have courted a princess. He was a man of wonderful energy, though slight of build. When clerk of the court in Jacksonville, he preached in villages and country churches on the Lord's Days.

His great meeting in Louisville, Ky., in which five hundred additions were received, called special attention to him. During his pastorate there, the great pillared Temple at the corner of Fourth and Walnut Streets was erected. In its basement the Foreign Christian Missionary Society was organized. In the same place a daily morning prayer-meeting during the Civil War was held, and the unity of the congregation was thus conserved. He was an earnest Union man, and there were influential numbers there who differed with him. Mr. Henderson was thoroughly democratic. He knew nothing of snobbery save as he saw it in others. While a forceful leader, he was admirably conciliatory. He was a fine example of the suaviter in modo, fortiter in re.


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