Born: Missouri, 1838.
Died: Illinois, 1904.
Entered the Christian ministry through the action of the church at Louisiana, Missouri, in 1860. The same year he came into Illinois, where he continued his work to the close of his life. He wrote a few years before his decease:
"As you probably know, my preacher-life has been a very humble and uneventful one. My first regular work was in the counties of Brown and Schuyler in 1862. At that time I was almost the only Christian preacher, outside of Quincy, in all that region between the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers. The Civil War was then on. Hundreds of soldiers were being brought back--sick, wounded, dying and dead. Many nights I rode on horseback, through mud and darkness, to be at the places where soldiers were to be buried, and give consolation through the preaching of the gospel. In the first five years of my ministry, although I baptized many hundreds of people, I did not receive enough money to buy my clothes. The first State convention I attended was in Bloomington in September, 1863. On the first morning of the convention the ground was covered with a heavy frost--a splendid corn crop was in ruins. A sadder-faced audience I never looked into. Robert Foster said: ‘Let us brace up. I move that the janitor make a fire, and that Bro. Fillmore lead us in one of his best songs.' Both of these things were done, and through our prayers the Lord's work moved on gloriously."
While Mr. McGinnis was a faithful preacher of the Lord, he was pre-eminently a man of peace. Through the gentleness of his spirit and the sweetness of his disposition, the influences of his consecrated life were as wholesome and abiding as the sunshine.