Born: Madisonville, Kentucky, August 10, 1868.
Died: Santa Ana, California, October 27, 1930.

William Edgar Crabtree was born at Madisonville, Kentucky, August 10, 1868. His father, Cyrus W. Crabtree was a zealous elder of Manitou Christian church at time of his death in 1886. His mother was Ermina Rebecca Gregory, daughter of Virginians, and on the maternal side he is the third generation of Disciples. The mother, a woman of rare Christian faith and life, dedicated her children early to Christian service and at the time of her death in 1912 had four members of her immediate household serving in California pulpits.

Edgar, at age of ten, went with his father's large family to a farm and for several years did all kinds of farm work, from clearing away forest to harvesting crops. The values of this experience are today manifest. With other members of the family, he attended private schools until he was sixteen, at which time he entered the Standard Normal School at Madisonville and in the second term graduated, securing a teacher's state diploma. For three terms he taught in the common schools, and has ever counted that his life as a young schoolmaster made a distinct contribution to his subsequent ministry. He taught a mining town school. There was no church near the paternal farm, and he and his twin brother went horseback double to Madisonville, six miles away.

Then the zealous mother gathered the neighborhood children into a Sunday school. Custom in those days did not allow women to offer public prayer, so if "Uncle Dave Davis" did not appear, there was no prayer. However, the mother taught the lesson and there was singing. When her first four children, including Edgar, made confession, it was not in a church, but in a tobacco factory, to which the revival was carried from an overflowing schoolhouse. Dr. D. M. Breaker was the evangelist. A church was built at nearby Manitou and the children became active in Sunday school and prayer meeting.

Having decided to enter the ministry, Edgar matriculated in College of the Bible, Lexington, in 1888. Here his teachers were Graham, McGarvey, Grubbs, Loos, White, Milligan, Fairhurst, Collis, Freeman and Ellett. To these men, who during a period of five years guided his training he feels his debt is incalculable. Besides what they taught, in themselves they mightily influenced his life. He graduated in College of the Bible in 1891 as valedictorian of his class, and in 1893 he finished the classic course of Kentucky University in the honor group.

He preached his first sermon in old Republican church near Lexington, the church whose picture is displayed in James Lane Allen's book, "The Reign of Law." During college days he served as minister to the following churches, all in Kentucky: Glencoe, Mt. Carmel, Moorefield and Carlisle. In January, 1893, he was called to Chestnut Street Christian church, Lexington, and after graduation in June devoted himself to that field, expecting to make it his life work, but his field in the far West was definitely marked out for him.

In October, 1893, he married Miss Ettie Goode, of Bowling Green, Kentucky, who has been a true and co-operating friend in his ministry. Since going to San Diego, California, two daughters, Rebekah and Harriet, now young ladies in college life, were born to them.

Mr. Crabtree preached his first sermon in Central church, San Diego, on July 15, 1895. A congregation of 125 in a small frame building located some distance from the heart of the city, greeted him and entered heartily into work with him. It was San Diego's dull day and church work was heroic at that time. The summer of 1917 completed the twenty-second year of his ministry with this church. The city has grown and the church has grown with it. Today the membership is a thousand and worships in a handsome $75,000 property, modern in equipment, and filled with busy workers nearly every day of the week. Out from Central Christian, three other churches have gone and Central has turned over to them property free of debt in every case. For nine years this church has been in the "Living Link" column and including the Woman's Missionary Society supports two Living Links on the foreign field. Of course, it is active in the home field.

Mr. Crabtree is oldest in point of service, of all ministers, Catholic and Protestant, in San Diego, and his enlarged constituency calls for much outside ministry. He conducts from eighty to one hundred funeral services a year and married in 1913, which was his banner year in that respect, 210 couples. He has served his city and county on various commissions, such as Library and Probation, and enters heartily in all civic, betterment and reform work. At one time, the Congressman, Legislator, Mayor, Chief of Police and President of City Board of Education were all members of Central Christian. This minister is never happier than when free to "preach the Word" and "to exhort from house to house." He has sought by private study and by travel, including a sojourn in Bible lands, to keep abreast and efficient. He is a thoroughgoing Californian and has for his ambition the development of a group of self-supporting churches in San Diego and environs before he relinquishes the active guidance to another.

The foregoing record is sufficient to give the subject the right to a place among the representatives of the New Living Pulpit of the Disciples of Christ. Mr. Crabtree is perhaps the best known and most popular preacher in the city where he lives. Blest with a striking personality, he is endowed also with those mental qualities which combine to make him the successful pastor that he is. It is well for the Christian Church that they have such an able and faithful representative in the growing and important city of San Diego. In his hands the gospel is always safe, that makes safe the salvation of souls.