FOLLOWING BIOGRAPHY ON BACK OF PLATE:

The subject of this sketch was among the first to enter Atlanta University the first day it opened, 1869, and there remained until 1876. He taught school in Georgia for several years. He was converted in 1877 and joined the A. M. E. Church at Thomasville, Ga. He was licensed both to exhort and to preach. In January, 1880, he joined the Georgia Annual Conference , in 1882 was elected secretary of the Georgia Conference, which position he held for five consecutive Years. In this same year he was ordained a Deacon by Bishop W. F. Dickerrson and sent to Darien, Ga., where he prepared for and took care of the session of the Georgia Conference. In 1884 he met the Georgia Conference at Valdosta, Ga., and was ordained an Elder by Bishop W. F. Dickerson, and was stationed at Quitman, Ga.,. remaining there two years. In January, 1886, he was transferred by Bishop James A. Shorter to the North Georgia Conference and stationed at Big Bethel A. M. E. Church, Atlanta, Ga., the city in which he was born. his mother had been a member of this church and its old members knew him when a boy. There he remained about years with great success, raising the largest amount of dollar money that had up to that time been raised in the State; by this he became one of the dollar money kings of the connection for 1886 and was awarded a gold badge by the Financial Department of the A. M. E. Church. Thus, in six years after entering the ministry, he became pastor of the largest church in the State at the age of twenty-seven years. In 1889 he was assigned to Pierce's Chapel, Athens, Ga., and served it three years. In 1892 he was made Presiding Elder of the Athens District, which place he filled for three years. In 1893 he preached the annual sermon to the students of Alien University, Columbia, S. C., when the faculty and Trustee Board conferred on him the title of Doctor of Divinity. In 1892 he was a delegate to the General Conference of the A. M. E. Church, which met in Philadelphia, and served as a member on the committe on statistics. In 1895 he was stationed a second time in Atlanta, at Alien Temple, A. M. E. Church, remaining here four years with great success and entertaining the session of the North Georgia Conference in his last year. Hle was elected again to the General Conference, which met at Wilmington, N. C., in May, 1896, and served on the committee on revision of discipline. In 1899 he was elected not only a delegate but the leader of his delegation to the General Conference, which met at Columbus, Ohio, in May, 1900. Here he was elected without opposition chairman of the Episcopal Committee, the most important committee of the church; it is composed of all the leaders of the delegations from all parts of the church, and before this committee the Bishops appear for an examination in their moral, religious and official character, it fixes the boundaries of the districts and assigns the Bishops to their fields He is now a trustee of Morris Brown College, Secretary of the Trustee and Executive Boards, Treasurer of the Theological Fund, Chairman and treasurer of the dollar money committee of the Atlanta, Ga., Conference, Book Steward, Chairman of Committee on Fourth Year's Studies. He is a prominent craftsman and for one year was Deputy Grand Master of the Most Worshipful Union Grand Lodge, A. F. and A. M. of Georgia, Grand Representative of the Stringer Grand Lodge of Mississippi to the Graxid East of Georgia, with the rank of Grand Senior Warden. He is now a Trustee of the W. E. Terry Masonic Orphan and Widows' Home and Industrial School, located at Americus. Ga., Associate Editor of the "Voice of Missions," the missionary organ of the A. M. E. Church, published in New York. One of the greatest events of his life was the receiving of Rev. Jas. M. D'wane of the Ethiopian Church from Pretoria, Transvaal Republic, South Africa, into the A. M. F,. Church, and through him eighty preachers and two thousand eight hundred members.