Henry Samuel EARL

EARL, HENRY SAMUEL (b. Northampton, England, 1831; d. last reference 1910). Churches of Christ evangelist.

Henry Earl migrated with his parents to America in 1831, when he was 17. He was converted in 1853 and later trained for the ministry of the Disciples of Christ at Bethany College in West Virginia. After graduating in 1858, he spent three years with the Waverley City Christian Church in Missouri.

While on leave of absence in Britain, Earl's preaching was so well appreciated that he remained there for three years. While there he was invited to serve with Churches of Christ in Melbourne and arrived in July 1864.

Earl was immediately successful, with crowds of between one and two thousand turning out to hear him. When he arrived, the membership of the Victorian Churches of Christ was 400. In the first year with the Lygon St Church in Melbourne he added a further 200. He enjoyed similar success in Adelaide (where he went to recuperate) and in New Zealand. During his time in Australia, Earl travelled to suburban and country areas conducting missions, trained colonial preachers in Adelphian Classes and acted as a sub-editor of the Australian Christian Pioneer, the first journal of substance published by members of Churches of Christ in Australia. Earl's success encouraged Australian Churches of Christ to seek other American Disciple evangelists.

When the American Foreign Missionary Society was set up in 1875, Earl offered to return to Britain, if necessary at his own expense, to work under the Society's direction in areas unoccupied by the British. He established a work at Southhampton. He so impressed Timothy Coop, a wealthy Wigan clothier who had been treasurer of the Evangelistic Committee of the British Churches of Christ since 1861, that Coop visited America in the hope of encouraging American preachers of quality to work in Britain, a venture he was willing to finance from his own resources.

G Chapman, One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism: A History of Churches of Christ in Australia (Melbourne, 1979); H S E Diary: His Own Account of His Life, From notes taken by B T E in conversation with him at Springfield, Illinois, during the winter of 1909-1910 (unpublished ms)

GRAEME CHAPMAN