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Early Adventist physicians who worked at a number of early Adventist sanitariums from New York and Michigan to California.
Alfred Clinton McClure was an Adventist pastor and administrator, and president of the North American Division from 1990 to 2000. He was at the forefront of innovative strategies for outreach, notably satellite evangelism that culminated in the NET and other satellite evangelistic series. During his leadership of the division, more than 250,000 people were baptized. He saw the need for planting new churches and was a major proponent of the SEEDS church planting initiative, which resulted in more than 600 new churches during the last four years of his leadership. His lifelong passion was to build within the church a “culture of evangelism.”
Sara McEnterfer was a book binder, nurse, traveling companion, private secretary, stenographer, typist, and “executive secretary” who effectively managed Ellen White’s household operations, visitors, and travel arrangements. She was one of White’s most trusted confidants and friends.
Baptist and Seventh Day Baptist minister who briefly became a Seventh-day Adventist educational leader.
Fred L. Mead was an early leader in Adventist colporteur ministry and, with his wife Rosie Cochran Mead, among the church’s earliest missionaries to the indigenous people of southern Africa.
North American Division Biography Missionaries Died/Imprisoned for Faith Groundbreakers Couples
Eli B. Miller was a pioneer Adventist educator and missionary, the first professor of elocution or homiletics in Adventist history, and contributor and editor of Bible Readings and some of the earliest Sabbath School lessons.
North American Division Biography Educators Groundbreakers Missionaries
William Miller was a farmer turned revivalist who predicted that the world would end “about the year 1843.” His movement represents one of the most dramatic instances of American millennial fervor and spawned several new religious movements, the largest of which today is the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Eliza Happy Morton was an Adventist author, educator, pedagogical reformer, poet, musician, musical composer, church administrator, and philanthropist. She is best remembered for her geography textbooks.
Bessie Mount was a teacher, author, editor, and administrator who served as a missionary in China for 31 years. Her Chinese name was 贝茜.芒特 (pinyin: Bèi qiàn. Máng tè). She was a prisoner of war during World War II. During her final decades of service she was a trusted staff member of the Ellen G. White Estate.
Helge T. Nelson was an Adventist from Chicago, Illinois, who believed that he was the prophetic successor to Ellen G. White and made national news for disrupting church services and assaulting White.
Seventh-day Adventist medical facility that operated for a century in Massachusetts. The sanitarium went through several name changes. It was nicknamed the Melrose Sanitarium when it moved to a new location and renamed the New England Memorial Hospital in 1967 and the Boston Regional Medical Center in 1995.
Otis and Mary were former Millerites and Sabbatarian Adventists from Dorchester, Massachusetts. Census records list his occupation as a farmer. Together they were two of the earliest and most stalwart supporters of James and Ellen White. They provided early financial, logistical, and moral support at a crucial stage in the formation of the Sabbatarian Adventist cause.
Henry Norman, a charlatan who professed to be a wealthy sea captain to early Adventist church leaders in 1899, claimed that he would donate a vast fortune to the Seventh-day Adventist Church for missions. His subsequent disappearance caused a scandal among Adventists.
Oakwood Sanitarium was an Adventist health institution established at Ellen White’s urging on the campus of Oakwood Manual Training School, today known as Oakwood University.
John Oss (史約翰; Pinyin Shǐ Yuēhàn) was an Adventist colporteur, minister, administrator, and missionary to China. He was the official pioneer missionary to open the first wave of the denomination’s work in Mongolia. He witnessed wars in China and was a prisoner of war.
Chinese Union Mission China Biography Groundbreakers Missionaries Died/Imprisoned for Faith
Emily Catherine Clemons was an educator, author, poet, and from 1844 to 1845 a Millerite “laborer” exhorting people to be ready for Christ’s impending return.
Erik and Ida Pilquist were pioneer missionaries to China. Erik worked for several Bible societies as an independent missionary. At one point he played a pivotal role in the development of Adventist missions in China. Ida was a steadfast advocate on behalf of the women of China, training “Bible women” and starting girls’ schools.
Chinese Union Mission China Biography Groundbreakers Missionaries Couples
Lorena Florence Plummer (née Fait) was a church administration, a teacher, an author, and a Sabbath School director at the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.
Thomas Preble was the first American Adventist preacher to accept the seventh-day Sabbath. His writings about the seventh-day Sabbath played a crucial role in the acceptance of the Sabbath doctrine by Joseph Bates, J. B. Cook, J. N. Andrews, and other early Sabbatarians. He subsequently abandoned his belief in the seventh-day Sabbath but remained an adherent to the Second Advent message.
May Priest was an early Millerite convert who was among the earliest Sabbatarian believers. She is best remembered in the annals of Adventist history as one of four women who, with S. N. Haskell, founded the Vigilant Missionary Society and served as the secretary of that organization from its inception until her death.