Isaac Kauffman Funk.
Originality has been a powerful factor in the career of the noted clergyman, editor and publisher, the Rev. Dr. Isaac Kauffman Funk. He was born at Clifton, Greene county, Ohio, September 10, 1839. His parents, John and Martha (Kauffman) Funk, were descendants of early Holland-Swiss emigrants to Pennsylvania. Graduating from Whittenberg college, Springfield, Ohio, with the degree of D.D., he from this same institution, in 1896, received the degree of LL.D. From 1861 to 1872 he was engaged in active work in the Lutheran ministry. At the end of that time he resigned his pastorate and traveled extensively in Europe, Egypt and Palestine. Upon returning to America he became associate editor of the Christian Radical. In 1876 he founded and published in New York city the Metropolitan Pulpit, now the Homiletic Review, acting as its editor-in-chief. His former college classmate, Adam W. Wagnalls, a lawyer of Atchison, Kansas, became in 1877 his partner, and the firm name was changed to I. K. Funk & Co., and later, in 1891, to Funk & Wagnalls Co. Their several branch houses in Canada and England, as well as their many published books which have met with public favor, testified to the business successes of the members of the concern. Dr. Funk is the founder of some well-known periodicals, among which The Voice, The Literary Digest and The Missionary Review are the most important. He also published a standard dictionary of the English language, of which he was editor-in-chief. The production of this work was a gigantic undertaking, costing nearly one million dollars.