Exiled from the Seminary halls, these rebel reformers took refuge in a building hard by the city, and extemporized a Theological school, themselves being both lecturers and students. The following Spring, negotiations being matured for adding a Theological department to the Oberlin Institute by the accession of Professors Finney and Morgan the seceders went in a body to Oberlin, where they prosecuted their preparations for the ministry, which were completed in 1836. Among these first graduates of Oberlin Theological Seminary was J. A. Thome. The Winter of 1835-6, he had spent in lecturing on anti-slavery in Ohio, under commission of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The Winter of 1836-7, he, with Jos. Horace Kimball, of New Hampshire, visited the British West India Islands to investigate the results of the abolition of slavery, two years prior, by act of Parliament. A volume entitled "Emancipation in the West Indies," prepared by Mr. Thome, and published, in 1837, by the American Anti-Slavery Society at New York, embodied these observations. The book was timely and told efficiently on the reform in this country. The Winter of 1837, was passed in Kentucky, the abolitionist living among slaveholders, and officiating as the minister in the church of his father. The next Spring he accepted a call to the chair of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in Oberlin college, and in September following was married to Miss Ann T. Allen, daughter of John Gould Allen, Esq., of Fairfield, Connecticut. After ten years of professorial labors, in association with men of great worth, most of whom still retain their connection with the college, Mr. Thome entered upon the pastoral work, December, 1848, in connection with the church of which he is still the pastor.
He has enjoyed a pastorate of twenty years, uninterrupted by serious ill-health, and cheered by successive revivals and consequent accessions to the church, which, having a membership at the beginning of his pastorate of little over one hundred, now numbers over three hundred, after many losses by dismission and death.
Mr. Thome, early converted to anti-slavery, and consistently devoted to that cause, has lived to see slavery abolished in America. In addition to the volume on West India Emancipation, he wrote, in 1850, a book on Slavery in America, which was published by the British Anti-Slavery Society. Since, a Prize Tract on Prayer for the Oppressed, also a tract during the war on "What are we Fighting for?" and a treatise on "The Future of the Freed People."
At the earnest solicitation of the Secretaries of the American Missionary Association, and with the generous consent of his church, Mr. Thome, accompanied by his wife and daughter, went abroad early in 1867, to secure pecuniary assistance from the friends of the freedmen in England and Scotland for their education and evangelization. He was absent on this mission one year. The result of his efforts have not yet ceased to be realized.
After thirty years of unbroken domestic felicity, three beloved daughters having been reared to womanhood in the enjoyment of the Christian's hope, and two of them happily wedded, Mr. Thome and his wife were overwhelmed with sorrow by the sudden death, on the last day of April, 1869, of their second daughter, Mrs. Maria E. Murphy, wife of Mr. Thos. Murphy, of Detroit. A lady of singular amiability, purity, and Christian excellence, she was endeared by her sweet graces to rich and poor, to young and old, throughout the circle of her acquaintances.
William H. Goodrich.
Rev. William H. Goodrich, D. D., pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Cleveland, is a native of New Haven, Conn. His ancestry is among the most honorable known in American society. His father was the late Rev. Chauncey A. Goodrich, D. D., a greatly distinguished professor in Yale College; and his grandfather, Hon. Elizur Goodrich, for some years a representative in Congress, and for twenty years Mayor of New Haven; and his great-grandfather, Rev. Elizur Goodrich, D. D., distinguished both as a clergyman and an astronomer. His mother was the daughter of Noah Webster, LL.D., the lexicographer.
He graduated at Yale college, and was subsequently a tutor in that institution. He studied theology at the New Haven Theological Seminary. While tutor, it was his duty to preserve order about the college grounds, and he received, (though not from a student,) during a night disturbance, a severe injury upon the head, which put his life in peril and interrupted mental labor for a long period. A part of this time was spent abroad in 1848; and it was not till 1850 that he entered steadily upon the duties of his profession. He was first settled as pastor of the Congregational Church of Bristol, Connecticut, where he remained four years. He was then called to the pastorate of the Presbyterian Church in Binghamton, N. Y., where he remained till 1858, when he removed to this city, where, for eleven years, his ministry has been marked by very great success. The prosperous condition of the church under his care, together with almost unparalleled attachment between pastor and people, afford evidence of the ability and faithfulness with which he has discharged his ministerial duties. To remarkable mental vigor, he adds great delicacy of character and the warmest sympathies; and those who know most of him, regard it as no partial judgment which awards him a front rank among preachers and pastors.
[Illustration: Yours truly, W. H. Goodrich]
Mr. Goodrich has enjoyed the best of opportunities, and is a writer of rare taste and rhetorical force, and an eloquent and impressive speaker. As a preacher he is never speculative and theoretical, never dogmatic nor sectarian, but eminently spiritual and practical. But the strongest point in his character is his downright, never-failing common sense. He never blunders, and never has to apologize for important mistakes committed. He is remarkable for insight to the character of all with whom he has to do. This trait gives him influence with many who care little for the gospel which he preaches. Though not conspicuously demonstrative in his outward life, and though free from all approach to obtrusiveness, so earnest and direct are his ways, that he becomes known to thousands with whom he has no personal acquaintance.