Charles Albert Tindley

TINDLEY, Charles Albert. b. Berlin, Maryland, 7 July 1851; d. 26 July 1933. The son of slaves, he lost his mother when he was four, and was separated from his father when he was five. He taught himself to read and write, and at age seventeen he moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he worked as an unskilled labourer and a janitor at Bainbridge Street Methodist Episcopal Church. He studied at night school and by correspondence course, including Greek and Hebrew, before applying to become a Methodist minister. He was admitted as a probationer in 1885, serving at Cape May, New Jersey; he was then made a deacon, working at South Wilmington, Delaware. He then served in circuits in Maryland...