George Edward Henderson
In this blogpost, I reproduce the brief story G. E. Henderson told on April 6, 1916, when he joined with many others in the Brown’s Town Baptist Church to thank God for his 40 years of ministry in the community. After this, a few notes on Henderson’s life will be added.
“We are gathered together to celebrate the end of my 40th year amongst you. My mind goes back to many years, when I came along with senior ministers on 1st April, 1876 to help your then minister, Mr. [John] Clarke, who was with you for forty years.
I remember well the turmoil, and I remember having a feeling that God did not want me to remain. When I came, I found the church fallen in membership. Brown’s Town with a congregation of 800, had 523 remaining. Bethany with 700 only had 42 remaining; Sturge Town with 150 had only 23 left. The combined membership [of the churches] amounted to about 588. This was disheartening.
I had only come for three months, but three months has run into forty years. Efforts were made to secure a minister from England, as well as from Jamaica to take my place, but with no success. A great many did not want me when I came, but God removed all my difficulties and the work progressed.
After a while, we had a membership of 2,000, and when I found it necessary to separate the churches of Bethany and the sister churches at that end, and hand them over into other hands, then the call came to extend in this direction [to the north of Brown’s Town], and Grateful Hill, Salem, etc. were added and today we still have a large number. I have baptized many during my ministry and only wish that all were true to their baptismal vow.
The town [Brown’s Town] has changed considerably; only a few are left of the older people. All the churches have been built since I have been here, and this has been renewed and enlarged since the hurricane of 1893. The plan of our thanksgiving service was to invite all the ministers to come, but the Revs. [F. Wilson] Coore; [E. B.] James, [A. G.] Eccleston, [T. E.] Marston, have been disappointed. My own desire is that our hearts may be knit together.”
That was Henderson’s testimony after 40 years in Brown’s Town.
George Edward Henderson was born in 1850 to Rev. George Richard Henderson and Caroline Rose Henderson, nee Drayton. When he responded to God’s call to the ministry, he did not choose to attend Calabar College. Instead, he attended Madison University (now, after two mergers, Colgate/Rochester/Crozer Divinity School) in Rochester, New York. After graduation, he paid a visit to Jamaica to say goodbye to his parents before completing preparatory work for service as a missionary in Japan. That was his plan, but God had something different for him to do.
While he was in Jamaica, Henderson received a brief letter from John Clark of Brown’s Town
Inviting
him to come to assist Clark with the pastoral work there. Henderson’s mind was
set on Japan and he wanted no part of that plan.
Meanwhile, John E. Henderson of Second Baptist Church, Montego Bay, and Edward Hewett of the Mt Carey circuit issued Henderson an invitation. As senior ministers in JBU, they were going to Brown’s Town on April 1, 1876, at John Clark’s invitation, to investigate a controversy involving Clark and a Rev. Johnston. They asked him to accompany them and to take the minutes for the meeting. Henderson obliged and, when the meeting ended, all concluded on Clark’s innocence of the charges Johnston had brought against him.
After understanding the challenge Clarke faced, Henderson decided to consult with the two senior ministers, who encouraged Henderson to accept Clark’s invitation. After receiving the counsel, Henderson agreed to accede to Clark’s request and to serve for three months.
When Henderson turned up in Brown’s Town as Clark’s assistant, he received a hostile reception from the church, but, looking back after 40 years, he explained that he believed he was “sheltered in the canopy of God” and so survived the challenge.
While residing in the home of his senior pastor, Henderson was deeply impacted by Clark’s life – his patience, the family altar and his prayers and tears for his scattered flock. He was also attracted to Clark’s daughter, Alice. In July, 1876, Henderson was installed as Clark’s co-pastor.
Henderson first assignment was to verify the exact church membership that remained after the crisis caused by Johnston. He visited homes and interviewed the people. Soon, he married Katherine Alice Eden, the widowed daughter of John & Eliza Clark. Through this, Henderson established a direct link with the Clarks.
George and Alice Henderson were a remarkable couple. They had five children: Arthur Theodore (1883-1976), who spent most of his years as a medical doctor in Canada, where he died and was buried; Alice Mary (1885-1966), who married Rev Arthur Groves Wood in 1915 and served for more than 30 years in Haiti; George Ernest (1887-1939), also referred to as Walter Brooks Drayton Henderson, who migrated to Montreal, Canada, where he was a writer and poet; Elsie Katherine (1891), who married Miner Fenn of Newton, Massachusetts, USA, in 1917 and lived for many years in Brown’s Town; and Edith Winnifred (1893), who migrated to USA and resided in Brattleboro, Vermont, where she died.
After four years as Clark’s assistant, Henderson was saddened at his father-in-law’s passing in 1880. Soon, Henderson secured the assistance of Mr. A. G. Byfield, who had been a school teacher in Sturge Town. He relocated to Brown’s Town and joined Henderson in working for the church’s renewal. Byfield carried out a hectic programme that included visiting members in their homes and carrying out a ministry of encouragement. Evangelistic meetings were organized and the churches began to grow again.
Henderson made changes to the church programme. A monthly church members’ conference was introduced. A “Workers Band” was formed where weekly study of the Bible was undertaken. In 1884, at the request of the Jamaica Baptist Missionary Society, Byfield was ordained and released to serve in Clarendon. A Miss Vivian from Bath, England, served for one year as the pastor’s assistant. The choice of Miss Vivian helped open the door for the cooperation by the Brown’s Town church in facilitating the ministry of women. Brown’s Town Baptist Church facilitated the ministry of both Deaconess Phyllis Tuckett, sent out by BMS on special mission to Jamaica, and Clare Smith, the first Jamaica Baptist woman to graduate from Calabar College after completing the full College course. After Vivian’s departure, the church hired Edward James, who professed faith under the ministry of Miss Vivian, to continue Byfield’s work.
Subsequently, James went as a missionary to the Congo under sponsorship by the Gratton Guinness Trust. After his return to Jamaica, he departed again for service in Corn Island in Nicaragua, where he died after surgery for appendicitis.
Under the watch of Henderson and his predecessor, several persons offered themselves for the ministry. These include Charles Hobson, who died while serving as a missionary to the island of Ruatan; William Mornan who served as a missionary to Cuba and afterwards as pastor of Bethany and Stepney and later in Port Antonio; Solomon Marson, who died while serving in Santa Cruz; Daniel McBayne, who died while a student at Calabar Theological College; Solomon Brown, who trained as a teacher at Calabar and, after graduation, served as a teacher in Turks Island. Afterward, he became minister of a Baptist church in Springfield Massachusetts, USA and then at Bay City, Michigan. In addition to these, one can add the other names Henderson mentioned at his 40th anniversary service: J. S. Linton, who served at Porus; F. W. Coore, E. B. James, A. G. Eccleston; and T. E. Marston. Serving outside the Baptist family was Rev Mr [A.]Cresser [a Wesleyan]. This great tradition of nurturing persons for the ministry was to continue and today, no circuit has given more ministers to the JBU family that Brown’s Town Baptist.
Some
of the other contributions by Henderson include overseeing the erection of
church buildings and the opening of schools at Philadelphia, Lower Buxton and
Liberty Hill, where a church was also formed. Lime Tree Gardens also welcomed
the Beulah Baptist Church. Eventually, decision was taken to realign the
churches in the Brown’s Town circuit with other churches. Bethany, Stepney,
Emmanuel and Bethsalem (Balaclava) were united under Rev. Joseph Thrift.
Brown’s Town united with Grateful Hill and Salem under the leadership of
Henderson. Henderson also tackled the urgent task of seeing to the rebuilding
of churches, including Brown’s Town, which were damaged by earthquakes in 1903.
God continued to bless the churches and by 1907, membership in the Brown’s Town
church had climbed to 1,017.
With the passing of William Webb of Stewart Town in 1912, Henderson, who had helped Webb start the Manchester (now, Westwood) High School for Girls, was invited to assume the management of that school. Henderson also served for a time as pastor of the churches left vacant by Webb’s death.
Westwood is not the only school to which Henderson was attached. In 1906, after the Methodist District had closed down the York Castle Theological College and High School that it had started in the community of York Castle, near Claremont in St. Ann, some of the students were admitted to Middlesex High School in Brown’s Town. This school was later renamed Henderson High School in honour of the pastor of the Brown’s Town Baptist Church. One year after Henderson High School closed in 1954, a group of parents of former students of the school opened the Northside Secondary School. In 1957, the Northside Secondary School was transferred to the Methodist Church of Jamaica and the school was renamed York Castle High School, my alma mater.
Churches in districts neighbouring Brown’s Town continued to lose their pastors. With the passing of Rev. H. M. Phillips at Bethany, Henderson answered the call to serve pro temp as pastor for the Bethany circuit. Yet, he remembered the challenge his father-in-law had faced near the end of his ministry.
Not wanting to suffer the disappointment of his predecessor, Henderson, at age 50, offered to resign the office of pastor of the Brown’s Town Church, but the church denied his request. Henderson agreed to continue to serve but explained that he would resign so soon as he felt unable to bear the physical strain of the job. Meanwhile, he continued to select, after careful scrutiny, persons to serve as his assistants.
With the inadequate supply of pastors for the churches, Calabar principal Ernest Price appealed to young men in Baptist churches in England who were desirous of becoming pastors to make use of the training opportunity that Calabar College provided. Three of the persons who responded to this invitation were Harry M. Brown, Robert Banfield and Arthur G. Wood. After arriving in Jamaica, each of them spent time in the Brown’s Town circuit offering Henderson assistance prior to commencing their Calabar course. On completing his course, Wood served from 1915-1919 as Henderson’s assistant in Brown’s Town, becoming Henderson’s son-in-law in the process. He then accepted a call to the Balaclava circuit, after which he and his wife fulfilled their dream to be missionaries to Haiti.
At Henderson’s request, BMS sent out Rev. J. Alfred Pearce, who had earlier worked as a missionary in Africa, to assist Henderson. After serving for a few years, Pearce made Haiti and Tortuga his mission fields.
Calabar graduate Rev. S. A. McFarlane, having returned from service as missionary to Bocas del Toro, resigned from Port Maria and was without pastoral responsibility. Henderson invited him to serve in Brown’s Town as his assistant, which he gladly accepted.
Soon, Henderson believed the time for his retirement had come. Knowing that their minister had always believed that Brown’s Town Church should be a stand-alone church, the circuit called McFarlane to serve the four smaller churches. With this, after a 50-year pastorate, Henderson retired as minister of the Brown’s Town church in June, 1926, and the people invited Rev. Harry M. Brown to become his successor.
Five years later, on July 28, 1931, Henderson breathed his last, only three months after the passing of the outstanding minister neighbouring minister T. Gordon Somers in Stewart Town. As Henderson went on to receive his heavenly reward, the people greatly mourned his passing. A faithful and influential servant of God had completed his earthly course.
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