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Pioneer Short Biography

John Nevins Andrews 		A pioneer writer and scholar-evangelist, John Nevins Andrews exercised wide influence in the early Seventh-day Adventist church serving alongside James and Ellen White and Joseph Bates as one of the inner circle of leaders involved in founding the movement. He held a variety of important leadership positions including General Conference president, editor of the Review and Herald, and local conference president. He also served as a long-term member of the General Conference Executive Committee. John Andrews is remembered most for his scholarly defense of Adventist doctrines, especially the seventh-day Sabbath in his celebrated History of the Sabbath, and for his pioneering role as the first official overseas missionary for the church. Read Encyclopedia Article

Lottie Blake 		Dr. Charlotte (Lottie) Isbell Blake served the church as a pioneering physician, hospital administrator, medical missionary, and teacher. She is distinguished as the first African-American Seventh-day Adventist to become a licensed physician. Read Encyclopedia Article

Mary Britton 		Mary E. Britton was an educator, social activist journalist, physician, and ardent believer. Read Encyclopedia Article

Edith Bruce 		Edith (Langworthy) Bruce was born on 6 April 1867 in Traverse City, Michigan, USA. After Mr Bruce died in 1901, Edith took the nurses course at the Battle Creek Sanitarium. After spending several years as a medical missionary in the American Midwest and a short time as matron and head nurse at the Washington Branch Sanitarium, she was sent in 1908 to do medical and Bible work in what is now Kolkata, India. Mrs Bruce also did Sabbath School and educational work while in India. She died 12 October 1920, in Mussoorie, India.

Nanibala Biswas Burrus 		Nanibala Biswas, born in 1885 in a high caste Hindu family in Calcuta (Kolkatta), was the first non-Christian to accept the Adventist message in India in 1896. Read Encyclopedia Article

George Ide Butler 		George Ide Butler was born on 12 November 1834 in Waterbury, Vermont, USA. His parents were Millerites who became Sabbath-keeping Adventists in the late 1840s; they raised him in the Advent message, though he was not converted until his twenties. In 1859, he married Lentha A. Lockwood, with whom he had three children. Originally a farmer, Butler’s first church administrative role came in 1865, when he was elected as president of the Iowa Conference. He was ordained in 1867, and, in 1871, he was elected as General Conference president, a role he served in for eleven years. Beginning in 1882, he was president of the Review and Herald Publishing Association until his health failed in 1888, and he retired to Florida for rest and recuperation, where he bought a farm and planted orange trees. After Lentha’s death, Butler was called in 1901 to take on the responsibility of leading the Southern Union Conference as well as the Southern Publishing Association, where he labored for six years. He married a second time, in 1907, to Elizabeth (Work) Grainger, whose husband had died in 1899 while she and he were missionaries in Japan. While now officially retired, he and Elizabeth traveled throughout the United States, and were spending the summer in California when George died in Healdsburg, California, USA, on 25 July 1918.

John Byington 		John Byington was a circuit-riding preacher, abolitionist, and first General Conference president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Read Encyclopedia Article

Anna Knight 		Rachel “Anna” Knight was an African-American Adventist missionary nurse, teacher, colporteur, Bible worker, and conference official. Read Encyclopedia Article

Rosina Le Meme 		Rosie (Rosalina) Le Même was the first baptized Seventh-day Adventist in Mauritius and one of the leading pioneers of the denomination in the island. Read Encyclopedia Article

John Norton Loughborough 		John Norton Loughborough’s seventy-two years of ministry as a pioneering evangelist, missionary, author, organizer, and administrator had a major impact on the shaping Seventh-day Adventism. Read Encyclopedia Article

George Edward Peters 		George Edward Peters was one of the leading pioneering evangelists, urban pastors, and church administrators between 1908 and 1953, serving the predominantly African American believers. Elder Peters was the first Caribbean born Adventist leader to serve his church at its headquarters serving as the director of the Negro (Colored/Regional) department between 1941 and 1953. Read Encyclopedia Article

Lorena Florence (Fait) Plummer 		L. Flora Plummer, as she was best known, was born 27 April 1862 in Jay County, Indiana, USA, to her parents, John and Elizabeth Fait. When working as a teacher in Iowa in 1883, Flora met and married Frank E. Plummer, a fellow teacher. During this time, they moved to Des Moines, Iowa. Within days of their arrival to this new town, they received a visitor, Della Wallace, who asked them if they were interested in Bible studies. Flora, feeling that it was the neighborly thing to do, agreed, and soon was engaged in Bible study with Miss Wallace, Mrs. A. E. Burnett and her daughter Mamie, and A. G. Daniells. In 1886, Flora decided to become a Seventh-day Adventist. She and Mamie Burnett also became lifelong friends at this time. Flora Plummer then connected with the Iowa Conference’s Sabbath School Department and then, in 1900, with the Minnesota Conference. In 1901, when the Church’s structure was reorganized, she was called to be the corresponding secretary of the new Sabbath School Department, working with G. B. Thompson. In 1905, the Plummers and Miss Burnett moved to Takoma Park so that Flora would be close to the new denominational headquarters. (Miss Burnett kept the household so that Flora Plummer could do the work she had been called to.) That same year, the Plummers adopted two children—Donn and Dorothy. In 1913, Flora became the secretary (today, director) of the General Conference’s Sabbath School Department, a position she held for twenty-three years, until she retired in 1936. Even in retirement, she wrote all sorts of Sabbath School and camp meeting lessons for a variety of ages, and steadily promoted soul winning, Bible study, and sacrificial giving. She died 8 April 1945.

Fredericka House Sisley 		Frederika House was the youngest and only single person elected as an officer of the General Conference, and one of only three women to serve as a GC treasurer and GC officer. Read Encyclopedia Article

Uriah Smith 		Uriah Smith was born 2 May 1832 in West Wilton, New Hampshire, USA. He was a part of the great Advent movement in 1843-1844, even though he was a young boy at the time. Smith was educated at Exeter Academy and taught school after his graduation from there. He became a Sabbath-keeper in 1852 and began writing materials related to his religious beliefs. When he submitted the poem to the Review in 1853, he became connected with the institution in a way which was not broken until his death. He served as editor of the Review, as part of the General Conference Committee, and as General Conference Secretary, taught a Bible class, regularly attended prayer meetings, and wrote articles, books, and poems. In 1857, he married Harriet N. Stevens, with whom he had five children. He died 6 March 1903.

Hannah Tay 		Hannah Sevrens was born 8 September 1844 in Woburn, Massachusetts, USA. She married John I. Tay in 1866. They both became Seventh-day Adventists at the first tent meeting held in Oakland, California, USA. She was one of the first missionaries to travel aboard the mission ship Pitcairn. The Tays visited and worked on Pitcairn Island for a few weeks, and then moved to the Fiji Islands, where, after six months, John Tay died. She spent time there alone until she was brought to Australia, and then traveled back to the United States, where she made her home in Massachusetts. It was said of her that, “although quiet and unassuming, she was ever watchful of the comfort of others, and ready to lend a helping hand to those in need”. She died 21 November 1923.

Ruth Temple 		Ruth Janetta Temple, M.D., was the first Black graduate from what is today the Loma Linda University School of Medicine, the first Black female physician licensed to practice in the state of California, and a lifelong public health crusader. Read Encyclopedia Article

Miriam G Tymeson 		Miriam Graham Gilbert was born 14 February 1902 in Lancaster, Massachusetts, USA, to Frederick and Ella Gilbert. She married Sydney Tymeson in 1927. Both educators, the Tymesons worked in a variety of places, but were most connected to Adventist institutions near the denominational headquarters in Takoma Park. She died 9 September 1984.

Adelia Patten Van Horn 		Adelia Patten was born June 30, 1834 in the U.S. state of New York. She was baptized in 1861 in Battle Creek, Michigan, by James White. Shortly after her baptism, she began assisting Ellen White with the preparation of many of Mrs. White’s writings for publication; she lived with the Whites during this time. In 1865, Adelia was married to Isaac D. Van Horn, with whom she had three sons. She was the first woman to become General Conference Treasurer, serving from 1871 to 1873. Later in life she worked with Battle Creek College and the Battle Creek Sanitarium, and still later served as editor of the Youth's Instructor . Adelia Patten Van Horn died on July 8, 1922.

Isaac Van Horn 		Isaac D. Van Horn was born 28 March 1834 in Cato, New York, USA. As a child, he moved with his parents to Michigan, where they settled in Jackson County. Van Horn became a Sabbath-keeper in 1859, and began ministerial work in 1863, working in the state of Michigan. In 1865, he was married to Adelia P. Patten, with whom he had three sons. In 1873, the Van Horns moved to the Pacific Coast, laboring in California, Oregon, and Washington. After eight years, they returned to Michigan, where Van Horn was elected president of the Michigan Conference. In 1893, he was given charge of General Conference District No. 1 (the territory of the district covered part of Canada as well as US states now in the Atlantic Union Conference) for two years. Between 1895 and 1898, he labored in the states of Ohio and Indiana. His public labor ceased in 1907, due to old age and his health worsening. He died 22 August 1910.

J H Waggoner 		Joseph Harvey Waggoner was born 29 Jun 1820 in Pittston, Pennsylvania, USA. While he lacked formal education, he was untiringly self-taught. Trained as a printer, he worked his way up to partner in a printing-house. At first a Baptist, Waggoner was convinced of the seventh-day Sabbath in 1851 and began writing and preaching about it. Soon he connected with denominational leaders and began active Adventist labor. He was sent in 1878 to California to take charge of the Signs of the Times. In 1885, Waggoner began the American Sentinel (a forerunner of today’s Liberty magazine), and, in 1886, the Pacific Health Journal. In 1887, he traveled to Europe, charged with the position of editor-in-chief of the denomination’s German and French periodicals. Writing, editing, translating, and printing were most of the entirety of his efforts on behalf of the Advent movement. He died 17 April 1889.

Ellen G White 		Read more about Ellen White

James White 		James White was born 4 August 1821 in Palmyra, Maine, USA. He was a preacher, writer, editor, and administrator. He was instrumental in the organization of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, serving as General Conference President three times, from 1865-1867, 1869-1871, and 1874-1880. He began the periodical known today as the Review. He was married to Ellen G. Harmon in 1846, with whom he had four children, two of which survived to adulthood. He died 6 August 1881.

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