Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 07.djvu/446

 MOOAR

MOODY

Joseph born in Ayrshire, 1680, a near relative of Sir Jarues Montgotnery of the SkelmorHe line. William, Jr., was graduated at Washington col- lege in 1839, and wjis admitted to the bar in 1841. He was appointed district-attorney by Governor Smith in 1845. He was married in 1845 to Matilda, daughter of Elisha and Phoebe (Gross) Duval, of HagerstoNvn, Md. She died Feb. 21, 1895. He was a Democratic representative in the 36th and 37th congresses, 1859-63, and a leading orator of the party in congress and in the state. He was the author of the " Crittenden-Mont- gomery Resolution " on the admission of Kansas to the Union. He left, besides his widow, three sons : Andrew Jackson, who married Martha G. Black of Washington county, and had two chil- dren, Elizabeth and George ; James, who married Lillian Ritner, and had one son William who re- sided in Philadelphia ; and William, who died in 1880. William Montgomery, the representative, died in Canton township. Pa., April 28, 1870.

MOOAR, George, educator, was born in An- dover, Mass., May 27, 1830 ; son of Benjamin and Susanna (Cummings) Mooar ; grandson of Benja- min and Hannah (Phelps) Mooar, and a descend- ant of Abraham Mooar who settled in Andover, Mass., about 1686, and married Priscilla, daughter of Daniel and Mary (Farnum) Poor. He attended Pliillips Andover academy, and was graduated from Williams college, A.B., 1851, A.M., 1854, and from Andover Theological sem- inary in 1855. He was married, Oct. 5, 1855, to Sarah A. Comstock of Centerbrook, Conn. He was ordained Oct. 10, 1855 ; was pastor of the South Congregational church at Andover, Mass., 1855-61 ; removed to Oakland, Cal., where he was pastor of the First Congregational church, 1861- 82, and of the Plymouth Avenue church, 1874- 88 ; professor of systematic theology and church history in the Pacific Theological seminary, 1870- 92, and was api>ointed professor of apologetics and church history in 1892. He was a member of the commission of twenty-five appointed by the national council of Congregational churches to prepare a creed and catechism for the church, 1881-84. He received the honorary degree S.T.D. from Williams in 1868. He was associate editor of the Pacific, 1863-86, and editor, 1886-96, and is the author of : Historical Manual of the Sotith Church, Andover (1859); Handbook of the Con- gregational Churclies of California (1863); The Religion of Loyalty { 1865) ; The Prominent Char- acteristica of the Congregational Churches (1866) and a volume of sermons. He also prepared for press Genealogy of the Mooar and Cummings Families.

MOODY, Dwight Lyman Ryther, evangelist, was born in Northfield, Mass., Oct. 5, 1837; son of Edwin and Betsey (Holton) Moody. The

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Moodys came to America in 1627, and the Hel- tons in 1630. On the death of his father in 1840 his mother was left with the care of her nine children, and Dwight worked at a neighbor's farm for his board, and attended school. He was later employed in a printing office at Clinton, Mass., and again as a farm hand at Northfield. In 18- 51 he went to Boston and was employed by his uncle, Samuel Holton, in his shoe- shop and later as trav- eling salesman, 1851- 54. He was connect- ed with Wiswall's boot and shoe house in Chicago, 1854-60, earning over $5000 the first year and retiring with a capital of $7000. Meantime, he joined the Plymouth church, where he hired a pew in the church agreeing to fill it with young men every Sunday. He visited on the men at their rooms, stopped them on the street and even called them out of saloons, and in a short time he rented six pews for the accommodation of his guests. He taught a class in a Sunday-school mission in North Wells street ; gathered in his pupils from the street, and soon the school had a larger at- tendance than could be accommodated. In 1858 he opened a Sunday school on North Market Hill, where, with the assistance of John V. Farwell, then the largest dry-goods merchant in Chicago, and Isaac H. Binch, president of a Chicago bank, he began the work that eventually developed into the Chicago branch of the Young Men's Christian Association, in which he was an officer, and the Chicago Avenue church with an attendance of fifteen hundred, of which he became the unor- dained pastor. In retiring from business in 1860, he devoted himself and his capital to religious work. He was a member of the Christian com- mission during the civil war. The Chicago Av- enue church, the Y.M.C.A. buildings, and Mr. Moody's house were destroyed by the fire of 1871, and he at once succeeded in raising money to rebuild them. With Ira D. Sankey he visited Europe in 1873 and instituted a series of daily religious services in London and the larger cities of England. They returned to America in 1875 and organized similar meetings all over the United States. In 1883 they again engaged in evangelistic work in Great Britain. On one of his visits to England Mr. Moody preached to an audience of seventeen thousand people. He was the founder, in 1879, of the Northfield seminary