Charles Betts Galloway was one of the eight children of Charles Betts and Adelaide (Dinkins) Galloway. He was born on 1 September 1849, in Kosciusko and died in Jackson, Mississippi.
His ancestry was English, Scotch, Irish, and Welsh. His father, a physician of North Carolina origin, in 1863 moved the family residence from Kosciusko to Canton, in order to be near numerous relatives of his who were also living in Mississippi.
Young Charles Galloway grew up in a hospitable, religious home, attended local schools and churches, and, entering the University of Mississippi as a sophomore, graduated fifth in his class in 1868, being not yet nineteen.
The atmosphere of the University was favorable to religion, and Galloway’s demonstrated ability as a public speaker made it natural that he should enter the ministry.
He was licensed to preach in the summer following his graduation, and the following autumn was admitted on trial into the Mississippi Conference.
Galloway's charm of personality and pronounced ability as a preacher caused his rapid advancement in the ministry.
In 1873, he was sent to a church in Jackson, which, with the possible exception of one in Vicksburg, was the most important position his denomination could offer in Mississippi. He was here from 1873 to 1877 and again from 1881 to 1883, after which he was no longer an active pastor.
From 1877 to 1881, he was in Vicksburg. There, in 1878, both he and his wife had yellow fever. His life was despaired of, and an obituary of him even appeared in a paper in Jackson.
From 1882 to 1886, he was editor of the New Orleans Christian Advocate, and in 1886, he was made a bishop, the youngest Methodist to be raised to that position in America until that time. Though, according to the custom of his church, he presided over conferences in various states and mission fields throughout the connection, soon after his elevation to the episcopacy he made his home in Jackson.
Often referred to as the “missionary bishop of Methodism, ” he made extensive episcopal tours in the Orient and South America. Though in no sense fanatical, he was a leader in the prohibition movement in his state and section and in 1887 had a sharp but on the whole dignified newspaper controversy on this question with Jefferson Davis.
He wrote many essays, lectures, and public letters, some of which have been gathered into books.
Probably, Galloway's greatest services were in the fields of education and race relations. He was a trustee of the University of Mississippi from 1882 to 1894; he was a prime mover in the establishment of the Methodist institution, Millsaps College, Jackson, Mississippi, making a state-wide canvass for funds at the outset and serving as president of its board of trustees from 1889 until his death; he was long president of the board of education of his church and was for fifteen years a trustee of Vanderbilt University, being president of the board from 1905 to 1909. His sermon at the opening of the ecumenical conference in London in 1901, and his address on L. Q. C. Lamar delivered many times and regarded in the South as an oratorical classic, were particularly notable.
An active trustee of the John F. Slater Fund for the Advancement of Freedmen, Galloway courageously withstood prejudice and passion and urged his fellow citizens to practice forbearance toward and do justice to the negroes. Though impatient of narrow sectionalism, he was an enthusiastic student of the history of his state and a frequent contributor to the Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society.
In all of his essays, Galloway shows courage, practical good sense, and fair-mindedness. He was chiefly famed, however, as an orator, both in the pulpit and on the platform, and was not inaptly described as “golden-mouthed. ”
Among the bishops of his church, he was affectionately known as “Prince Charley, ” and it was said after his death that he was a type of greatness which made him preeminently useful and lovable. It would be hard to prove the claim advanced by his eulogists that he was the greatest of all Mississippians, but he seems to have swayed the imagination of his state as not more than two or three others of its citizens have swayed it.
On his twentieth birthday (1869), Galloway was married to Harriet E. Willis of Vicksburg.
15 April 1825 - 3 June 1877
3 May 1825 - 1873
9 February 1850 - 2 March 1890
28 July 1850 - 14 January 1927
29 June 1870 - 16 March 1931
17 April 1874 - 13 April 1902
