Henry Albert Schauffler

Background

Henry Albert was born on September 4, 1837 in Constantinople (Istanbul, Turkey), the son of William Gottlieb Schauffler; his mother was Mary (Reynolds), who introduced education for women into the Turkish Empire.

Education

Sent to the United States, Henry entered Williams College, from which he was graduated as salutatorian of his class in 1859. Later he spent two years at Andover Theological Seminary and one year at the Harvard Law School.

Career

After Andover Theological Seminary and the Harvard Law School Henry Albert Schauffler went back to Constantinople, where he was for two years professor of law at Robert College. He was ordained at Constantinople on June 3, 1865, and for the next five years was an American Board missionary in that city.

As a missionary to Catholics in Austria, he was stationed at Prague from 1872 to 1874, and from 1874 to 1881 at Brunn where he found the field difficult and suffered many hardships; his labors, however, had the important result of securing a fair degree of religious freedom in the empire.

Returning to the United States in 1882, he was employed by the Missionary Society of Cleveland, Ohio, to conduct religious work among the 20, 000 Bohemians in that city. Within a few years one Polish and four Bohemian churches were established through his efforts, and in 1884 he was made superintendent of its Slavic work throughout the country by the Congregational Home Missionary Society. In 1885 a department for the training of Slavic-speaking ministers was established in Oberlin Theological Seminary.

He died in 1905.

Achievements

• Henry Albert Schauffler became known as the "Apostle to the Slavs", as he founded churches and planned missions in many centers of Slavic population. His most important achievement was the Schauffler Missionary Training School in Cleveland, founded for the training of Slavic women for mission work. He was the author of many publications of addresses on the Slavic peoples and mission work among them.

Personality

Schauffler was characterized by great missionary zeal, marked executive ability, and indomitable persistence. He was master of five languages and had considerable acquaintance with several others.

Connections

On November 25, 1862, Schauffler was married to Clara Eastham Gray, who died September 3, 1883; and on July 28, 1892, to Clara Hobart, who had been the first teacher in his Cleveland school. Seven children by the first marriage and three by the second survived him.

Father:

William Gottlieb Schauffler

Mother:

Mary (Reynolds) Schauffler

Spouse:

Clara Hobart

Spouse:

Clara Eastham Gray

References

• The Schauffler missionary training school