Background

William Henry Withrow was born on August 6, 1839, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He was the son of James Withrow, a contractor, and Ellen (Sanderson) Withrow.

Education

Withrow studied at the Victoria College in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada. He also received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto in 1863 and a Master of Arts in 1864.

Career

After receiving degrees from Victoria College, Cobourg (the Methodist college of the University of Toronto) in Ontario, he became a minister. Withrow’s first important book was The Catacombs of Rome, published in 1874. This scholarly work was a detailed description of the early Christian catacombs and was intended to show the contrast between the Christians and the Romans. In the same year, impressed by his work and his ministerial service, the Methodist Church appointed him editor of the Canadian Methodist Magazine, where he served until 1906. Withrow also edited several Sunday school publications, increasing their circulation from 46,000 in 1874 to 400,000 by 1908.

Withrow wrote histories of Canada and five historical novels. Titles such as Neville Trueman, the Pioneer Preacher, and Lawrence Temple's Probation reveal the religious underpinnings of all of Withrow’s fictional efforts. Withrow’s histories were didactic and moralistic as well. He chronicled the lives of important Methodists in such works as Worthies of Early Methodism, published in 1878, and Makers of Methodism, published in 1898. His biography of Christ, The Harmony of the Gospels: Being the Life of Jesus in the Words of the Four Evangelists, appeared in 1894.

Achievements

• A late-nineteenth-century Methodist minister who also wrote books and edited religious magazines, William Henry Withrow was a minor figure in Canadian literary history. His works are long out of print, but he is of interest to scholars of Canadian history. Withrow wrote moralistic religious books, travel accounts, books about the activities of Methodist missionaries, and biographies.
  
  Perhaps his most important work was Religious Progress in the Century, which appeared in 1900. By the time of his death in 1908, Withrow had made significant contributions to the religious life of his country.
  
  

Works

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  • The catacombs of Rome, and their testimony relative to primitive Christianity 1874
  • Worthies of early Methodism 1878
  • The King's Messenger, Or, Lawrence Temple's Probation : a Story of Canadian Life 1879
  • The Romance of Missions 1879
  • Neville Trueman, the Pioneer Preacher: A Tale of the War of 1812 1880
  • Our Own Country: Canada Scenic and Descriptive 1889
  • Makers of Methodism 1898
  • Religious Progress in the Nineteenth Century 1900

Membership

Withrow was a member of the Historical Society, Montreal, of the Senate and Board of Regents of Victoria University, of the Senate of Wesleyan Theological College, Montreal, and was a member of the Senate of University of Toronto.

Connections

In 1864, Withrow married Sarah Anne Smith. The couple had a son, William James, and two daughters.

Father:

James Withrow

Mother:

Ellen (Sanderson) Withrow

Wife:

Sarah Anne Smith

Son:

William James Withrow

References

• Literary History of Canada, Canadian Literature in English
  1966