William Brock Wellons

Background

William Brock Wellons was born near Littleton, Sussex County, Va. , the son of Hartwell and Mary W. Wellons. His father was a farmer.

Education

The only formal education William ever received was at winter sessions of country schools.

Career

Converted at a camp meeting when he was thirteen years old, he was thereafter governed largely by religious interests. From 1840 to 1845 he taught school, for a part of the time at Airfield, Southampton County, Va. He also conducted religious meetings with such success that in 1845 he was admitted to the Eastern Virginia Conference as a licentiate and in 1846 was ordained a minister of the Christian Connection. For several years he served as an itinerant, holding revival meetings and organizing churches. While acting as pastor in New Bern, N. C. , he married Sarah L. Beasley. Soon afterward, they removed to Suffolk, Va. , which was Wellons' home for the remainder of his life. During these years, he had pastoral oversight of several churches in the vicinity, and was frequently in attendance at conferences and conventions, at which he made his influence strongly felt. In 1854 he was a delegate to the quadrennial Christian Convention held at Cincinnati, and was the Southern member of a committee of three appointed to consider the question of slavery. He was himself a slaveholder and presented a minority report urging that the South be conceded the right to manage its own domestic institutions. The attitude of the majority of the convention was so hostile, however, that finally Wellons announced his withdrawal on behalf of his constituency. Other Southern members followed his example, and in 1856 the General Convention of the Christian Church, South, was organized with Wellons as president. In the meantime, 1855, he had become editor in chief of the Christian Sun, the official organ of the Christian Connection in the South, of which he had been an associate editor since 1849, and it was thereafter published in Suffolk. During the Civil War he was forced to discontinue it and remove to Petersburg. At this time he became editor of the Army and Navy Messenger, issued by the Evangelic Tract Society and distributed among Confederate soldiers and sailors. He also did much personal religious work on the field and in hospitals. In 1865 he returned to Suffolk, resumed preaching, labored to reorganize the churches of the neighborhood, and, assuming the financial responsibility himself, began again the publication of the Christian Sun. Largely through his influence, the General Convention of the Southern branch of the Christian Connection in 1866 adopted and published a statement of principles and government - an event regarded as significant in the history of the Connection. Wellons was all his life much interested in education. For sometime he conducted a school for young women in his home at Suffolk, and he was instrumental in securing the establishment in 1853 of the Holy Neck Female Seminary in Nansemond County. As a result of a recommendation made by a committee to the Southern Christian Convention in 1870 that normal and theological schools be provided in each of the local Conferences, the Suffolk Collegiate Institute was opened in January 1872 and Wellons was elected principal. As such he served until his death. He took an active part in the temperance movement in Virginia, and during his later years was an advocate of more cooperation on the part of the Christian Connection with other evangelical bodies. He died in his fifty-sixth year of tuberculosis of the lungs.

Achievements

• He was instrumental in securing the establishment in 1853 of the Holy Neck Female Seminary in Nansemond County.

Connections

He married on April 12, 1850, Sarah L. Beasley, a widow.

Father:

Hartwell Wellons

Mother:

Mary W. Wellons

Spouse:

Sarah L. Beasley

References

• Life And Labors Of Rev. William Brock Wellons ... Of The Christian Church