Theodore L. Flood    

THEODORE L. FLOOD, Meadville, was born in Williamsburg, Penn., February 20, 1842. He was educated in the academy of his native town, and studied privately two years under Dr. Ulysses Hewitt, of the same place; received his theological education at the Biblical Institute, Concord, N. H., now the school of theology in the Boston University. He was converted in his sixteenth year in Williamsburg; was licensed to exhort when eighteen, and licensed as a local preacher in his twentieth year. He served in the war nine months as First Sergeant and Lieutenant; joined the New Hampshire Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in his twenty-second year, in 1864; served as Superintendent of the public schools in Salem, N. H., one year. While pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church in that place (he was pastor in New Hampshire from 1864 to 1874, at Rumney, Seabrook, Salem, Newmarket and Keene) he was made Presiding Elder of the Concord District in the New Hampshire

Conference when thirty-two years of age, and was elected President of the New Hampshire State Sunday-school Convention in 1874, which was composed of delegates from eleven different religious denominations. Failing health obliged him to seek a change of climate, and he was transferred to the Erie Conference, and stationed at Jamestown, N. Y., in April, of 1874. While here, he delivered a series of four lectures, which were published by the congregation in pamphlet form: “Temperance and the Excise Law,” “Spiritualism,” “Protestantism and the Romish Church,” and “The Bible in the Common Schools.” His next pastorate was the First Methodist Episcopal Church at Meadville, Penn., a body of about 700 members. Allegheny College is located here, and the faculty and students mostly attend this church. Here Mr. Flood delivered a series of three lectures which were printed in a number of local papers, also in the Assembly Herald. They were: “Novels and Novel Reading,” “Modern Social Life,” “Theater Going, Dancing and Card Playing.” Mr. Flood is the author of a book published by Estes & Lauriat, of Boston, Mass., entitled, “A Hundred Ministers and how they Switched off.” While pastor in Jamestown, N. Y., he published a monthly local church paper entitled, the Herald of the Cross, also published one in Meadville called the Evangel. In 1876 the Ohio Wesleyan University conferred upon Mr. Flood the degree of Master of Arts. Mr. Flood as

editor, and Mr. M. Bailey, of Jamestown, N. Y. , as manager, founded the Chautauqua Assembly Daily Herald, the official organ of the great Chautauqua meetings in 1875, and at this writing Mr. Flood has entered upon his ninth year as editor of this paper. It is a quarto forty-eight column paper issued monthly, till July, 1880, during the year, and daily during the Chautauqua meetings in August. There were 6, 000 copies of the daily issued in August, 1880, and 6,000 copies of the monthly the previous year. Mr. Flood purchased Mr. Bailey’s interest in the Chautauqua periodicals in October, 1880, so that he is now the editor and proprietor of both the Assembly Herald and the Chautauquan. Mr. Flood, with the Rev. J. W. Hamilton, of Boston, Mass., has published at the Methodist Episcopal Book Concern in New York City a book, “Lives of the Methodist Bishops,” from the standpoint of an active episcopacy. The design of the book is to give a sketch of the life of every deceased Bishop in every branch of Episcopal Methodism, with a steel engraving of each one. The articles have been prepared by eminent writers in all branches of Methodism, both in England and America, and several of them by Mr. Flood. Mr. Flood was elected a member of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church which met in May, 1880, in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was made Doctor of Divinity by Mount Union College at Alliance, Ohio, in 1881. In 1880 Dr. Flood, as editor and proprietor, established in Meadville the Chautauquan, a monthly magazine, organ of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle. The first year it reached a circulation of 15,000 copies, and in 1884 its circulation had reached nearly 50,000 copies. After three years’ service in Meadville, Dr. Flood preached two years at Trinity Church, Oil City, and supplied the pulpit of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Titusville one year. In December, 1883, he purchased the Meadville Daily and Weekly Republican, located at Meadville, Penn., the leading secular and political journals of Crawford County. He made

his son, Harry C. Flood, editor and proprietor of these periodicals. Dr. Flood was elected in 1883, the second time, delegate to the General Conference of his church, at the head of the delegation. In 1883 he purchased a residence on the Diamond, in Meadville, where he now resides. Our subject was married, June 20, 1862, in Huntingdon, Penn., to Miss Annie M., daughter of David Black, Esq., of that town, and by this union were born two sons and one daughter: Harry C., Ned A. and Rebie M. Dr. Flood retired from the pastorate in October, 1882, to devote himself exclusively to the editorial work and business management of the Chautauqua periodicals.

History of Crawford County, Pennsylvania: containing a history of the county, its townships, towns, villages, schools, churches, industries, etc., portraits of early settlers and prominent men, biographies, history of Pennsylvania, statistical and miscellaneous matter, Chicago: Warner, Beers & Co., 1885, page 715.  View image of this page of the book on line at ancestry.com.  Free Trial  More Crawford County History Books  Search Hundreds of 1880s-1890s Pennsylvania County History Books for biographies and historical information on your ancestors.  View the book page images on line and print them out for your genealogy file!  Free Access to the old history books - plus birth & death records, census images and ALL other records at ancestry.com

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