BIO:Benajah Harvey Carroll 1843-1914

   Baptist minister and educator. B.H. Carroll was born in 
Carrollton, Mississippi, the son of a preacher-farmer and one of 
twelve children. At the age of 18 he was graduated from Waco 
University in Waco, Texas, and then spent the next four years 
in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. In 1865, at the 
age of 22, he was converted to Christ in a wood shed through 
the efforts of a Methodist evangelist, and was ordained to 
the ministry one year later.

   During the first years of his ministry, immigrants 
were moving into Texas by the thousands, and he labored for 
their evangelization. After pastoring several Baptist 
churches, he became secretary of the Education Commission of 
the Baptist General Convention of Texas in 1899. He served in 
this capacity until 1901, at which time he became head of the 
Bible department at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. In 1905 
he was made dean of the Baylor Theological Seminary, which 
later became Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. 
Carroll served as president of Southwestern from 1908 until 
his death in 1914.

   In addition to his intellectual and argumentative 
abilities, in an age of denominational debates, he possessed 
a lovable nature. He once said, "When I come to know a man 
and love him as a friend and a brother, nothing can destroy 
the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love." He believed 
in the Baptist interpretation of the teachings of the New 
Testament, and was devoted to spreading those teachings to 
the uttermost parts of the earth.

Ruckman '67
