Charles Monroe Sheldon Papers

Charles Monroe Sheldon, son of Rev. Stewart and Sarah (Ward) Sheldon, was born on February 26, 1857, in Wellsville, New York. He received his bachelor's degree from Brown University in 1883 and three years later graduated from Andover Theological Seminary. He was ordained to the Congregational ministry in the same year, spent a short time in Europe, and from 1886 to 1888 was pastor of the Waterbury (Vermont) Congregational Church. From Waterbury he went to the Central Congregational Church at Topeka, Kansas, where he met and married Mary Abby Merriam in 1891. He remained there as pastor until 1912, when he became minister-at-large of the same church. In 1915 he resumed his active pastorate at Topeka and held the post until 1919, when he left for New York to become editor of the Christian Herald. Sheldon received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Temple College in 1898, from Washburn College in 1900, and from Brown in 1923. He is the author of a number of books on religious topics, the best-known of which is In His Steps, published in 1897. He died on February 24, 1946.