Edward Payson Hart was born in June 6, 1835, in Middlesex, Vermont.
He was the son of Moses Lester Hart and Emeline Mobra (Stowell) Hart.
The Hart family was from a Congregational denominational background. When
Edward Payson Hart was born, his grandmother had the privilege of naming
him. Predicting he would one day be a minister, she named him after
the famous New England Congregational evangelist, Rev. Edward Payson.
It would be a few years before signs of that prophecy coming true held
hope. The son of an entrepreneur, Edward Payson Hart moved around as employment
opportunities presented themselves for the family. Moses Hart is
known to have served as a postmaster (Middlesex), merchant, and eventually
as proprietor of the Lake House Inn, in Burlington, VT, in the late 1850s.
From 1835-1858 the family is known to have lived in Middlesex, Hyde Park
and Burlington, Vermont.
For reasons not yet known, the Moses Hart family moved to Marengo,
IL in the late 1850s. By 1860, Edward Payson Hart, now 25, was studying
law under the care of a local lawyer, Mr. Amos B. Coon. Now Mr. Coon
was married to an old time Methodist, Harriet “Auntie” Coon. By this
time the Harts had become Methodists, having been won over to the Methodist
denomination through preaching of the evangelist, Rev. John Wesley Redfield
in the late 1850s when he held revivals in Burlington, Vermont. Several
years later while living in Illinois, Emeline Hart discovered that the
old time Methodist evangelist Rev. Redfield, was holding meetings in near
by St. Charles. Mr. and Mrs. Hart invited Rev. Redfield to hold meetings
in Marengo, and Edward Hart was soundly converted. Upon his conversion,
he left the study of law, as well as his drinking and tobacco habit, and
entered the ministry as an apprentice Methodist Episcopal preacher.
Shortly after his conversion, E.P. Hart met and married Martha Bishop,
a Methodist girl from Marengo, Illinois, and a frequent vocalist for Redfield
when he was in the area. They were married on August 8, 1860 in McHenry,
IL. Soon after they were married, the Rev. Hart entered his first
appointment to a Methodist Episcopal circuit as a junior pastor.
However his holiness style of preaching placed him at odds with the senior
pastor under whom he was serving. In 1861 he met the Rev. Benjamin
Titus Roberts, founder of the newly formed Free Methodist denomination,
and E. P. Hart quickly became a Free Methodist minister. In 1863
he was asked to extend the work in Michigan. Starting in Ida, Michigan
the work spread quickly to the north and west. In 1873, Rev. Hart
founded a co-educational private high school known as Spring Arbor Seminary
on the western outskirts of Jackson, Michigan. Today it has grown
to become an extensive liberal arts institution known as Spring Arbor University.
In 1881, again obeying the call of his denomination, E.P. and Martha
Hart boarded a train and moved to Alameda, CA near San Francisco, to extend
the Free Methodist work on the West Coast. For the next 28 years
the Harts opened conferences in California, Washington, Oregon, Kansas,
Arizona and the Dakotas.
In 1909, Rev. Hart resigned as Bishop of the Free Methodist denomination
due to failing health. On Saturday evening, March 15, 1919, EP Hart
wrote out his weekly sermon as was his custom, went to bed, and woke up
in glory. He died at the age of 81 having served the church he loved
as minister for over 57 years.
Biography
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