MORGAN'S HISTORY OF THE NEW JERSEY CONFERENCE Page 235
publication: "The Lights Along the Jordan;" "Fifty Years in the Field, or the A. M. E. Church in Ohio;" "The Life and Times of Solomon H. Thompson;" "Methodism in Columbus, Ohio."
Benjamin T. Tanner was born December 25, 1835, in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, where he and the members of his family were raised by a kind and affectionate mother, and provided for by a father who knew the responsibility of the family, and did all in his power to perform that duty. The children were sent to such schools as the city afforded, but "Bennie," as all of his family and friends called him, was not contented with the three "R's," so he went through the preparatory course and the first year of the college course at Avery College, Allegheny City. But, while he was going through this course, he was carrying on a business in the city of Pittsburg, and in this way he assisted his mother in raising the family, for his father was dead. While pursuing this course of study he had a war with poverty, with early habits, business complications, ignorance and sin; but by grace and study he has conquered them all, and has won a place in the history of the race that any man ought to feel proud of.
In 1857 I first met him in Pittsburg. He was then taking a three years' course in theology in the Western Theological Seminary. He was very fortunate in this, for he had the advantage of the ripe scholarship and deep learning of such men as Drs. Plummer and Jacobus. With such teachers we may not wonder at the place he occupies among the theologians of his church; and, when I say that he is one of the first in his, and the christian church, I only voice the judgment of all who know him.
In 1860 he was appointed by Bishop D. A. Payne to the Sacramento station, California conference. He and the church failed to raise the money necessary to pay his way. There was then no Pacific Railroad nor Southern Pacific Railroad to the gold regions, and one had to go by the way of the sea and isthmus.
Thus housed in despair, he was out of employment. The
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