Puddlefoot, William George

PUDDEFOOT, WILLIAM GEORGE: Congregationalist; b. at Westerham (18 m. s.e. of London), Kent, England, May 31, 1842. He was educated in the Westbourne schools, London, but at the age of seventeen went to Canada, settling at Ingersoll, Ontario. He served in the Fenian raids of 1866 and six years latter removed to Tecumseh, Mich., where he worked as a shoemaker. He had always been interested in religious matters, however, and in 1879 became a home missionary under the auspices of the Congregational Home Missionary Society. He was later a general missionary and later still held a Congregational pastorate at Traverse City, Mich., until 1888, since when he has been field secretary of the Congregational Home Missionary Society, and has written Minute-Man on the Frontier (New York, 1895) and Hewers of Wood (in collaboration with I. O. Rankin, Boston, 1903).