Henry Clay Early (11 May 1855–1 September 1941), Church of the Brethren leader, was born in Long Glade, in Augusta County, and was the son of Noah Early, a farmer, and his third wife, Sarah Ann Kidd Early. Raised in a household that emphasized discipline and piety, he worked on the family farm and attended a small private academy. Early spent two summers taking courses at the Shenandoah Valley Normal School in Bridgewater, and from 1874 until about 1882 he taught in local public schools. On 25 May 1876 he married Mary Agnes Showalter in Augusta County. Of their eleven children, one son and five daughters survived infancy.

On 12 December 1876 Early was baptized in the Pleasant Valley congregation of the Church of the Brethren, which he had attended since childhood. He helped establish and oversee its Sunday school, a controversial endeavor because many Brethren wished to confine religious education to the home. In 1880 Early moved his family to a farm near the neighboring Barren Ridge church, and on 6 November of that year he was elected a minister. The denomination's clergy did not then receive financial compensation, and the family continued to rely on agriculture for its income. Casting about for the right farm, Early settled near the Middle River congregation in 1883. There he gained a reputation as a powerful preacher, and his influence spread as Brethren churches throughout the area sought his services as an evangelist. His efforts during the next four decades are credited with converting many people to the faith.

To support his family as he became more involved in denominational affairs at the local and district levels, Early embarked on a years-long project of purchasing poorly maintained farms situated on good soil, living on them as he made improvements, and then selling them at a profit. He implemented this strategy in 1889 with a move to Rockingham County, where he joined the Mill Creek congregation, a large and prominent church that served as his home base for more than thirty years. Ordained an elder in August 1898, Early served as elder-in-charge of the congregation for about twenty years beginning in 1902. From 1891 to 1894 and again in 1904 he sat on the board of trustees of Bridgewater College, a school founded by Brethren, and he also chaired a committee that devised the plan by which several districts of the church banded together to take formal ownership of the college in 1904.

In the first decades of the twentieth century, Early emerged as a trusted and fair-minded leader who guided the denomination through a period of growth and transition on the national level. Twelve times between 1899 and 1925 his district elected him to the standing committee that oversaw the denominational annual conference, where church policy was set, and in eight of those years he served as moderator of the conference. By demonstrating respect for all points of view, Early helped maintain church unity in the face of controversies over such issues as the use of musical instruments in worship and the dismantling in 1911 of a strict code of austere dress. In 1912 he served as pastor of the Brethren congregation in Washington, D.C., but a distaste for city life led him to resign within a year.

The annual conference frequently appointed Early to committees to study significant issues confronting the church. He chaired the committee that proposed a board to supervise Brethren colleges, and, after the Educational Board became a reality in 1908, he served as its chair for seven years. Early also presided over a committee formed to study the ministry. In 1917, after several years of debate, this panel issued a report that set in motion the transition to a paid and formally trained clergy and called for the establishment of a General Ministerial Board, which was accomplished four years later. Interested in church doctrine as well as governance, Early wrote tracts about Brethren beliefs and sat on the committee charged with approving all materials printed with the church's imprimatur. He expressed his opinions in Brethren periodicals beginning about 1880 and later became a contributing editor of the Gospel Messenger, the denomination's official organ. Early's articles sought to build consensus for moderate change. In 1915 he declined an offer to become chief editor of the journal.

Elected in 1901 to the missionary committee that in 1908 became known as the General Mission Board, Early served as chair from 1910 until he stepped down in 1924. He devoted his energy to raising funds, managing an endowment worth about $2 million, recruiting missionaries, and overseeing the expansion of the mission program. During his tenure Brethren continued work already begun in India and established themselves in China and in Africa. Early conducted thorough inspections of the missions in China and India during a trip around the world in 1913 and 1914.

Early's wife died on 17 January 1922, and on 30 September of the same year he married Emma Martin, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. That year he also helped establish the Church of the Brethren Industrial School for children in Greene County, Virginia, where educational opportunities were few, and he accepted a pastorate in Flora, Indiana. Failing eyesight prompted Early's return to Virginia in 1924. Though on the verge of retirement, he helped prepare a report on church governance that led to the creation of a permanent executive body to oversee the annual conference. He was living in Washington County, Maryland, in 1930 and published a series of reminiscences entitled "Ministerial Memories" in the Gospel Messenger in 1931 and 1932. Blind in his old age, Henry Clay Early died at a Harrisonburg hospital on 1 September 1941. He was buried in the cemetery of the Mill Creek Church of the Brethren in Port Republic, Rockingham County.

Sources Consulted:
Biographies in Noah D. Showalter, Atlas of Rockingham County, Virginia (1939), 60, John S. Flory, H.C. Early: Christian Statesman (1943), with frontispiece portrait, John W. Wayland, ed., Men of Mark and Representative Citizens of Harrisonburg and Rockingham County, Virginia (1943), 398 (with second marriage date), Joseph B. Yount, ed., Tunker House Proceedings, 1972 (1973), 79–89, and The Brethren Encyclopedia (1983), 1:413–414; birth date in Birth Register, Augusta Co., Bureau of Vital Statistics (BVS), Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia, and in passport application, 2 Sept. 1913, General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; variant birth date of 11 Mar. 1855 in Augusta Co. Birth Register; Augusta Co. Marriage Register (1876); Gospel Messenger, 25 Nov. 1911; Washington Post, 26 Jan. 1912; obituary and accounts of funeral in Harrisonburg Daily News-Record, 2, 3, 4 Sept. 1941; obituary in Washington Post, 4 Sept. 1941.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Jennifer R. Loux.

How to cite this page:
Jennifer R. Loux, "Henry Clay Early (1855–1941)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2025 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Early_Henry_Clay, accessed [today's date]).

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