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Rev. William H. Boole, D.D., was born and reared in the city of New York. He began to study law, but soon gave that up and entered the ministry in the New York East Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, since occupying some of the principal pulpits of this denomination in the cities of New York and brooklyn.
After the breaking out of the war he helped to raise General Stickles' famous "Excelsior brigade," and was appointed chaplain of the 5th regiment of that command. A fall from his horse, resulting in severe injuries, compelled his resignation. Though removed from the field of active warfare, he was constantly on the platform in the interest of the Union cause. His address on "Russia and America," delivered at the banquet tendered the officers of the Russian fleet in New York harbor by the city authorities during the war, was publicly complimented by the Russian Minister.
Some years later, his sermon against Mormonism, delivered at Salt Lake City, in the presence of brigham Young and the chief dignitaries of the Mormon Church, aroused such excitement that a riot was almost precipitated.
Dr. Boole was formerly a Republican. He withdrew from the party in 1872 when its national convention at Philadelphia incorporated in its platform the famous or infamous "Raster Resolution," which declared against Sunday laws and Prohibition. From that time he has remained a consistent party Prohibitionist, his special temperance work being on the platform of the churches. He resides at Prohibition Park, Staten Island, New York.
[Boole died in April, 1896.]
-- Data from An Album of Representative Prohibitionists (1895)
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