Melancthon Clarence Lockwood, D.D., was born in New York City, Jan. 29, 1853. His parents were from Connecticut. The Lockwoods came to this country in 1630 and are one of the oldest families in the United States. Dr. Lockwood was educated in the public schools of New York, the College of the City of New York, and at the academy of Geo. B. Glendinning, at Stamford, Conn.
He was ordained in the Baptist denomination, Feb. 6, 1877, and in June of the same year was called to the pastorate of the Willis Street Baptist Church, of Paterson, N. J. In 1880 he became pastor of the First Baptist Church, Albany, N. Y. In 1882 he was called to the Baptist church at Whitehall, N. Y., and in 1885 entered upon his long pastorate in Cincinnati, Ohio.
While in Albany his literary and pulpit ability began to attract the attention of the press throughout the country. He was the "Stalwart Chaplain" of the New York legislature during the Garfield-Conkling struggle. He is well known as a lecturer both in the United States and Canada, and has achieved considerable reputation as a writer.
Dr. Lockwood's conversion to the Prohibition Party occurred in Cincinnati, and was the result of his discovery of the alliance of the Republican Party with the beer interests of that city and the State. He assisted in organizing the Labor party in Cincinnati, for the purpose of defeating the re-election of a Republican mayor who had refused to enforce the laws regulating the liquor traffic. Soon afterward he came out for the Prohibition Party. His politics up to this time had been Republican.
In 1890 he was nominated· for the head of the Prohibition ticket in the State of Ohio. During the campaign he was assailed savagely by partisans in his Church, all Republicans, and through suffering much, came through victoriously. It has recently transpired that he is "Kenneth Paul," the author of "The New Minister," a novel which has attracted a great deal of attention in literary and theological circles.
-- An Album of Representative Prohibitionists (1895)
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