“Adams” A.B. Leonard

Adna B. Leonard was born in Berlin, Mahoning County, Ohio, August 2, 1837.  His preparatory education was received in the Union High School of Alliance, Ohio.  He is also a graduate of Mount Union College.  Entering the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the Pittsburg Conference in 1860, he has served for twenty-eight years a pastor and presiding elder in Pennsylvania, Kansas, and Ohio.  He has had considerable experience on the lecture platform, but mainly in the advocacy of the policy of Prohibition.  Three times in succession he has represented the Cincinnati Conference in the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, beginning with 1884.  He was elected corresponding secretary of the missionary society of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1888 and re-elected in 1892.  In 1893, he was sent by the board of managers of the missionary society to Japan, Korea, and China, in company with Bishop R. S. Foster, to visit and examine into the condition of the missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church in those countries.
     Dr. Leonard cast his first vote for Abraham Lincoln in 1860, and his last Republican vote for James A. Garfield in 1880.  He became identified with an independent Prohibition movement in Ohio in 1881 and canvassed the State in support of the Hon. Abram Ludlow, the Prohibition candidate for governor.  In 1883, he canvassed Ohio for Constitutional Prohibition.  In 1884, he was one of the very few ministers in southwestern Ohio who took the platform and campaigned for St. John for president.  In 1885, he was the candidate for governor of Ohio on the Prohibition ticket and thoroughly canvassed the State, besides filling the pulpit of the Central Church in Springfield, Ohio, and having the pastoral oversight of about 800 church members.

— Data from An Album of Representative Prohibitionists (1895)

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