Benajah Harvey Carroll
1843-1914
Baptist minister and educator. B.H. Carroll was born in Car-
rollton, Mississippi, the son of a preacher-farmer and one of
twelve children. At the age of 18 he was graduated from Waco
University in Waco, Texas, and then spent the next four years
in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. In 1865, at the
age of 22, he was converted to Christ in a wood shed through
the efforts of a Methodist evangelist, and was ordained to
the ministry one year later.
        During the first years of his ministry, immigrants
were moving into Texas by the thousands, and he labored for
their evangelization. After pastoring several Baptist
churches, he became secretary of the Education Commission of
the Baptist General Convention of Texas in 1899. He served in
this capacity until 1901, at which time he became head of the
Bible department at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. In 1905
he was made dean of the Baylor Theological Seminary, which
later became Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr.
Carroll served as president of Southwestern from 1908 until
his death in 1914.
        In addition to his intellectual and argumentative
abilities, in an age of denominational debates, he possessed
a lovable nature. He once said, “When I come to know a man
and love him as a friend and a brother, nothing can destroy
the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love.” He believed
in the Baptist interpretation of the teachings of the New
Testament, and was devoted to spreading those teachings to
the uttermost parts of the earth.

Ruckman ’67