#52 Ancestors 2023 Week 28: Random: Cousin Rev. Charles Winterfield Baldwin

Historic Baldwin Hall

Many people are familiar with Anne Arundel County’s Historic Baldwin Hall (1861) located on General's Highway, but not everyone knows about the man for whom it is named, Rev. Charles Winterfield Baldwin.  So, I would like to help correct that lack. A distant cousin of mine, he was a remarkable man, and his story deserves to be told.

Charles Winterfield Baldwin was born 23 March 1840, the tenth of eleven children of Judge William Henry Baldwin and Jane Maria Woodward, the grandson of Captain Henry Baldwin who served in the Revolutionary War. He and his siblings grew up at the family home, Bunker Hill, in Anne Arundel County, near the site of the present Baldwin Hall. 

Bunker Hill

Charles Winterfield Baldwin entered Yale University in 1859 as a junior, graduating in 1861.  While at Yale, he was also secretary of the Yale baseball team. (Go, Bulldogs!)  After graduation, he studied law in Baltimore for two years, but ultimately decided to enter the ministry, studying at Yale Divinity School and Union Theological Seminary.  In 1866, he began his ministry as a junior pastor on the Severn Circuit, which included the Cross Roads Church, now Baldwin Memorial United Methodist Church. By 1897, he was the presiding elder of the West Baltimore District of the Methodist Episcopal Church and was superintendent of the Baltimore City Mission until 1910. He retired from the ministry in 1916, but frequently returned to the pulpit, often recalling the "old-time Methodist experience" which he hoped would revive. 

Rev. Baldwin grew up in the years just before the Civil War. His family owned slaves. But,  as adherents to John Wesley’s Methodism, they were encouraged to reflect on the morality of slaveholding, which led to the slaves being emancipated before the war and given land to help them start life as free people. 

Rev. Baldwin was committed to a life that respected the value of all human beings and worked tirelessly throughout his life to create opportunities for women and black people to succeed, especially in the area of education.

In 1884, he was an incorporator of The Women’s College of Baltimore, now Goucher College, and served as a trustee. He also helped to found American University, an institution that educated men and women, black and white, for careers in public service, serving at one time as its Chancellor. Starting in 1899, he served 24 years as a trustee of Morgan State College, now Morgan State University, in Baltimore.

Rev. Baldwin married Annie Campbell Hopkins in 1868 and had a daughter Marie with her.  After Annie’s death, he married Anna Thomas in 1876.  There were no children from his second marriage. 

In the years before his death, Rev. Baldwin lost his sight but had the newspaper read to him every day. He died in Baltimore in 1938 at the age of 98, the last surviving member of his graduating class at Yale, having served 70 years in the Methodist ministry. 

He is buried in the cemetery at Baldwin Memorial United Methodist Church in Millersville MD, just down the road from the house where he was born and across the street from the 1861 hall that bears his name.

 The Cora Anderson Dulaney Library next to Historic Baldwin Hall has a large collection of Rev. Baldwin's letters and papers.