1839 — 1900
Summary
Sarepta Myrenda Irish (S.M.I.) Henry was a national evangelist for the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union who became a convert to Seventh-day Adventism in the last years of her life while a patient at Battle Creek Sanitarium. Following a miraculous healing, she became a powerful voice for religious liberty within the WCTU and pioneered “woman ministry” in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Early Life, Education, and Marriage
Sarepta Myrenda Irish was born on November 4, 1839, in Albion, Pennsylvania, to Methodist minister Horatio Nelson Irish and his wife, Mary Allis Irish (nee Clark). Her brother, Orsamus H. Irish, served as superintendent of Indian Affairs for Utah under President Abraham Lincoln and as chief of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing under James A. Garfield’s administration.
As a young woman, Irish found employment as a teacher. In 1859, she enrolled at the Rock River Seminary in Mount Morris, Illinois, where a close friend introduced her to James W. Henry, a teacher. They married in 1861. Both had abolitionist sympathies, and James volunteered for the Union Army in 1864. In 1871, James died abruptly from an illness, leaving Sarepta with three surviving children.
Temperance Work with the WCTU
In 1874, alarmed to find that her young son Arthur had been lured into a saloon, Henry organized a local temperance society in Rockford, Illinois. She subsequently became involved with the WCTU and eventually took the position of a national evangelist for the organization.
Miraculous Healing and Conversion
In the summer of 1896, Henry entered John Harvey Kellogg’s Battle Creek Sanitarium for an enlarged heart that had left her bedridden since the late 1880s. Physicians had offered a diagnosis that she would never be released from her wheelchair. But Henry experienced miraculous healing after an anointing session with A. T. Jones, W. W. Prescott, several physicians, and two other patients on April 13, 1897. Drs. Kellogg and Lauretta Kress confirmed her miraculous recovery. It was during her time at the sanitarium that Henry became a Seventh-day Adventist. Following her recovery, she shared her testimony with an audience of 2,500 in the Battle Creek Tabernacle.
Religious Liberty Advocacy
At the WCTU’s convention in Buffalo, New York, in late 1897, Henry publicly presented a memorial signed by approximately thirteen thousand women requesting the dissolution of the WCTU’s Sabbath Observance Department, or an abandonment of its lobby for Sunday legislation. When Henry prepared to resign from the WCTU, Ellen G. White wrote to her urging against such an action:
“The Lord does not bid you separate from the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.” — Ellen G. White, Letter 118, 1898
Following her conversion, Henry conducted a letter-writing campaign to hundreds of WCTU members, often accompanying her letters with her tract “How the Sabbath Came to Me” (1897). Because of her personal efforts, a large number of WCTU members discontinued their advocacy for Sunday laws. Following the 1899 convention in Seattle, the WCTU drew up a resolution favoring the amendment of state Sunday laws so that they exempted seventh-day Sabbathkeepers.
Ministerial License and Pioneering Woman Ministry
On March 30, 1898, the General Conference Committee voted to grant Henry a ministerial license, “which would be more in keeping with her line of work.” Henry crafted plans for “woman ministry” in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. In a supplement to the December 6, 1898, issue of the Review and Herald, she exhorted women to a more active role in church life. Ellen G. White’s letter was printed alongside Henry’s essay:
“There certainly should be a larger number of women engaged in the work of ministering to suffering humanity, uplifting, educating them how to believe — simply believe — in Jesus Christ our Savior.” — Ellen G. White, Letter 133, 1898
Church historian Arthur Whitefield Spalding later wrote that Henry led “the first semblance of an organized effort to train parents and to give help in their problems.”
Author and Poet
Among her works were The Marble Cross and Other Poems (1886), “How the Sabbath Came to Me” (1897), Studies in Home and Child Life (1898), A Woman-Ministry, or The Gospel in the Home (1899), and Good Form and Christian Etiquette (1900). She also wrote a regular column titled “Woman’s Gospel Work” in the Review and Herald for approximately two years.
Legacy
While attending a meeting in Graysville, Tennessee, Henry suddenly caught the flu, which developed into pneumonia and pleurisy. She died there on January 16, 1900. Her funeral was held at the Battle Creek Tabernacle, and she was buried by her parents in Pecatonica, Illinois. Her daughter, Mary Henry Rossiter, remembered her mother in My Mother’s Life: The Evolution of a Recluse (1900). Her granddaughter Margaret Rossiter White-Thiele wrote Whirlwind of the Lord: The Story of Mrs. S.M.I. Henry (1953).
Source: Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists, encyclopedia.adventist.org. Article by Michel Sun Lee, Ph.D.
