William Henry Lacey
Attended Yale Divinity School, 1913-1914; Attended Yale Graduate School, 1914-1915
Biography
William Henry Lacey was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1869. At age 12, he and his family moved to Topeka, Kansas. He was a graduate of Clark College (now part of Clark Atlanta University) and graduated from the Gammon Theological Seminary in Atlanta in 1895. He was ordained in 1892 and admitted to the North Georgia Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1893. He served as a minister to churches in the Atlanta area, including Big Bethel AME Church. In 1895, he was appointed principal of the Wayman Institute, an elementary school founded by the Kentucky Conference of the AME Church in Harrodsburg, Kentucky.
He resigned from that position two years later to pursue missionary work in Bermuda. He remained in Bermuda for five years. He married Ada Amelia Parker, who was from Hamilton, Bermuda.
When he returned to the United States, he pastored a number of churches in New York before transferring to the New England Conference. He was pastor of Bethel AME Church in New Haven. While in New Haven, he attended the Yale Divinity School as a special (non-degree student in the 1913-1914 academic year, then took graduate courses in the Department of Theology in the 1914-1915 academic year. In addition to ministry, he was also a talented tenor vocalist; he performed with Yale alumna Helen Hagan in 1916.
He continued his career as a minister, serving churches in Massachusetts and in St. Louis, Missouri. He died in St. Louis in 1949.
