Granville Moody HOF

Granville Moody

Granville Moody (1812-1887) – Moody was born in Portland, Maine, the son of William and Harriet Brooks Moody.  He moved to Ohio at the age of eighteen and became a Methodist minister in 1833.  Her served at the Greene Street M.E. Church c. 1857-1861 and c. 1963-1865.  In 1862, he was commissioned a colonel and took command of the 74th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment which had formed in Xenia.  In 1862, he also served as the commandant of Camp Chase, a prisoner of war camp located west of Columbus.  While serving with his regiment in Tennessee, he participated in the Battle of Stone River.  For his bravery during the battle he became known as the “Fighting Parson”.  He resigned his commission in May of 1863 and returned to his position of pastor at Greene Street Church.  Moody would be awarded the rank of Brevet Brigadier General in March of 1865.  At a convention in Philadelphia in c. 1863-64, Moody met President Lincoln.  Never afraid of expressing his opinion, Moody was a featured speaker at a local Republican Union Party rally in 1863.  He responded to comments about southern sympathizers having their rights trampled upon, “Rights! Rights!  Let me tell you, my friends, that the only rights those people have is to be hanged in this world and damned in the next.”  Reverend Moody used his brief meeting with Lincoln to later request a political favor.  Moody wrote a letter to the president in March of 1865 requesting the appointment of Joseph M. Patterson as the Piqua postmaster.  Moody’s letter relates that First Sergeant Patterson (Company A, 110th Regiment) had lost his arm after the Battle of the Wilderness.  Lincoln granted Moody’s request and Patterson served as Piqua’s postmaster from 1865 to 1879.  Paterson died in 1906.  In June of 1865, Rev. Moody opened the Ohio Republican Union Party Convention in Columbus.  Rev. Moody retired from the active ministry in 1883 and wrote his autobiography, published in 1890, entitled, A Life’s Retrospect.