website watertownhistory.org
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History of Watertown,
Wisconsin
Rev. William A.
Hendrickson
1830-1919
1919
ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AGED CLERGYMAN
FORMER PASTOR HERE
Was for Five Years Pastor of the Congregation Church
Married While Here
Chaplain of Indiana Hospital
An Indianapolis, Ind., dispatch
says the injuries suffered in a fall caused the death Friday of the Rev.
William A. Hendrickson, for twenty-five years pastor of the Twelfth
Presbyterian church of that city and for a number of years chaplain of the
Central Indiana Hospital for the Insane.
He was 89 years old.
Rev. Hendrickson was pastor of
the Congregational Church of this city
from May 1, 1875 to November 5, 1880, and the family home was the residence now
owned and occupied by Casemir Henrich
in Western Avenue. He is well remembered
by the older residents of our city. He came here from Columbus, where he
officiated as pastor for few years.
Attorney Charles A. Skinner, who
as a boy attended his church, in speaking of Rev. Hendrickson, said:
“He was an intellectual and
highly cultured man, of an exceptionally sociable disposition, and very
deliberate in his thoughts and utterances.
His pastorate here was a very successful one and he was recognized as a
pulpit orator of a very high order. He
was popular with all the people here regardless of sect or class.”
While here Mr. Hendrickson was
united in marriage to Mrs. Adella Williams, the widow
of a well known Watertown physician, who died several years previous. He had two sons by a former marriage who resided here with him and went to school. One of the sons, George L. Hendrickson, is a
professor of Latin in the Chicago University, and the other, Edward
Hendrickson, is engaged in the wholesale harness business in Indianapolis. A stepson, Irving Williams, is the editor and
publisher of “Rough Notes”, an insurance journal of wide circulation in
influence.
The second Mrs. Hendrickson
departed this life a few years after the family left Watertown.
Rev. Hendrickson was the eighth
pastor of the Congregational Church of Watertown, which has had seventeen
pastors including the Rev. N. Carter Daniell, the
present one.