website  watertownhistory.org

 ebook  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.