It was at this time that he met Daniel Alexander Payne, a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) church, who, as president of Wilberforce, was instrumental in the school's success. Small of stature and fragile of physique, Payne exerted a tremendous influence upon many, not the least of whom was Whitman. Whitman, who considered himself for all of his life Bishop Payne's protégé, almost a son, was later a pastor for A.M.E. churches in Ohio, Kansas, Texas, and Georgia, founding some of them as well. He was also officially connected with Wilberforce University for a number of years. By 1877 he was the school's general financial agent, an elder in the A.M.E. church, and pastor of a church in Springfield, Ohio. Whitman married a woman named Caddie, with whom he had two daughters. He drank excessively, and while alcoholism may well have shortened his life, it never occasioned his abandonment by his denomination or his wife, although it surely destroyed any hopes he may have had for a bishopric (he was known as a fine pulpiteer). His last ministerial charges were St. Phillips in Savannah, which a storm destroyed, and Allen Temple in Atlanta.
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