1865-1950
Salvation Army Leader

Born with the Army.

Evangeline Cory Booth was born in London on Christmas Day, 1865, the year that her father, William, a pawnshop worker, began the East London Revival Society, later called the Christian Mission and subsequently known as the Salvation Army. Her life would never veer from the mission of the Army, which followed from her father's Christian principles and compassion for the poor. She was named Evelyne and was called Eva. Years later, at the suggestion of Frances E. Willard of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, she took a longer, fuller name, choosing Evangeline because it suited her work of saving souls as well as feeding them. Evangeline devoted her life to the Army, as had her brothers, Ballington, Bramwell, and Herbert, and her sister, Emma, though she served longer than any of her siblings. At fifteen she became a...