Born in Virginia in 1850, George Washington Henderson was employed as a servant by Henry Carpenter, adjutant in the Eighth Vermont Regiment in the Civil War. In 1865 he accompanied Carpenter to his home in Belvidere and began to learn his letters. After study with Oscar Atwood in Underhill and at Barre Academy, he entered the University of Vermont and graduated at the top of his class in 1877. He taught in schools in Jericho, Craftsbury, and Newport. After graduating in 1883 from Yale Divinity School, he went south in 1888 to serve as a Congregational minister in New Orleans. In 1894 he was the author of the first formal protest against lynching in the U.S. From 1890 to 1932 he taught theology and classical languages at Straight, now Dillard, Fisk, and Wilberforce Universities. He died in Wilberforce, Ohio, in 1936.