Sherlock Bristol , son of Gideon and Julia (Parker) Bristol, was born on the four-generation historic family farm in Cheshire, CT on June 5, 1815. He was converted at age 16 and went to Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts to prepare for college. There he became interested in a “great” anti-slavery revival.  His active participation in the rebellion resulted in him being expelled from the Academy. This interest in northern abolitionism took him to the Oberlin Collegiate Institute in 1835 where he studied and received an A.B. degree in 1839. He then went to the New Haven Theological Seminary for one year after which he came back to Oberlin to complete his study and graduated from the Seminary in 1842. He was licensed to preach the following winter by the Central Ohio Congregational Association at Mansfield, Ohio.

While serving as the Financial Agent of Oberlin College and the Theological Department (1843-1846), he conducted revival work in Ohio and later held pastorates in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, New York City, Andover, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin. In 1851 he settled in California because of health problems but after one year, he returned to Wisconsin where he established three churches. In 1862 he started west again across the plains, several times encountering Indians on the frontier and ending up in Oregon. The following year he headed east again and reached his previous home in Wisconsin in 1864.

Finding himself unable to sustain his health in the east, he set out for California in 1867 by ship from New York City by way of the Isthmus of Panama. There he spent two months exploring the country while walking across the isthmus to the Pacific Coast and waiting to catch a ship north. He disembarked in Monterrey, California, and worked his way north through California to the minefields. On the way he did ministerial work among the miners as well as some mining himself.  He evolved (to fit the conditions of the wild frontier) from “Father Bristol” to “Captain Bristol” when justice had to be enforced in perilous situations on short notice. Sherlock was of sturdy build with a fearless personal presence that served him well in the roughhouse atmosphere that prevailed in the west at that time.

In 1868 he came south from the mining country and settled in Ventura County just north of Los Angeles near Montalvo where he bought a farm and became one of the pioneer settlers of the area.  Six years later another Oberlin educated western builder, Charles G. Finney II, the son of Oberlin’s second president, Charles G. Finney, joined him in Ventura.  He continued farming, preaching and doing ministerial work almost continuously up to the day of his death in 1906. He wrote many articles and several books, the most popular of which his massive 1887 autobiography The Pioneer Preacher, which went through several printings.  James Harris Fairchild, then president of Oberlin College, wrote the introduction to it.

Bristol had an active correspondence on religious topics of the day.  In particular, he preoccupied himself with the “Baptism of the Spirit” and other like spiritual matters.  He discusses these topics in two books, The Pioneer Preacher: Incidents of Interest, and Experiences in the Author’s Life  (1887) and Paracletos, or The Baptism of the Holy Ghost (1892).  Bristol counted among his close friends Oberlinians Amos Dresser, James H. Fairchild, Edward Henry Fairchild, James Monroe, General A.B. Nettleton, Danforth B. Nichols, and John M. Williams.  In 1883, on the occasion of Oberlin’s Jubilee, Bristol was unable to attend because of the distance he faced in getting to Oberlin.  Sherlock missed an important time to regale with his friends about their exploits in outfoxing slave catchers and assisting African-Americans on the Underground Railroad so that they would not be returned to slavery.

 Sherlock Bristol married Emily H. Ingraham, from Providence, Rhode Island on September 9, 1842 and they had two sons and a daughter. Emily (d. 1899) was a graduate in the Ladies’ Course at Oberlin Collegiate Institute in 1841.  (Apparently, Emily was not related to Elizabeth Ingraham, from the same graduating class, and Mrs. Bristol remains somewhat of a mystery in tracing her genealogy.)  Some years later they were legally separated and Sherlock married Amelia S. Locke November 2, 1865. They had three sons and two daughters. He continued his religious work and was active until the day he died on Sept. 26, 1906 at the age of 91.  In May of 1906 he wrote "I am in excellent health and about as active in religious work as ever."

Student file of Sherlock Bristol, Alumni and Development records, 28/2