William Walter Peele - Ordained and Academic Ministries and Military Service

Ordained and Academic Ministries and Military Service

Upon college graduation, Peele began a career in teaching as a professor of mathematics at Rutherford College in Conoly Springs. In 1906 at the age of twenty-five he became president of Rutherford College, remaining in this position until 1909.

Also in 1906 Peele was ordained to the ministry of the M.E. Church, South. In 1909 he was appointed pastor of St. John's Methodist Church near his hometown of Gibson. Following St. John's, Peele was appointed to the Aberdeen-Biscoe Charge. In 1915 the Rev. Peele became the headmaster of the Trinity Park School in Durham, North Carolina, the preparatory school of Trinity College. He remained in this position until 1918. He entered Officers Training School at Plattsburgh, New York, during World War I. Shortly before doing so he became Professor of Biblical Literature at Duke University. Following the war he returned to Duke as Acting Dean.

In 1918 the Rev. Peele also accepted the pastorate of the Edenton Street United Methodist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, remaining five years. In 1923 he was appointed to Trinity Methodist Church in Durham. In 1928 Peele transferred his conference membership to the Western North Carolina Annual Conference, being appointed pastor of the First Methodist Church of Charlotte. In 1937 he became superintendent of the Greensboro District of that conference, serving until 1938.