The Rev. William H. Steele was born July 19, 1847, near Athens, Ala.; moved to Alcorn County, near Corinth, Miss., in 1854, where he grew up to manhood. He made public profession of faith in Christ in 1867, and immediately joined the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. From that time he became an active worker in the Church, and deeply concerned in all its public enterprises. In 1869 he made known his call to the work of the gospel ministry, and was received under the care of Bell Presbytery, at Fulton, Miss. He was licensed by said Presbytery to preach, Dec. 19, 1870, at Corinth, Miss., and was ordained by Knoxville Presbytery in 1873. He attended school at the University at Lebanon (irregularly, on account of feeble health) from July, 1860, to the spring of 1873, missing as much as fifteen months of the time. In the spring of 1873 Brother Steele was called to the pastorate of the church in Greeneville, East Tennessee, where he exhibited the spirit of the true Christian hero to the satisfaction and admiration of all. In the summer of 1873 Greeneville was visited by a fearful epidemic of cholera, and although not able to be out of bed more than half his time, and urged by his friends and physician to leave, he remained, and as far as able helped to nurse the sick and bury the dead. In 1875 he took charge of the church in Owensboro, Ky., but owing to declining health remained in that work only eleven months, and in 1876 went to Colorado Springs, Col., hoping that climate might prove beneficial to him. The climate of Colorado was too severe for his feeble frame, and in the spring of 1877 he sought relief in the warmer climate of South-west Texas. In the summer of 1877, by the death of his father, he was called to his home in Mississippi to look after and take charge of affairs at the old homestead, at the same time preaching regularly to Shiloh congregation, the congregation of which he first became a member. He removed to Corinth, Miss., and in 1882, and in October of 1883 received and accepted a call to the church at Franklin, Tenn., where his labors and his sufferings on earth were brought to a close.

Our beloved Brother Steele was a sufferer for twenty years, and no one save his immediate relatives ever knew how severe and how intense his sufferings were. He tested the skill of scores of physicians, the virtues of hundreds of medicines, and the healing efficacy of numbers of wells, springs, climates, and health-resorts, from Pennsylvania and Virginia to Colorado and South-west Texas. In fact, he spent all his living in search of health, but all to no purpose. In the summer of 1884 he became deeply interested in the subject of direct divine agency in the cure of physical maladies, and while suffering greatly, and in profound gloom amounting almost to despair of ever being any better in this world, he was led to submit his case alone to God in prayer and supplication for divine power from above in the healing of all his physical maladies. From that hour he began to improve, and his improvement was so rapid and marvelous that for some nine months he enjoyed better health than for twenty years in the past. Thus from the very depths of despair as to physical health he was at once lifted to the mountain-top of rejoicing, feeling that God had heard and answered his prayer. He claimed that his cure was direct and divine, the change from sickness to health in answer to prayer as real and tangible as any soul-experience he ever enjoyed. And those who knew him best, and knew his habit of cautious investigation, never doubted his statement or the reality of his cure. He said that future afflictions and death would certainly come, but that nothing could invalidate the testimony of his own personal experience that the Lord had healed him. His old maladies--liver-complaint, dyspepsia, and bronchial trouble--never did return. He died from acute pleurisy, contracted while walking the streets in cold, damp weather, to raise funds for the poor and distressed. His education was acquired under constant affliction, and his life-work performed--the greatest portion of it--under the most distressing forms of disease. In addition to a good English and classical education, he was well versed in the Holy Scriptures. He possessed the faculty of patient, thorough investigation, critical analysis, and clear presentation of truth. A minister once remarked that the Rev. William H. Steele could use more Scripture in one sermon appropriately than any man he ever heard. His labors in the pulpit were always attended with marked results, and his ministry entirely satisfactory to those whom he served. The large attendance of weeping friends at his funeral, and the united expressions of the many ministers present, told in language unmistakable that he was held in the highest possible esteem among those with whom he lived and died. His death was what might be expected from such a life--a glorious, a triumphant death. His last expressions were: "The Lord's will be done," but "I would rather depart and be with the Lord." "All is peace; all is quiet." When too feeble to speak, and friends would take him by the hand, with the other he would point upward to the home of the blest. Thus lived and thus died a good man and true. "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his."
[Source: The Cumberland Presbyterian, April 16, 1885, page 2]

1872

1873
Steele, Wm. H., Greenville, Tenn.
Minister - Knoxville Presbytery
[Source: Minutes of the General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 1873, page 101]

1874
Steele, W. H., Greenville, Tenn.
Minister - Knoxville Presbytery
[Source: Minutes of the General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 1874, page 101]

1875
Steele, W. H., Owensboro, Ky.
Minister - Ohio Presbytery
[Source: Minutes of the General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 1875, page 83]

1876
Steele, W. H., Colorado Springs, Col.
Minister - Rocky Mountain Presbytery
[Source: Minutes of the General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 1876, page 94]

1877
Steele, W. H., San Marcos, Tex.
Minister - Colorado Presbytery
[Source: Minutes of the General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 1877, page 80]

1878

1879
Steele, W. H., Kossuth, Miss.
Minister - Bell Presbytery
[Source: Minutes of the General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 1879, page 84]

1880
Steele, W. H., Kossuth, Miss.
Minister - Bell Presbytery
[Source: Minutes of the General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 1880, page 110]

1881
Steele, W. H., Kossuth, Miss.
Minister - Bell Presbytery
[Source: Minutes of the General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 1881, page 82]

1882
Steele, W. H., Corinth, Miss.
Minister - Bell Presbytery
[Source: Minutes of the General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 1882, page 112]

1883
Steele, W. H., Corinth, Miss.
Minister - Bell Presbytery
[Source: Minutes of the General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 1883, page 121]

1884
Steele, W. H., Franklin, Tenn.
Minister - Lebanon Presbytery
[Source: Minutes of the General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 1884, page 115]

1885
Deceased Ministers.
Lebanon Presbytery - W. H. Steele - 1885
[Source: Minutes of the General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 1885, page 44