Herbert Spaugh

Who was Herbert Spaugh?

Walter Herbert Spaugh was a U.S. Bishop of the Moravian Church. By the 1960s he was one of the most prominent clergymen in North Carolina, as well as in the Southern Province of the Moravian Church.

Spaugh was born in Salem, North Carolina, the eldest of three sons of Rufus Armenius Spaugh and Anna Louise Spaugh. Spaugh graduated from Tinsley Military Institute in Winston-Salem in 1913, and from Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 1916. He earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Moravian Theological Seminary in 1924, and a Master of Arts degree from Davidson College in 1931.

During World War I Spaugh served in the United States Army. He was stationed at Fort Jackson.

Spaugh married Ida Brown Efird in Winston-Salem on 21 April 1920, his mother's forty-eighth birthday. Herbert and Ida had two sons and a daughter: Earle Frederick, Herbert, Jr., and Carolyn.

In 1924, Spaugh became the first full-time minister of the Little Church on the Lane in Charlotte, North Carolina. He held that position for forty-two years.