Born to Joshua and Mary (Cushman) Soule at Broad Cove in Bristol (now Bremen), Maine, Soule was the seventh child in a Norman-English family. He was the great-great-great-grandson of George Soule, who in 1620 arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts as a MayflowerPilgrim, eventually becoming a prominent Duxbury landowner.[1] In the autumn of 1781, not long after this Joshua Soule's birth, the Soules moved to Avon where his father, a former sea captain from Duxbury, was an original settler along the Sandy River. Joshua, the son of Joshua, married Sarah Allen in 1803.
He became known as a "Boy Preacher," and an opponent of Calvinism, Unitarianism and Universalism. Tall, dignified and able, Soule was ordained, both deacon and elder, by Bishop Richard Whatcoat. He was appointed a presiding elder at the age of 23, placed in charge of the state of Maine. He also served as a book agent for the M.E. Church. In 1820, he was elected bishop, but declined consecration because the General Conference had adopted a policy he could not approve. He did accept episcopal consecration upon being elected again in 1824.
Leete, Frederick DeLand, Methodist Bishops. Nashville, The Methodist Publishing House, 1948.
Short, Roy Hunter, Chosen to be Consecrated: The Bishops of The Methodist Church, 1784-1968, Lake Junaluska, N.C., General Commission on Archives and History of the United Methodist Church, 1976.
^George Soule of the Mayflower and his descendants in the Fifth and Sixth Generations, Part 2 (Family Numbers 350-464), by John E. Soule, Milton E. Terry and Louise Walsh Throop, Published by General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 2002, pp. 172-175
^Text of historic marker for Soule College[permanent dead link] at Latitude 34 North, retrieved 25 May 2017.
^"Sacred Dust: Reinterment of Bishops McKendree and Soule at Vanderbilt University". Daily American 4 October 1876