T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin

Born in Smith County, Mississippi, in 1862, he grew up in a Baptist family and graduated from Mississippi College before studying at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. He originally hoped to enter missionary work, but illness changed those plans and kept him in the United States.

After serving as a pastor, he moved into full-time evangelistic work around 1900. Accounts of his career describe a preacher with a powerful voice and a direct style, and his meetings often grew large enough to require tents. He remained active in revival work for many years and preached until the final stage of his life.

He is now remembered both for his long career in evangelism and for his leading role in the anti-evolution movement of the 1920s. His writing and public campaigning made him a prominent fundamentalist voice of that era, especially through books such as Hell and the High Schools and Christ or Evolution.