William Kimbrough Pendleton (1817–1899) was Alexander Campbell's coworker, friend, and — twice over — son-in-law, and one of the most influential figures in the movement from 1840 until his retirement from public life in 1887.
He became coeditor of the Millennial Harbinger after 1844, and its proprietor and senior editor after Campbell's death in 1866; in the same year he became president of Bethany College. Where the first generation had been polemicists, Pendleton was an administrator and an editor — the person who had to keep the movement's flagship journal and its flagship college running once its founder was gone.
His public voice was irenic. He advocated missionary societies and counseled tolerance of progressive opinion at exactly the moment when the movement was beginning to sort itself into parties over those questions. Reading Pendleton alongside Benjamin Franklin and David Lipscomb is the fastest way to see how the division of 1906 was built, position by position, out of good-faith disagreement.
Relationships
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Succeeded as editor of the Millennial Harbinger: Alexander Campbell
Coeditor from 1844, then proprietor and senior editor after Campbell's death; also his son-in-law twice over.