Pinkham was a professor of English Literature at Earlham College from 1879 to 1884 and acting president of Earlham in 1883-1884. Pinkham was born in Litchfield, Maine, September 3, 1841, the son of Thomas and Mary (Beede) Pinkham, Quakers who moved in 1843 to Fayette County, Pennsylvania, and in 1845 to Salem, Ohio.  In 1860 he married Emma Curry in Salem.  After teaching in Quaker schools in Salem and Mount Pleasant, Ohio, and New London, Indiana, he moved to Bloomington, Iowa, where he lived until 1868.  He then became principal of the Blue River Friends Academy in Washington County, Indiana, leaving in 1874 to head a normal school in Paoli, Indiana.  From 1879 to 1884 he was at Earlham, then was appointed principal of Spiceland Academy in Spiceland, Indiana.  From 1887 to 1898 he was a Quaker pastor in Lynn, Massachusetts, Portland, Maine and Woonsocket, Rhode Island.  In the latter year he joined the staff of the Friends Bible Institute in Cleveland, Ohio, serving ten years.  He then moved to Alliance, Ohio, as pastor of the Alliance Friends Church.  In 1910, he moved to Huntington Park, California, to head the Training School for Christian Wokers, now Azusa Pacific University, there. He died in Huntington Park, April 20, 1919. Pinkham was recorded a Quaker minister in 1869.  In the 1870s, he identified himself with the holiness revival movement among Gurneyite Friends.  As modernism and critical Bible study grew in influence among American Quakers after 1895, Pinkham emerged as one of the most steadfast opponents and critics of modernist Quakerism.  From 1905 to 1909 he was coeditor of the Evangelical Friend, which became a rallying point for evangelical Quakerism.

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