MALONE, J. WALTER (11 Aug. 1857-30 Dec. 1935) and his wife, EMMA BROWN MALONE, Evangelical Quakers, founded the Christian Workers' Training School for Bible Study and Practical Methods of Work in March 1892 in Cleveland. Also known as the Bible Institute or Cleveland Friends Bible Institute, the facility later developed into Malone College of Canton, OH. Walter Malone was born in Clermont County, near Cincinnati, OH, the 7th of 8 children of Quakers Mary Ann Pennington Malone (a preacher) and John Carl Malone. The family later moved to New Vienna, OH, then a state center for Quakerism. Malone was educated first at public schools, then at the preparatory department of Earlham College (1874), and graduated from Chickering Institute in Cincinnati in 1877. In 1880 he came to Cleveland to work in his brother's stone quarry firm, Malone and Company. Malone taught Sunday School at the EUCLID AVENUE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH before taking leadership of the Sunday School of the Cleveland Meeting of Friends (begun in 1871 by James and Meribah Butler Farmer. In March 1882 he organized the first local Quaker revival, which added enough new members to set up the Cleveland Monthly Meeting the next spring.
Malone married Emma Brown on 19 Jan. 1886; they had 6 children: Carroll B., J. Walter, Jr., Franklin, Margaret Crobaugh Day, Esther M. Waterbury, and Ruth M. Osborne. The couple concentrated on urban ministry to people of all races and social classes, holding evangelistic meetings in the ACADEMY OF MUSIC until it burned in 1892, and then opening the Whosoever Will Mission, which served meals to the poor in a former Free Methodist Church. Malone was elected to the board of directors of the Publishing Association of Friends in 1890 and co-founded The American Friend. He and Emma published The Christian Worker, The Bible Student, The Soul-Winner, The Evangelical Friend, and The Young People.
J. Walter Malone Papers, Malone University, Canton, Ohio
Oliver, John W., ed. J. Walter Malone: The Autobiography of an Evangelical Quaker (1993).
Osborne, Byron L. The Malone Story: The Dream of Two Quaker Young People (1970).