George Carter Needham

George Carter Needham was a member of the Baptist community who pioneered Narberth's southside around the 1891 Baptist Church of the Evangel.

Reverend Needham was an evangelical Baptist preacher from a family of evangelists (three brothers were also reverends) who traveled widely, preaching from an 800-person tent. When he died at his Narberth home on February 16, 1902, he had just returned from a tour through Tennesee, and had expected to leave again shortly for Chicago.

Needham was a prolific author and hymist.

Of Candy and Cannibals

Such was the reverend's renown and charisma, that two compelling stories continue to this day to attach to him, both possibly spurious.

Needham became a candy namesake, the "Needham" of Maine, a chocolate-covered confection of coconut and potato. Its 1870s inventor is said to have been inspired by the evangelist, who was then based in Boston, although this is undocumented.

His obituary in the New York Times reported that ten-year-old George went to sea, following in his Coast Guard father's footsteps. Marooned in Patagonia by his cruel captain, he escaped being eaten by cannibals thanks only to their fear of the tatoos the crew had inflicted on the boy.

But it was George's younger brother Thomas (1852–1916), also an evangelist, later known as the "sailor preacher", who went to sea at age 13. In 1900 Thomas published his memoire From Cannibal Land to the Glory Land : being a narrative of a journey from Patagonia through the Argentine Republic, Paraguay, and Brazil. Even so, this story, too lurid to resist, yet clings to George.

Updated December 15, 2024.