Elmer Ellsworth Shelhamer (December 16, 1869 – January 22, 1947) was an American preacher, evangelist, and author whose fervent ministry within the Free Methodist Church spanned over 60 years, emphasizing holiness and divine healing. Born in Wayne County, Pennsylvania, to John Shelhamer and Sarah Jane Ellsworth, he grew up in a poor farming family, leaving home at 16 to work as a lumberjack and farmhand before his conversion at 18 under Vivian A. Dake’s Pentecostal Bands in 1887. Sanctified wholly and healed of tuberculosis at 22, he briefly attended Wheaton College in Illinois, leaving after a year to pursue full-time evangelism. Shelhamer’s preaching career ignited as a leader in the Pentecostal Bands, planting Free Methodist churches in Pennsylvania and Illinois, and later pioneering work in Georgia and Florida after the Bands split from the denomination in 1895, when he remained loyal to the Free Methodists. His bold, uncompromising sermons—delivered across South America, Africa, Australia, Asia, and Europe—focused on conversion, sanctification, and practical Christian living, often from makeshift platforms or street corners. He authored over 40 works, including The Ups and Downs of a Pioneer Preacher (1915), Heart Talks to Ministers, and Five Reasons Why I Do Not Seek the Gift of Tongues, while basing much of his later ministry at God’s Bible School in Cincinnati. Married twice—first to Minnie Baldwin in 1892, an evangelist who died in 1902, with whom he had two children, Esther and Ruth, then to Julia Arnold in 1905, with whom he had four more—he died at age 77 in St. Petersburg, Florida, leaving a legacy as a tireless herald of holiness.