CHURCH, GEORGE EARL (1835-1910), American geographer, was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on the 7th of December 1835. He was educated as a civil engineer, and was early engaged on the Hoosac Tunnel. In 1858 he joined an exploring expedition to South America. During the American Civil War he served (1862-1865) in the Army of the Potomac, rising to the command of a brigade and the rank of colonel; and in 1866-1867 he was war correspondent of the _New York Herald_ in Mexico. He explored the Amazon (1868-1879), and gradually became the leading authority on that region of South America, being appointed United States commissioner to report on Ecuador in 1880, and visiting Costa Rica in 1895 to report on its debt and railways. He wrote extensively on South and Central American geography, and became a vice-president of the Royal Geographical Society (London), and in 1898 president of the geographical section of the British Association.
CHURCH, SIR RICHARD (1784-1873), British military officer and general in the Greek army, was the son of a Quaker, Matthew Church of Cork. He was born in 1784, and at the age of sixteen ran away from home and enlisted in the army. For this violation of its principles he was disowned by the Society of Friends, but his father bought him a commission, dated the 3rd of July 1800, in the 13th (Somersetshire) Light Infantry. He served in the demonstration against Ferrol, and in the expedition to Egypt under Sir Ralph Abercromby in 1801. After the expulsion of the French from Egypt he returned home, but came back to the Mediterranean in 1805 among the troops sent to defend the island of Sicily. He accompanied the expedition which landed in Calabria, and fought a successful battle against the French at Maida on the 6th of July 1806. Church was present on this occasion as captain of a recently raised company of Corsican Rangers. His zeal attracted the notice of his superiors, and he had begun to show his capacity for managing and drilling foreign levies. His Corsicans formed part of the garrison of Capri from October 1806 till the island was taken by an expedition directed against it by Murat, in September 1808, at the very beginning of his reign as king of Naples. Church, who had distinguished himself in the defence, returned to Malta after the capitulation.