Describe Elias Strorm from The Chrysalids

In John Wyndham's dystopian sci-fi novel The Chrysalids, Elias Strorm is the grandfather of the narrator, David Strorm. He has already been dead for years by the start of the novel, and David never actually met the man.
Elias was an extremely religious man who left the "ungodly" area of the East when he was 45 years old, in order to start a new life in a stable religious community. He came across an underdeveloped area in the country called Waknuk and started building his home there, and that area is now where the characters of The Chrysalids live.
Elias is described as being "husky," "dominating," and having "eyes that could flash with evangelical fire beneath bushy brows." David essentially tells us that Elias sucked the life and happiness out of his wife, who became a "sad, grey wraith of wifehood who died, unprotesting, a year after her second son was born." He also passed on his extreme religious tendencies and harsh personality to his son, Joseph.