EDWARDS, WILLIAM M. (1823-1890)

EDWARDS, WILLIAM M., Baptist missionary, Upper Southwest Miramichi, 1860-90, and medical practitioner; b. Ireland, c1823; m. 1st, 1845, Elizabeth Weeks, of Saint John, and 2nd, 1850, Isabella C. Rigby, also of Saint John; d. Blissfield, 9 Jul 1890.

William M. Edwards, who was born in Ireland of Welsh ancestry, was living in Saint John in the 1840s. Reports which he wrote later in life show him to have had an indifferent education, but he was ordained a Baptist minister in 1855. Five years later he settled in Blissfield parish as missionary responsible for an area extending from Blackville to Ludlow. With the financial support of the Baptist home mission board he remained on this field for the duration of his ministry. For the first twenty years he was assisted in the Boiestown area by the Rev. James Tozer, who had been the sole Baptist missionary previously on the Southwest. In the 1880s he sometimes had the help of student ministers, but his duties were onerous at all times. In the year ending 1 June 1873 he reported travelling 1689 miles, preaching ninety-nine sermons, conducting forty-five conference and prayer meetings, making 243 religious visits, delivering one temperance lecture, and administering the Lord's Supper fourteen times. On his rounds he also gave medical advice and dispensed medicines. The seriousness with which he took his medical work is reflected in a lecture entitled "Diphtheria-Diphtheritis," which he delivered at Doaktown in 1882 and subsequently had published in Saint John as a twenty-four-page pamphlet.

In 1889 Edwards was making his home at Blissfield in "a fine wooden building of modern architecture." He was confined to the house by illness at that time, however, and was unable to attend to his regular duties. He rallied later but did not recover. He and his first wife, Eliza Weeks, who died of tuberculosis at age twenty-seven, had one daughter, Hessy Elizabeth Edwards, who married in Ludlow parish in middle age. His second wife, Isabella C. Rigby, who was several years his senior, aided him in his ministry.