HUDGELL, ROBERT WILLIAM (1859-1949)

HUDGELL, ROBERT WILLIAM, Anglican missionary, Derby and Blackville, 1889-91; b. London, England, 23 Apr 1859, s/o Joseph Hudgell and Mary Ann Gollis; m. 1887, Mary Carter, of Oxford, N.S.; d. Clevedon, England, 15 Jul 1949.

The son of a bricklayer, Robert W. Hudgell was educated at King's College, London. He arrived in Canada as a young man and was trained for the Anglican ministry at King's College, Windsor (1885-86). Ordained a deacon in 1886, he spent a year as a travelling missionary for the Amherst deanery. In 1887 he was ordained a priest and appointed rector at Stewiacke, N.S. He remained there until he transferred to New Brunswick in 1889 to take charge of the mission of Derby and Blackville.

Hudgell attracted attention from the start of his ministry on the Miramichi by hitching rides between Millerton and Blackville on freight trains and horse- drawn vehicles and by hiking the distance in an energetic fashion when such means of transportation were unavailable. A highlight of his two-year term was the opening of St Agnes Church at Gray Rapids. He and most other members of the Chatham rural deanery paid a formal visit to this new church on 21 May 1891, but it was not consecrated until 1900.

In the census of 1891 Hudgell and his wife were enumerated in Derby parish with a two-year-old son. They left that summer for Saint John, where he became rector of St Jude's Church, and where a daughter was born to them. In 1894 he transferred to Methuen, Mass., and he was a curate there until 1897. He then went to England for a year but ministered in the U.S. again between 1898 and 1904. The rest of his service was rendered in England. He had several appointments as curate and chaplain prior to becoming vicar of Cogges Church in Witney, Oxfordshire, in 1915. He held this appointment until his retirement in 1932.

In 1928 Hudgell and his wife, Mary Carter, returned to the Miramichi to visit, and he preached again in the churches at Derby and Blackville. He was ninety years old when he died in 1949.