ALLABY, HENRY EMMERSON (1891-1980)

ALLABY, HENRY EMMERSON, Baptist minister, Whitneyville and Little Southwest, 1915-17, and Ludlow, Boiestown, and Bloomfield Ridge, 1917-20; b. near Bloomfield Station, Kings Co., N.B., 25 Oct 1891, s/o James Thomas Allaby and Augusta Maria Mutch; m. 1st, 1913, Nina Dashily Hubley, BA, of Halifax, andy 2nd, Doris Hanson Atherton; d. Woodstock, N.B., 1 Jul 1980.

Henry E. Allaby was a grandson of the Rev. Robert Mutch and a great-grandson of both the Rev. Alexander Mutch and the Rev. Robert Emmerson, all formerly of Whitneyville. He was educated at Acadia University (BA 1913) and served for two years as secretary of the YMCA at Truro, N.S. After studying for a short time at the Newton Theological Institute in Massachusetts he accepted the pastorate of the Baptist churches at Whitneyville and Little Southwest. In the summer of 1915 he was joined by the Rev. Crawford P. Wilson, home mission evangelist, and during a three-week crusade fifty-one persons 'came forward'. At that time also he was ordained at Whitneyville. At the end of his first year he counted a total of forty-seven new church members on the Little Southwest and fifteen at Whitneyville. He remained for one more year.

In 1917 Allaby was engaged as the Baptist minister at Boiestown, Ludlow, and Bloomfield Ridge, where he continued his evangelizing activities. In 1919 Licentiate David C. Kaine was assisting him there. After three years on that field he took a pastorate in Rhode Island. He returned to Canada in 1925 to be minister at Berwick, N.S. From 1931 onward he occupied pulpits at different places in New Brunswick. He was pastor of a church in Saint John prior to being appointed in 1946 as evangelist-at-large for the province. In 1947 he took over the church at Berry Mills, N.B., and when the United Baptist Bible Training School opened in Moncton in 1949, he was engaged as a part-time instructor in religion. He joined the full-time staff in 1951. In 1956 he was granted an honorary DD by Acadia University. He was president of the Maritime Baptist Convention in 1958. In retirement he made his home in Woodstock, where he compiled a history of the local Baptist church and published a religio-autobiographical work entitled Listening to God: Lessons from a Long Life.

Allaby and his first wife, Nina D. Hubley, had three sons, all of whom became Baptist ministers, and two daughters. His survivors in 1980 included his second wife, Doris Hanson Atherton.