GARTSHORE, WILLIAM (1878 LIVING 1943)

GARTSHORE, WILLIAM, Presbyterian and United Church minister, Blackville, 1923-28; b Airdrie, Scotland, 10 Feb 1878, s/o John Gartshore, an iron moulder, and h/w Jean Pollock; m. c1900, Agnes B. Swift, of Airdrie; living in 1943.

William Gartshore left Scotland around 1906 for Montreal, where he worked at iron moulding. A few years later, he went to Boston, where he did the same work before completing a ministerial training course at Gordon Bible College in 1913 and being ordained a Baptist minister. After two years as pastor at Websterville, Vermont, he resumed his studies at the Newton Theological Institute and was granted a BD degree.

Gartshore was received into the Presbyterian ministry at Boston in 1920 and soon obtained an assignment to Wallace, N.S., where he ministered for the next three years. At the same time, he pursued a postgraduate program at the Presbyterian College in Halifax. In June 1923, he accepted a call to Blackville, where the pulpit of St Andrew's Church had been vacant for six months. He served there and in the church at Quarryville for five years, during which time the Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists joined together to form the United Church of Canada.

Gartshore resigned in 1928 and went to South Ryegate, Vermont, where he was the Presbyterian minister for six years. He was then in Philadelphia and Chicago for short periods. His last known posting was at Garrattsville, N.Y., between 1940 and 1943.

He and his wife, Agnes M. Swift, had two children who did not survive infancy.