MACDONALD, GEORGE BRUCE (1877-1956)

MACDONALD, GEORGE BRUCE, Baptist minister, Newcastle, 1941-51; b. Woodstock, N.B., 14 Jan 1877, s/o the Rev. George W. Macdonald and Matilda Jane Carman; m. 1906, Beatrice B. Marsten; d. Hampton, N.B., 23 Feb 1956.

George B. Macdonald's father, a native of Grand Manan Island, was one of the founders, in 1888, of the Reformed Baptist Alliance of Canada; that is, of the Reformed Baptist Church.

Macdonald attended school in several New Brunswick towns and cities in which his father had pastorates, finishing his high school education in Saint John. He then took a BS degree from Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky. He was ordained to the Reformed Baptist ministry in 1899, at age twenty-two. He worked within that communion until 1910 and then joined the United Baptists. He had United Baptist pastorates in Sussex and elsewhere in New Brunswick, as well as in Halifax and Needham, Mass. He was invited to Newcastle from Petitcodiac in 1941 and stayed until 1951, when he retired at Hampton, N.B.

Macdonald, who possessed a "fine physique" and a "strong voice," was "a minister of more than ordinary pulpit eloquence," whose preaching was characterized by "its beauty of English." During much of his life he was involved in fraternal and recreational activities in the communities in which he lived. In 1934 an honorary DD was conferred on him by his alma mater, Asbury College. He served for many years on the New Brunswick and Canadian boards of the British and Foreign Bible Society and was made a life governor of the parent body in 1946. He and his wife, Beatrice Marston, had a son.