PINKERTON, JOHN JAMES (1873-1926)

PINKERTON, JOHN JAMES, Methodist minister, Chatham circuit, 1915-19; b. Benton, Carleton Co., N.B., 17 Oct 1873, s/o John Pinkerton and Esther Hay; m. 1905, Edna Leighton Smith, RN, of St David parish, Charlotte Co., N.B.; d. Fairville (Saint John), 19 Apr 1926.

John J. Pinkerton spent some of his childhood years in the United States and his teenage years at Milltown, N.B., where his mother was keeping a boarding house in 1891. After finishing his secondary education he took a business course in St Stephen. He was admitted to the Methodist ministry on trial in 1900 and was assigned the following year to pastoral duties at Chatham, while the Rev. William C. Matthews was confined to a tuberculosis sanitorium. When he departed in 1902 he went to Mount Allison University to finish his theological studies.

Ordained in 1904, Pinkerton pursued his entire ministerial career in New Brunswick. He was at Silver Falls in Saint John in 1915 immediately before returning to Chatham as minister of St Luke's Church. He was popular with the congregation, and his sermons were favorably reviewed in the Chatham World. He also had an opportunity while on the Miramichi to indulge his love of trout fishing, for which it was said he always "dressed the part." When his initial three-year term expired he was invited to stay an additional year. He did so and was complimented on his kindness to the students and staff when fire gutted St Thomas College in March 1919. A few months later he was appointed to the church at Marysville. He was subsequently the minister of St Mark's Methodist-United Church at Fairville, in Saint John. He was survived in 1926 by his wife, Edna L. Smith, two sons, and a daughter.