BLESEDELL, JOHN MILFORD (1893-1973)

BLESEDELL, JOHN MILFORD, Baptist minister, Doaktown field, 1942-45; b. North Sydney, N.S., 16 Apr 1893, s/o John Blesedell and Idella Allen; m. 1917, Rena Annie Doncaster, of Amherst, N.S.; d. Shelburne, N.S., 12 May 1973.

As a young man, John M. Blesedell worked in the retail sales field in Amherst, N.S., and served overseas with the Canadian forces for two years in World War I. After his discharge he completed his education at Horton Academy and Acadia University (BA 1926) and was ordained a Baptist minister at age thirty-three. His first pastorate was at Shelburne, and he had served in all three Maritime provinces before his arrival in Doaktown from Victoria Corner, N.B., in 1942. When he left three years later he went to Keswick.

Blesedell was resolute on the temperance question, and the text of one of his many temperance addresses, entitled "Some Fruits of the Liquor Traffic Trade," was published in The Maritime Baptist in 1947. In 1950 he stepped out of the pulpit for a year to act as field agent for the Nova Scotia Sons of Temperance. His last pastorate was at Westchester, N.S. He died in retirement in Shelburne in 1973, at eighty years of age. He was survived by his wife, Rena A. Doncaster, and two daughters.