MORSE, RUPERT OSGOOD (1867-1936)

MORSE, RUPERT OSGOOD, Baptist minister, Whitneyville and Little Southwest, 1928-30; b. Williamston, Annapolis Co., N.S., 10 Aug 1867, s/o Asa Tupper Morse and Henrietta Bishop; m. 1894, Antoinette Saunders, of Hebron, N.S.; d. Middleton, N.S., 20 Apr 1936.

A graduate of the Nova Scotia Normal School, Rupert O. Morse taught for a time before continuing his education at Acadia University (BA 1891, MA 1894) and the Rochester Theological Seminary (grad. 1894, BD 1908). He was a minister for three years in New York state and for twenty-four years in the Maritimes. Between 1921 and 1926 he stepped out of the pulpit to act as business manager and editor of the church newspaper, The Maritime Baptist, which was published in Saint John. "A careful observer and a writer of grace and power," he also contributed historical and religious articles to other papers and magazines.

Morse's two-year pastorate at Whitneyville and Little Southwest concluded his ministry, and he retired in 1930 in Nova Scotia. He was sixty-eight years of age when his death occurred in 1936. In an obituary, The Maritime Baptist stated that although he was "a walking encyclopedia of denominational information" and was always "loyal to his own communion," he was "free of sectarian bigotry and narrowness."

Morse and his wife, Antoinette Saunders, had a son and two daughters. Their son, Rupert O. Morse Jr, was a chemist with Canadian Westinghouse Ltd.