Forgotten Women Preachers series

[Dec 5 2025: I finally found the obituary for Maria Parr: see the end of the text for the summary.]

Out of the 133 women who participated in the official ministry of the early EMCC in Ontario, the part called the Mennonite Brethren in Christ, there were a number who for various reasons served a handful of years and then disappeared from the records of the church. The women had several disadvantages they shared with the men, and some peculiar to themselves. Mariah Parr (1879-1919) illustrates many of them. She served about 9 years but for 5 of them she was hindered by some disabling condition and in the last year she died.

Here is her official record according to the annual Conference Journals (assignments were generally made in March of the year named in this period):

1910: St Catharines, helper to Clara Brubacher. Later in the year Martha Hood joined them.

1911: Owen Sound, helper to Rebecca Hostetler with Jessie Mitchell

1912: Owen Sound, helper to Jessie E Peard

1913: “to open up another Mission as soon as…” with Rebecca Hostetler

1914: “unable to work”

1915: “unable to take work at the present”

1916: “to labour as directed by the President”

1917: “unable to take work at present”

1918: “labor [sic] as directed by the President”

Mariah, or Maria, Parr came from a large farm family who first settled in Melancthon Township in Dufferin County. Her parents were Thomas and Margret or Margaret Parr from Ireland. In 1901 they were Mennonites, and the only Mennonite churches in the area were Shrigley MBiC started ca 1890-1893,¹ and Mt Pleasant, near Singhampton, ON, which started with Shrigley’s help around 1896.² Mariah had at least 10 brothers and sisters (Elizabeth, Fred, Ellen, Mary, Edward, James, Rebecca, George, Effie…). Maria and some of her siblings appear in a Shrigley MBiC Sunday School photo of 1907.³ The Shrigley congregation sent out several workers over the years besides Sarah McQuarrie and Mariah Parr: including Clarence Hunking, Willis Hunking, Raymond Priddle and possibly Jessie Mitchell.

I cannot find Mariah Parr in the June 1911 Canada census. She should have been recorded in Owen Sound by then, or possibly at her family home which was then in Osprey Township, Grey County, just over the county line from Melancthon. At the time of the census, her partners in Owen Sound were Rebecca Hostetler and Jessie Mitchell, whom I also cannot find in that census.⁴ As a helper 1910 to 1914, she would not normally write the reports city missionaries frequently sent to the Gospel Banner, though she had her signature on it.⁵ In February 1911, John Kitching, the CMWS President reported, “Sister Brubaker and her helper (Sister Parr) have good courage and are pushing the battle to the gates,” a standard encouragement used in the MBiC in those days.⁶

Unable to take work. Mariah Parr’s record suggests she was not well from 1914 to her death about 4 years later. Many city mission women were forced to drop out of active work for a year or more. Many reports suggest the women were undernourished and overworked. Everek Storms said, “Often they had little to eat.. And few pastors maintained a busier schedule…Days of fasting and prayer were common.”⁷ Certainly several took a year off to recover health, as reported in the stationing reports.⁸ Some male counterparts also had health issues, but the nursing of a wife often preserved their lives. The single women had ever-changing ministry partners, and though they often supported each other well, the conditions took their toll. “To labour as directed by the President” could mean they had a surplus of workers for the opportunities available, or they were kept ready to substitute for faltering sister workers, as Miranda Hunsperger was in 1909 when Olive Bryant had to go home because of severe throat trouble.⁹ They did not necessarily resign when sick or unassigned, and the society kept them on the roll until hopefully they were strong enough to take an appointment.

Another possibility is that she was called on to care for her parents in those years. Thomas Parr died in 1913, and Margret in 1915, buried in South Line Union Cemetery, just to the west of Badjeros, ON.

I believe Parr was also buried at Badjeros.¹⁰ Her fellow preacher Sarah McQuarrie was to be buried in the same cemetery a few metres away in 1922.¹¹ And so far that is all I have been able to learn about Miss Parr.

[Dec 5 2025: William Mansell McGuire, “Deaths,” Gospel Banner (April 17 1919) p 14. McGuire was the pastor of MBiC Shrigley and Mt Pleasant, and thus Maria’s pastor. His notice recorded Maria’s birth date (Mar 28 1879) and day of death from cancer, March 21 1919 near Shrigley. Maria was converted at age 12 and she had been a city mission worker.]

Banner: Shrigley Evangelical Missionary Church building ca 2000. Constructed 1893. Courtesy Glenn Menard Collection, MCHT.

1With great sadness, I heard at the 2024 EMCC eastern Regional Gathering, that this rural church has just voted to close after 131 years of proclaiming Christ.

2See Clare Fuller (2022), https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Mount_Pleasant_Evangelical_Missionary_Church_(Singhampton,_Ontario,_Canada)

3Leamon Hunking, Home Spun Flashbacks of Shrigley and Community 1893-1995 (Dundalk, ON: By the Author, 1995) p 15.

4With 27 other Jessie Mitchells in Ontario in the census of 1911, you would think she would be somewhere in the province!

5Eg Clara Brubaker [also spelled Brubacher] and Maria Parr, “Ontario Conference, St Catharines, Ont.,” Gospel Banner (February 6 1911) p 11.

6John N Kitching, “St Catharines, Ont.,” Gospel Banner (February 23 1911) p 12. Also John N Kitching, “Home Missions, Owen Sound, Ont.,” Gospel Banner (January 6 1912) p 12 : “Sister Hostetler is a faithful leader and her co-laborers (Sisters Parr and Mitchell) are standing by her well”.

7Everek R Storms, History of the United Missionary Church (Elkhart, IN: Bethel Publishing, 1958) p 253; Eileen Lageer, Merging Streams: Story of the Missionary Church (Elkhart, IN: Bethel Publishing, 1979) p 75-76.

8Eg “M. Dunnington and S. McQuarrie to have permission to rest on account of poor health…,” Henry S Hallman, Henry Goudie and Solomon Eby, “Report of Committee to Station City Mission Workers,” Canada Conference Journal, 1902, p 74. Or Martha Doner, “Report of City Mission Workers Convention,” Gospel Banner (May 9 1918) p 13-14, recording Diana Shantz and Maude McClelland resting because they were not well.

9John N Kitching, “Home Missions,” Gospel Banner (December 23 1909) p 19-20.

10Grave marker image on “Billion Graves” website. I have searched the issues of the 1918 Gospel Banner for any death notice or obituary for Parr but not seen any yet [it was in 1919!].

11EMCC History blog, “Women Preachers in the MBiC Part 3: Sarah McQuarrie.”