Baldwin, Maurice Scollard

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Alan L. Hayes, “BALDWIN, MAURICE SCOLLARD,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 13, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/baldwin_maurice_scollard_13E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Church of England clergyman, bishop, and author; b. 21 June 1836 in Toronto, fourth son of John Spread Baldwin and Anne Shaw; m. first 4 Sept. 1861 in St Thomas, Upper Canada, Maria Ermatinger (d. 1863), and they had a daughter; m. secondly 21 April 1870 Sarah Jessie Day, and they had three daughters and a son; d. 19 Oct. 1904 in London, Ont.
    • Maurice Scollard Baldwin was related to two prominent Toronto families: his maternal grandfather was Æneas Shaw, William Warren Baldwin and Augustus Warren Baldwin were uncles, and Robert Baldwin was a cousin. He was educated in Toronto at Upper Canada College and at Trinity College (ba 1859, ma 1862, dd 1882), where his predilection for Methodist-style cottage meetings and salvation sermons raised eyebrows. Because of his evangelicalism he was reportedly refused ordination by Bishop John Strachan of Toronto. Baldwin began his professional ministry instead in the diocese of Huron, in the southwest part of the province, one of the energetic, evangelical clergy with whom Bishop Benjamin Cronyn surrounded himself. Cronyn ordained him deacon in 1860 and priest in 1861, and appointed him curate of St Thomas’ Church in St Thomas (1860–62). 
    • When Isaac Hellmuth resigned as bishop of Huron, the diocesan synod elected Baldwin his successor in 1883. He aimed to devote his efforts “first and chiefest of all,” as he told synod five years later, to “the spiritual life of the Diocese.” Contemporaries indeed knew him as “the most spiritually minded” of Canada’s Anglican bishops, in the words of the London Free Press. He routinely preached three times a Sunday, frequently spoke every evening of the week in parish churches, and led numerous retreats for clergy, deaneries, and other groups. Characteristically he attributed most of the problems of the church to insufficient faithfulness. He regretted the tendency to base ecclesiastical decisions on business principles, as if the major question should be “What will make it pay?” Baldwin was a keen advocate of domestic and foreign missions, Sunday schools, and temperance, and a supporter of the contemporary movement for ordaining deaconesses.
  • Grandson of Proven United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=7512
  • Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/104192785/maurice-scollard-baldwin