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Walking in the King’s Highway:
Alice Belle Garrigus and the Pentecostal Movement in Newfoundland
By Burton K. Janes
What do you do when, at age 52, God calls you to the mission field? You go! A teacher, regular church attendee, and occasional preacher, Alice wondered about the “more” God had in store for her life. That “more” led her to leave the United States and begin the movement that would become the Assemblies of God in Newfoundland – in her fifties. Her inspiring story is one of faith and determination to fulfill God’s plan, even in the later years of life.
Late in 1910, a diminutive American woman prepared to board the ferry that operated between Canada and the island of Newfoundland, a small British colony east of Canada. The step from the pier to the ferry would be a short – albeit momentous – one.
Passing through customs, she was asked her reason for traveling to the island. "To preach the gospel," she answered.
The surprised customs official suggested there must have been a mistake. The passport stated the woman was 52 years of age, hardly the age for a change in careers – especially for a woman in 1910.
The woman replied that she too would have considered the trip a mistake had not God called her for this very purpose.
We know this diminutive woman as Alice Belle Garrigus 1 (1858‑1949), the human instrument God used to begin the Pentecostal movement in Newfoundland.
Although she is virtually a forgotten Pentecostal pioneer outside her adopted land, Alice Belle Garrigus’ life is an inspiring story of faith in God and determination to fulfillHis plan for her at an age when others might have sought a less strenuous life.
Of French ancestry and a descendent of the Huguenots, 2 Garrigus was born into an Episcopalian family in Rockville, Connecticut. At 15 she began teaching in rural schools. One student, referring to his teacher, said, "She is a dreadful little thing, but there is something in her eyes which tells me that I guess it wouldn’t do to go too far!"
“From the hour God called me, my heart was in Newfoundland.” –Alice Garrigus
Desiring further education, Garrigus returned to Normal School and then spent three years (1878‑81) at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, 3 at South Hadley, Massachusetts, where she was "brought under hallowed influences." However, she later realized that she had never been converted.
Leaving the seminary a year before graduation, she resumed teaching. Through the influence of a colleague, Gertrude Wheeler, Garrigus was born again. In 1888, both women left on a 10‑month excursion in Europe. Returning to the States, Garrigus again taught but was spiritually restless.
She had been reading Hannah Whitall Smith’s The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life. "This I read," she wrote, "often on my knees – praying fervently: ’Oh God, if there be such an experience, won’t you bring me into it?’ " 4
Garrigus and Wheeler then joined the CongregationalChurch. Garrigus believed the time was nearing "when God was going to answer the cries of years for a victorious life." Shortly after, she responded to an appeal at a gospel hall. "The consecration was deep and thorough, and the Spirit witnessed to it." 5
About 1891, Garrigus gave up her chosen profession to work in a home for destitute children and women. Her friend Gertrude Wheeler went to Africa as a missionary and died there. The now lonely Garrigus moved to New Hampshire where she came in contact with the First Fruit Harvesters Association at Rumney. 6 The association had been organized in 1897 by Joel Adams Wright, to "strengthen the churches and send missionaries to the end of the earth." Garrigus was with Fruit Harvesters between 1897 and 1903, serving as an itinerant preacher.
The year 1906 was a time of "deep humblings" for Garrigus. She reread the Bible, pleading with God for help in understanding the passages which promise power to the believer. A question continued to haunt her: What made Jesus’ disciples so different following the Day of Pentecost?
Meanwhile, the Pentecostal movement was spreading like wildfire. Garrigus, hearing about the Azusa Street Mission revival in Los Angeles, "began most earnestly, with prayer and fasting, to seek for the experience [God] was giving His people," the Pentecostal baptism. 7
In 1907, at a Christian and Missionary Alliance camp meeting at Old Orchard, Maine, Garrigus met Frank Bartleman, a veteran of the Azusa Street revival and an unofficial chronicler of the Pentecostal movement. Bartleman had received no official welcome at the meeting but was warmly received by those waiting for the Holy Spirit baptism. Bartleman "stood for hours," wrote Garrigus, "telling us the deeper things of God."’
Following Bartleman’s departure, the seekers – including Minnie Draper, who later was one of the founders of Bethel Bible Training School in Newark, New Jersey – met in a dilapidated barn. "What a gathering it was," Garrigus remembered.
It was an individual matter, each after his full inheritance ....
Messages in many languages were given with interpretations – holy
laughter and shouts of victory blended in one harmonious song of praise. 9
Garrigus, after receiving the Pentecostal experience, continued preaching at Rumney, and Grafton, Massachusetts.
In 1910 at the age of 52, Miss Alice Garrigus had a dramatic career change. She founded what became the Pentecostal Assemblies of Newfoundland.
Later she returned to Bridgeport, Connecticut, where she had taught earlier. One Sunday she attended a service conducted by Charles Personeus, superintendent of the John Street Mission.
"When Miss Garrigus was with me in the John Street Mission," Personeus wrote, "I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and that changed the mission to First Pentecostal Mission." 10 Garrigus stayed with the Personeuses for six months. In 1917, the Personeuses went to Juneau, Alaska, under the auspices of the Assemblies of God.
0ne day while Garrigus was staying with friends at Rumney, a woman she did not know – Maude Griffith – approached her.
I knew God had a message for me …. There followed a a
message in tongues and the word, “NEW FOUNDLAND,”
came forth. At that word, I bounded from my chair
and went leaping and dancing and praising God. 11
Newfoundland! What and where was it? Was it a country? An island? A colony? A province?
"From the hour God called," she later confessed, "my heart was in Newfoundland ." 12
On December 1, 1910, the 52‑year‑old Garrigus, accompanied by the W.D. Fowlers, whom she had known since 1889, arrived at St. John’s, the capital city of Newfoundland. She was a veritable Christmas gift for the island!
A building in the downtown area was rented and renovated. On Easter Sunday, April 16, 1911, the first Pentecostal service "for general gospel work" was conducted at the church which was named Bethesda Mission.
Garrigus’ preaching at Bethesda centered on the four basic doctrines – conversion, adult water baptism, the baptism in the Holy Spirit with the physical evidence of speaking in tongues, and the imminent return of Christ. And it resulted in numerous changed lives.
After a little more than a year, the building was purchased and paid for in full by 1918, 3 years before the mortgage deadline. Much of the funds came to Garrigus from American friends.
Bethesda was enlarged about 2 years after the church was founded to accommodate the increasing number of people who were attending the services. Garrigus affectionately called the mission "the tree God planted."
The Pentecostal work in Newfoundland was for a dozen years confined to St. John’s, from where the movement eventually spread throughout the island and into Labrador, a dependency of Newfoundland. On December 8, 1925, the movement was officially incorporated as the Bethesda Pentecostal Assemblies of Newfoundland.
As the second decade of the 20th century ended, the denomination requested recognition by the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada (PAOC) as a district council. The denomination’s name was shortened in 1930 to the Pentecostal Assemblies of Newfoundland (PAON). It is now known as Pentecostal Assemblies of Newfoundland & Labrador (PAONL).
Garrigus’s nearly 40 years in Newfoundland were very busy.
Garrigus’s nearly 40 years in Newfoundland were very busy. She served as an evangelist in charge of Bethesda Mission and held a number of executive positions. She traveled frequently to assemblies, reporting on their progress and offering encouragement. And she wrote a corpus of articles, sermons, and memoirs." In 1942, when she was 84-years old, she moved to Clarke’s Beach, a scenic spot about 50 miles from St. John’s. Here she livedin a modest dwelling she named "Rehoboth" (a biblical name meaning wide places). She lived there until her death in 1949 at the age of 91.
In 1949, the people of Newfoundland voted to become Canada’s newest province. The PAON continued operating under its former constitution but in close fellowship with the PAOC, the Assemblies of God, and other denominations within the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America. By 1971, Newfoundland had the highest percent of Pentecostals of any province or territory in Canada. Ten years later Pentecostals in Newfoundland and Labrador represented 6.8 percent of the province’s population. One woman – Alice Belle Garrigus – had taken the daring initiative in introducing Pentecostalism to Newfoundland.
A. Stanley Bursey was one of her many peers who highly respected her. A Former PAON general superintendent, Bursey reflected on her life: “We, who have had the opportunity to appraise her work and the results of the same, can only conclude that when God calls, He makes no mistakes.”
Burton K. Janes is the author of a two-volume biography of Alice Belle Garrigus: The Lady Who Came and The Lady Who Stayed.
ENDNOTES
1. See author’s 2‑volume biography of A.B. Garrigus. The Lady Who Came and The Lady Who
Stayed (St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, AIB 3N4: The Pentecostal Assemblies of Newfoundland, 1982 and 1983).
2. The name used in France for members of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.
3. Now Mount Holyoke College.
4. Garrigus. “Walking,”Good Tidings (GT), March 1939, p. 17.
5. Ibid., p. 18.
6. Now called The New England Fellowship of Evangelicals.
7. Garrigus, "Walking," GT, Sept. 1939. p. 10.
8. Garrigus hints that Bartleman took the initiative and "led God’s hungry sheep out to the woods," Ibid., p. 11. However, Bartleman maintains in Azusa Street(Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1980), p. 109. that he did not plan the meetings: "There were so many hungry for ’Pentecost’ they insisted on my preaching to them."
9. Garrigus, "Walking," GT, Sept. 1939, p. 11.
10. Personeus to the author, letter dated Nov. 30, 1983.
11. Garrigus. "Walking," GT, March 1940, p. 9. Emphasis in original.
12. Ibid., Sept. 1940, p. 6.
13. Plans are being made to publish a volume of Garrigus’ writings.
The title of this article was taken from Alice Belle Garrigus’ life story which was serialized from 1938 to 1942 in Good Tidings, the official magazine of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Newfoundland.
Originally published in Assemblies of God Heritage, Summer 1986, p. 3-4,14. Used by permission of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center. For additional historical information about women in ministry visit www.iFPHC.org.
