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View Tree for Reverend William Dow SargeantReverend William Dow Sargeant (b. 22 Apr 1908, d. 02 Apr 2004)


Picture of William Dow Sargeant
Dow 1971

William Dow Sargeant (son of William Sargeant and Martha Milda Robinson)327, 328 was born 22 Apr 1908 in Derby Township, Ontario329, 330, and died 02 Apr 2004 in Palmerston Hospital, Palmerston, Ontario330. He married Matilda Mae Tipping on 22 Dec 1940 in Kitchener, Ontario330, daughter of Abner Wallace Tipping and Mary Ann Baker.

 Includes NotesNotes for William Dow Sargeant:
[SargeantFamilyTree.FTW]

William Dow Sargeant

Was born the sixth child of William Sargeant and Millie Robinson Sargeant on
the 22 April 1908 on a farm in Derby Township near Owen Sound Ontario. His
mother declared that there would be no more children and named him after the
doctor (Dow). He goes by that name. He is the writer's father. His sister
Mildred was none too happy to see another child to take care of and bemoaned
the fact that once again she would not get to town on Saturday morning, but
would have to take care of the babies.

The next time we see Dow is in a picture taken at about age 6. He faces the
camera square on, arms akimbo, pants held up by one brace. His cousin, and long
time boyhood friend, Bert Barber says that he was a little rip. Certainly if
stories are to believed of early childhood, his father had to apply the shingle
of learning to the seat of understanding on more than one occasion.

With his cousin, and others, he would fish and hunt and go to school. He says
that he was not a great student, and was dreadfully shy. He would hide when
visitors came to the farm.

He attended the Buelah Mission in Owen Sound and there was convicted of his
sin. On his return home after Sunday service, he sought the assistance of his
sister Roseline, and she led him to Christ. He then found that he had to make
things right with people he had wronged.

His cousin Bert Barber had purchased a new groundhog trap. One day Dow says
that he found the hole where Bert had set the trap and stole the trap making it
look like the animal had dragged it down the hole. On becoming convicted of his
sin, he made ready the Coleman lantern and walked across the back fields in the
middle of the night to Bert's home. Bert said that he could see the lantern
coming across the field and knew that something must be wrong. Dow came into
the house and confessed his misdeed, and replaced the trap.

Dow tells of many of his experiences on the farm with his father. One time he
and Bert were watching William Sargeant feed pigs. With a bucket of slops in
one hand, he entered the pig pen and then saw that the pigs had overturned the
trough. He stood on one foot, while trying to turn the trough over with the
other. Suddenly the excited pigs ran up against his leg and he fell over into
the pig poop. This brought the expected reaction from Bert and Dow and they
started to laugh. Dow's father glared at them, so they ran out of the barn,
sniggering on the way.

He was very aware of his father's temper and often spoken of the many
whippings he received. On one occasion when his father was going to whip him,
his sister Roseline came to his rescue. She looked her father in the eye and
said "Don't whip Dow, whip me". Needless to say this valiant intervention has
been used many times in sermons to teach the substitutionary act of Christ for
mankind. It also saved his bacon----on that occasion.

Roseline---Dad's right hand man on the farm. Dependable. I was with him the night he was saved. We prayed together at his own bed side. Entered the ministry and pastored for over 30 years. Strong, ready to listen, quite smart in his choice of attire. Dow was much loved by his sisters and is still very special to me. A real gardener ever up and at it even at age 81 or 82. Grew huge gladiolas

There are several good pictures of Dow with girls that are not my mother. After
much discussion and blushing, he confessed that there were girl friends before
he went to college and I learned that I might be compiling family history on
the Barfoot family, rather than the Tipping clan. Sweet bird of youth.

Dow helped his father on the farm for some time until he felt a call to enter
the ministry. He was a very shy person, but had the confidence that what God
called him to do, he would enable him to do. He enrolled in Toronto Bible
College and graduated with his Bachelor of Theology. He had to work to put
himself through college and assisted in the kitchen and did other menial tasks
to finance his study. This is the place where he formed life-long friendships
and learned that there were many Christians in other churches that had equally
compelling faith.

Toronto Bible College was the place that my mother and father met. My father,
however, felt that he could make no commitments until he had graduated and so
carried on an arm's length romance with the black haired beauty from Berlin.
After graduating, he kept up a correspondence that fair wore out the postman's
car. Dad tells of one trip to Turkey Point with my mother and Aunt Roseline
along. They arrived late and so decided to sleep in the car. During the night,
Roseline would look over the back of the front seat and check to see everything
was proper.

Mother later told of him burning the love letters and the wind carrying them
across the yard from the barrel and Dad chasing them to make sure they didn't
fall into the hands of someone who might not think of them in the same light he
did.

Eventually they took pity on the postman, and married on the 23 December 1940.
They were married in the Bethany Missionary Church in Kitchener by Rev CN Good.
Mother kids Dad about having him open windows, shut windows, turn lights on and
off etc etc on their wedding night. Well, after all they were shy.

Their first church or field was Shrigley. Located in the beautiful Blue
Mountain region of Southern Ontario, it nonetheless was a "hard scrabble
circuit". It was so much a wild area in the early 40s that Dow had to purchase
a horse to get around in winter. He bought a cutter and a fine mare called
June. June was a pacer and would break into a pacer's stride when she hit
optimum speed. This was fine as long as the snow lay crisp and even, but when
it drifted, she would slide off the snow banks and the cutter would overturn;
much to the amusement and giggles of my mother. One time, after I was born, the
cutter pitched both mother and I in my papoose out of the cutter and into the
snowbank. Both mother and baby were fine. Father was scared.

Unfortunately June had to be sold as the finances did not come in as expected.
Mother still joshes Dad about the lack of horse trading sense he had, since the
resultant acquisition had to be put in the back pasture so the neighbours
wouldn't see its sway back and long furry coat. At one point finances were so
bad that only 35 cents a week was collected in the offering for a couple of
months running. The parishioners would rescue my folks though by sending them
heart and other cuts of meat that no one wanted. Was it not for my father
keeping chickens, working for farmers, and planting a garden etc, they would
have been hard put to feed themselves.

During this time father was asked to appear before the army recruiting board.
He was exempted because he was a pastor. The second world war was on. Rationing was a fact of life at this time. The special speakers were to bring their own
sugar when they came to stay at my parents home. Mother talks of one who showed
up with an imitation sweetener and declared that it "was good for all sorts."

I and my brother Ron were born at Shrigley. We were born in the Markdale
hospital. Mother often tells of Aunt Roseline sitting in the back seat of the
car with me in her arms on the way home from the hospital. She said "Dow's
baby, Dow's baby" over and over again all the way home. You'd think Mae had
nothing to do with it.

When Dow was pastor at Shrigley, one of his parishioners was Willis Hunking. At Dow's funeral Willis told the story of one Sunday afternoon and Dad was preaching. A man entered the church, strode to the front and taking Dad by the arm said" You're coming with me". Dad recognized him and realized that his father was terminally ill and not a Christian. He turned to Willis Hunking and said, " Willis, you finish the sermon" and left with the man. Willis finished the sermon and Dad lead the man's father to Christ.

The next stop was Manitoulin Island. This was paradise for my father who enjoys
the outdoors. Again fishing, hunting and an extensive garden, helped supplement
a meager salary. Additionally my father helped various farmers. One he worked
for was also a member of one of the churches on this placement, a man called
Wilf Cochrane. Mr Cochrane and his strapping wife, Ruby, kept turkeys. I can
recall being chased by one of the huge birds and seeking refuge behind my
mother's skirts. Mrs Cochrane would make her own bread and bake it in the most
creative of containers, such as syrup pails, roast pans etc. Once she gave my
family a huge loaf of bread made in a roasting pan for one of the infamous
turkeys. My father sat at the end of the table and peeked around the loaf at my
mother, who immediately burst into room-shaking laughter.

While working for the Cochranes, my father and Wilf would log in the bush. I
think they cut pulp wood. They had a little shack on skids where they could
brew up their tea and get warm. One day Ruby forgot to put tea in their lunch
things and they had to use the tea from the day before. It was very weak and
lead to endless kidding about her supplying them with "pink tea". Thereafter
any liquid that was less than its usual strength bore the label -- pink tea.

Manitoulin or The Island, as the natives know it, is the first place I can
recall as a youngster. I can recall my father rescuing our terrier dog from the
uppermost branches of a pine tree. He had crawled up there, who knows for what
reason--perhaps a squirrel, and couldn't reverse himself down the tree. He
howled miserably until the pastor rescued him. The same dog caught a snake and
literally shook it to pieces. He happened to do this right beside the church,
which was painted white and pieces of the disassembled snake splattered to the
church. Ron thought this great fun and laughed to the point of needing a change
of clothes. My father had to get the snake off the church before Sunday and I
can recall him scrubbing the snake off the church.

The radio played a large part in keeping us connected to the rest of Canada.
(Getting to southern Ontario entailed a long stomach churning ride over the
road to Espanola or a long stomach churning ferry ride from South Bay Mouth to
Tobermory--so we didn't go south too often). Dad and a friend by the name of
Hartley used to meet almost every Saturday night at our house and play
crokinole. I can still recall drifting off to sleep to the sounds of Foster
Hewitt calling the hockey game and the click of crokinole playing. The radio
too ,became my teacher and entertainer as I listened to Just Mary and to
Maggie Muggins on the CBC.

Our next appointment brought us south again to Breslau, near Kitchener. It was
here that my father made a life long friend Paul Trissel. Trissel was an
American evangelist. With his wife, son Paul and daughter Becky, he would
arrive in their long trailer which would be parked in the church parking lot
and the hydro and water hooked up to the church or a neighbours house. Every
evening they would play instruments and sing and Rev Trissel would preach.
During the days however he and my father would carefully test every fishing
hole for miles in search of trout or bass or other denizens of the water world.
He is the man who introduced us to frog-legs fried in a pan. I can recall the
skinned and floured legs twitching in the pan as the nerves reacted to the
heat of the hot butter. Good eatin' neighbour. I don't think my father felt
that they were all that great and my mother stiffled strange sounds in her
throat.

After Breslau we were transferred to Stayner.

While we were living at Stayner, my father was ill, I forget with what. For
something to do, my mother bought him a flower magazine and that was the first
mistake. He found this most fascinating and wrote away for catalogs and books.
He started to raise gladiola, dahlias and this gave rise to the storage of
gladiolus cormels and dahlia tubers in the cellar, all dusted in insecticide. I
can still smell the glad-dust as we called it, that smell of which always makes
me think of basements. Dad won many prizes at the local and provincial level
for his glads. He hybridized a number of gladiolus and developed new color
combinations. He became known for having beautiful flowers. He supplied
weddings, sold flowers at Wasaga Beach to grocery stores etc. He also used to
fill the front of the tabernacle at Stayner Camp, with bouquets of glads and
dahlias.

My maternal grandparents, Mr and Mrs Abner Tipping, lived in Stayner and we
anticipated that it would be great to live near them. It was, for that is where
I learned to appreciate my mother's folks and established a close relationship
with them.

However Stayner proved to be a difficult church. One of the men Dad was trying
to reach for Christ said that he couldn't become a Christian because one of the
men of the church was a crook. Dad asked who it was and it turned out to be a
very influential man in the church. Dad approached the church man and was told
to mind his own business. He was told a different story than the man had
recounted. My father then checked with another individual who confirmed the lie
that the deacon told. Needless to say this caused the deacon to come down on
Dad for any little thing. Nothing like guilt to make you a nice person. At
annual conference my father was "hauled up on the carpet" on the complaint of
the deacon that he was a poor disciplinarian of his children and that he
bungled his Sunday morning service announcements. He was also told that he
should look forward to a move the next conference. Very discouraged, and I can
recall him coming home from conference and weeping, he was so let down by the
church, He continued to preach the way that he felt the situation deserved.
This brought further criticism, so that by the next conference, we knew we were
moving.


Big deal, we moved 10 miles away to Sunnidale, that is almost directly south of
Wasaga Beach, a country appointment. We lived next door to the public school
and ,for a time, boarded the teacher. Mrs Kelly was a rather large rambling
lady with dyed red hair that showed gray roots and who was diabetic. She would
fix her own lunches and put containers of fruit etc, open, in her lunch pail.
If she carried it carefully, she could get it across the school yard and park
it beside her desk. Of course, once it was learned that there were no tops on
her preserves etc, it was very hard to avoid kicking the lunch box. She had a
strange aversion to or lack of comprehension of mechanical things. When the
church installed running water, and a bathroom in the parsonage, a tap was
installed in the well head in the middle of the school yard. The parsonage and
the school shared a well. She would go to the pump in the middle of the school
yard and hang the pail on the pump spout and then turn on the tap. The water
would gush out of the tap onto her shoes and she would look most puzzled. My
father could see this all going on from one of our windows and thought it great
fun.

We had three churches at Sunnidale. One was the Ebenezer church, just a mile
down the road from the parsonage. It had Sunday School and worship service in
the morning. After a quick lunch, we would jump into the Consul and dash off to
New Lowell for 1:30 service in the New Lowell Church. It was a great vault of a
place and was heated with a cantankerous oil furnace that smelled. It also had
the best library of HG Henty books. After service there, we would go to
Glencairn, for Sunday School and service in the afternoon at 3:00. We would
have supper at the Carnahans and then service again at New Lowell at night.

When we traveled to the other churches, sometimes it would be in the dead of
winter. One time we were all in the car and headed down a country road toward
New Lowell. We came over the top of a hill and into a valley that had drifted
snow across the road. I can recall Dad shifting down into a lower gear and
ramming through the drift. For a moment we couldn't see anything, and then
burst through the snow and onto the clear road. We all cheered and continued on
to church.

I don't know how my father ever kept up the pace of that many churches. His
practice was to visit not only the members of the church but to try to talk to
anyone in the neighbourhood of the church to encourage them to attend. The
garden kept us fed, wood piles kept us warm and we had a very secure childhood.
At Sunnidale, another brother, Phil, was born. Diapers filled the lines.

After being at Sunnidale for several years, we moved to Altona which is a small
hamlet east of Stouffville. The church there consisted of two congregations
that used the same church and decided that they would amalgamate under the
Missionary Church. My Dad was their first pastor as a united congregation. His
gardening skills continued to feed us and to make his reputation as a
horticulturist grow. He showed flowers at the Canadian Exhibition and won many
local prizes for his glads and other flowers. He also gained the reputation of
a prize winning fisherman.

One day he caught a rather large fish and on reaching the dock, was encouraged
to enter the fish in a contest. He did so and was thrilled to learn that he had
won. The only thing amiss in all this was that the prize was proferred by Dow
Breweries. I sort of think he was minded to accept the prize but Mae pointed
out that he would have a split testimony if he accepted the prize from the
brewery when he was actively campaigning against the sale of alcohol. He still
has a copy of the letter he wrote to Dow Breweries and a copy of their reply.

One day a desperate phone call caused him to reach for his gun. He did keep a
rifle for shooting robins in the garden.(That's a family joke about the great
hunter of rabid foxes who tried to scare robins by shooting over their heads,
and ended up killing one). A lady from our congregation called him and said
that a fox was near their house. There had been a rabies scare and so he and
others set out to find this fox. He ended up shooting the fox. Picture in
paper.

My Dad loves to fish. One time the need for a good bass boat overcame his sense
of fatherly duty and he bought a small aluminum boat. One day mother was out in
the garage and looked up on the rafters of the garage. She said to Dow " What's
that up there?"

" It's a boat. "

" How did it get there?"

"Oh, it's been up there a long time." Definitely not answering the question.
I've since, used that excuse many times in my life.

After about 8 years at Altona, we were posted to Palmerston north of Kitchener.
This is where Phil received most of his education and eventually settled. Tim
also was educated in Palmerston and in Wasaga Beach, the next appointment. By
that time, John and Ron had left home.

Dow and Mae retired and lived near Nottawa Ontario, where Dow continues to
plant gardens, harvest corn, tomatoes and onions. He grew glads and went
fishing both winter (through the ice) and summer (with fly rod).

One day Mae was listening to the local Collingwood Radio station and heard a news report about this "old man" who fell thru the ice in the Collingwood harbour and had to be rescued. She later heard Dad come in thru a back door so he wouldn't have to walk across in front of her. A little later she went to the laundry room and found his clothes all soaking wet. She asked if he'd fallen in and got the run around for a while until he laughed and "fessed" up to being the "old man".

Dad loved to go fishing. At his funeral Wayne Good, one of his long time friends and pastor buddies told this story. Wayne and a few others had been fishing and weren't catching anything. Dad drove in, put his line in the water and set the pole in the holder on his front bumper. About 10 minutes elapsed and then the line dipped and Dad sprang from the car, and pulled in a nice trout. He put the line back in and sat back in the car. About 20 minutes later, the same thing happened. He rebaited his line, sat back in the car and about 15 minutes went by before he caught the third trout. He walked over to the boys and said "Well, I've got mine. Guess I'd better go home" and off he drove. Wayne and the boys still hadn't caught anything.

Mae passed away 21 July 1991 and is buried in the Stayner Cemetery beside her
mother and father, Mae and Abner Tipping.

Dad passed away on the 2nd of April 2004. He had a heart attack in the fall before and then a second one in late March 2004. He was put in intensive care at Palmerston Hospital, and later moved to palliative care passing away several days later. He was surrounded by his family who sat with him during those final hours. His body seemed to fight his spirit from going home to be with his wife. Helen Sargeant, Phil's wife was with him at the last. He just stopped breathing. He was buried in Stayner Cemetery beside his wife.

7April 2004

More About William Dow Sargeant:
Date born 2: 22 Apr 1908331, 332
Burial: 06 Apr 2004, Stayer Union Cemetery, Stayner, Ontaio.332
Known As Name: Dookie.332

More About William Dow Sargeant and Matilda Mae Tipping:
Marriage 1: Proposed in the woods ather father's Baden farm. Trussler Rd near Kitchener.
Marriage 2: 21 Dec 1940, at Bethany UM Church by Rev CF Krauth and Rev CN Good.
Single: 22 Dec 1940, Kitchener, Ontario.332

Children of William Dow Sargeant and Matilda Mae Tipping are:
  1. +John Paul Sargeant.
  2. +Ronald Douglas Sargeant.
  3. +Philip Dow Sargeant.
  4. +Timothy Colin Sargeant.
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