Alice Belle Garrigus

Who was Alice Belle Garrigus?

Alice Belle Garrigus was a Pentecostal evangelist and a founder of the Pentecostal church in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Alice Garrigus spent the first half of her life in various locations in New England; she studied at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary and worked as a school teacher. She was raised an Episcopalian, later joined the Congregational Church, which she served for a time as an itinerant preacher, and in 1907 converted to Pentecostalism. She resumed preaching, and over the next couple of years received, she claimed, messages from "mysterious strangers" and directly from God that she should found a mission in St. John's.

Together with a missionary couple, she travelled to Newfoundland, arriving in St. John's in December 1910. The three established the "Bethesda Mission" and began their work in 1911. In 1912, her co-preachers left Newfoundland for health reasons, leaving Garrigus in charge.

The Pentecostal movement grew quite slowly during its first decade. Garrigus, not known for her organizational strengths, did not expand the movement outside the St. John's area.