O.C.S. Wallace
September 7, 2016
O.C.S. Wallace (1856-1947)
Canadian O. C. S. Wallace served as pastor of First Baptist, Baltimore, from 1908 to 1913 before returning to Canada. In 1921, at age sixty-five, he accepted a call to Eutaw Place, where he became one of the city’s most popular pastors. In the interim between these Maryland pastorates, his stepson, a Fellow at Johns Hopkins, died fighting in France. One week after hearing the news, the grieving pastor’s wife died in a gas stove accident.
Dr. Wallace was a truly remarkable man, one who stood out from others. He was charismatic in the original sense of the word. He was tall, rather portly and with sparkling eyes. He was learned, scholarly, eclectic, and an insatiable reader and writer. His degrees were from Acadia University and McMaster University in Toronto where he was chancellor for ten years, the only period where he was not in charge of a church. When he returned to Baltimore to Eutaw Place Church he was already sixty-five, but such was his vitality and power that he not only served as pastor for fourteen years but also was chairman of the Committee of Nine (a committee that was appointed to devise plans for the support of the work throughout the Convention), moderator of the Maryland Association for three terms, and a constant contributor to the Baptist state paper. His column in The Maryland Baptist was called Clipping and Comments. His writing often gave Baptist news from around the world. He made an effort to widen the interests in the many homes where the paper circulated.
Dr. O.C.S. Wallace died in September, 1947 when he was nearly ninety-two years old. He had been totally blind for the last few years of his life, but he kept up his writing and his column in The Maryland Baptist by using the touch system on the typewriter. His last public address was given at the Southern Baptist Convention that met in Baltimore in 1940.
Material used in this biography were taken from:
You Are A Great People, by W. Loyd Allen
Baltimore Baptists 1773-1973, by Rosalind Robinson Levering
Historical files of the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware
