User:WilyD/William Case/David Spore

David Spore (c. 1798 - ?) was a circuit rider in the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Spore was born in the eastern townships of Lower Canada. He moved to Long Point, Upper Canada, as a young man, where he worked as a schoolteacher.

In Long Point, he began also working as a local preacher. In 1819, he began assisting Joseph Hickcox on the Thames circuit. He was accepted on trial as a circuit rider by the Genesee Conference in 1820. He was assigned to the Bay Quinte circuit, where he rode alongside Robert Jeffers. Membership in the Episcopal church remained unchanged that year. In 1821, he was assigned the Ottawa circuit. As a preacher, he was remarkably successful on the circuit that year, returning 136 members where the circuit covered an area that had had zero members in the Methodist church at the start of year. In his private life, he did not live up to the ideals of the ministry. In 1820, he was married to a woman in the United States, as the result of a pregnancy. He convinced her to remain quiet about the event, and entered the Ministry claiming to be unmarried. While on the Ottawa circuit, he courted several young women. He convinced Lucy Long, of L'Orignal to marry him. They set about to depart the Canadas to begin their life together. The District's presiding elder, Henry Ryan, found out about Spore's first marriage. He rode to the Long house to inform Lucy Spore was already married, but found the couple had already departed. Ryan set after them, finding them outside of Cote St. Charles. Ryan expelled Spore from the ministry, and returned Long to her parents' house. Spore followed them to L'Orignal, where he convince Long to live with him, and took up farming.

References

• Carroll, John (1869). Case and his cotemporaries, or, The Canadian itinerants' memorial constituting a biographical history of Methodism in Canada, from its introduction into the Province, till the death of the Rev. Wm. Case in 1855. Vol. II. Toronto: Wesleyan Conference Office.