California Genealogy and History Archives
Biographies
of
San Bernardino County and Riverside County
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REV.
JOHN B. TOOMAY, pastor of Bethel Congregational Church at
Ontario, has rounded out a career of a quarter of a century of faithful
work in the ministry, and is known as one of .the able thinker^ and
public leaders of San Bernardino County. Rev. Mr. Toomay was born in
Ray County, Missouri, in 1868, son of Edward and Martha Toomay. His
father was a native of Cork, Ireland, came to America in early lile and
served as a soldier in the Civil war. The mother belonged :to a family
of Missouri pioneers who went to that state from Tennessee. Rev. John B. Toomay was an
A. B. graduate from Otterbein University in Ohio, and subsequently
received his Bachelor of Divinity degree from Yale College. Of the
twenty-five years he has spent in the ministry fifteen were years of
labor in church building and preaching in Missouri, while for ten years
his duties have lain in California. He has been pastor of the
Congregational Church at Ontario for the past four years. Two years ago
he built an attractive home in Ontario, and his parents, now over eighty
years of age, live with him. Mr. Toomay was camp pastor
at Camp Kearney for a short time during the late war, and was prominent
in all war activities during the term of the war. Among other duties he
is probation officer for the west end of San Bernardino County. He is a
member of the El Camino Real Club, made up of local educators and
thinkers. He is a Mason and a member of the progressive wing of the
republican party. Rev. Mr. Toomay is widely traveled, and a number of
years ago he went abroad for an extensive tour of the Mediterranean
countries, in the course of which he visited the cities of Rome and
Athens and also Constantinople, Egypt, and the Holy Land. At Westerville, Ohio, in 1891, he married Miss Minnie O. Bender, daughter of Daniel Bender, of Ohio. Mrs. Toomay died at Ontario in 1919. She is survived by a daughter, Helen Toomay, now a student in Pomona College. Recently Rev. Mr. Toomay married Inez Crawford, a returned missionary from Japan. She is a daughter of John Crawford, a well known pioneer of Southern California. Mrs. Toomay has lived at Ontario since she was two years of age except for the two years she spent in her missionary labors in Japan. |
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Source: Transcribed by Peggy Hooper 2011 |