An interesting incident occurred in the Athens Universalist church in the spring of 1892.  The Rev. Robert M. Neale, who had been engaged by the church the previous November, was refused fellowship by the Pennsylvania Universalist Convention (PUC).  The congregation would lose its membership in the PUC if they kept Neale as their pastor, so the trustees dismissed him.  The church was closed and the doors barricaded.  However, a portion of the congregation wanted to keep Neale.  They elected a new board of trustees and re-hired him.  According to the Towanda Journal Reporter, “entrance was effected into the church through the windows, the barricade removed, and services continued.”

In May, 1892, a Bradford county judge granted an injunction barring Neale from preaching in the church.  Neale left Athens shortly afterwards.

I had heard this story a number of years ago but had not, until recently, known anything about the rest of Neale’s life.  After several weeks of searching through on-line newspapers, I have pieced together most of his story.

Robert Moffat Neale was born in England in 1848.  He came to the United States about 1870.  In that year he married his first wife, Ada Boyd, in Boston, MA.

His began his first pastorate at the Congregational church in Fairfield, VT, in January, 1874.  He had shown them a document stating that he had been ordained in England and also a letter of recommendation from the pastor under whom he said he had served for several years.

Joseph Northrop, a member of the Fairfield congregation, was suspicious.  He sent a letter to the pastor in England.  The pastor wrote back, stating that Neale’s documents were forgeries, and that Neale had not been ordained and had not served in any pastoral capacity under him. Neale was dismissed from the Fairfield pastorate.

Neale remained in the ministry, but his reputation as an “impostor” followed him for the next twenty years, even though he changed his denominational affiliation several times.  During those twenty years, he served Congregational, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Baptist, Universalist, and Methodist congregations.  He was dismissed – or left voluntarily before he could be dismissed – within a few months of his arrival by at least fifteen congregations in ten states and Ontario, Canada.

Interestingly, Neale’s preaching and ministry were generally viewed favorably, but the allegations of forged credentials trumped his popularity every time.  Neale took four years off from the ministry from 1878 to 1882, possibly to allow the dust to settle.  During that time he worked as a proofreader in publishing houses in Massachusetts and New Jersey.  However, when he returned to the ministry in 1882, those allegations also returned to haunt him.

Neale’s first wife died in Chicago in 1886.  Shortly after her death, Neale obtained a Baptist pastorate in St. Charles, IL.  (He allegedly had a legitimate Baptist ordination in Illinois in 1876.)  Within six months he was again under investigation, and he left town, with a companion – Cora Hunt, a married woman from his congregation.  They went to Ohio, where Neale preached in several Presbyterian churches, until, after about six months, Cora’s husband tracked him down and had him arrested for adultery.  With Cora’s help, Neale managed to escape prosecution, and they disappeared for a year or so.  By 1889, Cora’s husband had divorced her, and Robert and Cora were married in London, Ontario.

In the summer of 1890, Neale was called to the pastorate of the Congregational church in London. He served there for a few months before his unsavory history – which now included adultery – caught up with him.  He returned to the United States.  He attended a national Universalist meeting in Rochester, NY, in the fall of 1890, and there he met members of the Athens church, who invited him to fill their pulpit.

After Neale was installed at Athens, one of the church trustees contacted the London, Ontario, newspaper, requesting information about Neale.  The response he received no doubt led to the PUC’s denying Neale fellowship.

After leaving Athens, Neale preached in Missouri for several months, and then he was out of the public eye for four years.  When he reappeared in 1897, he was serving a Presbyterian church in Missouri.  Over the next ten years he served Congregational and Presbyterian churches in Missouri, Kansas, Oregon, Colorado, Texas, and Kentucky.  All of his pastorates lasted at least one full year, sometimes two, and there was apparently no more dredging up of past scandals and dismissals.

Neale’s final pastorate was at the Presbyterian church in Georgetown, KY.  He died in Georgetown on Oct. 19, 1907, after suffering a stroke.