Item 19 - Phoebe Watson

Jenny O'Hara Pincock, Canadian spiritualist, author and musician, was born in Madoc, Hastings County, Ontario in 1890, where her great-grandfather had been a settler. She studied music at the Ontario Ladies' College in Whitby, Ont. (ca. 1908) and at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto (ca. 1912). On June 15, 1915 she married osteopath Robert Newton Pincock and moved with him to St. Catharines. Ont. where he maintained a practice. Newton Pincock died in 1928.

Jenny Pincock's sister Minnie O'Hara Maines, married Fred Maines in 1922. Fred Maines was educated at Victoria University, Toronto and was ordained to the ministry while serving with the YMCA overseas during the WWI. After the war he served as Boys' Work secretary for the Hamilton YMCA and as general secretary of the YMCA in Hamilton and Galt. He served during for five years with the YMCA War Services during WWII. He was minister of the Church of Divine Revelation in St. Catharine's, Ont. from 1930 to 1935. In 1935 he and Minnie moved to Kitchener, Ont. to pursue business interests. He died April 13, 1959.

In 1927, together with her sister Minnie and brother-in-law Rev. Fred J.T. Maines, Jenny Pincock began to organize seances with Mr. William Cartheuser, an American medium, in St. Catharines, Ontario. Notes were kept of these seances and much of that material appeared in published form in Pincock's Trails of Truth (Los Angeles: Austin Publishing Co., 1930). In 1930 they founded the Church of Divine Revelation in St. Catharines, Ont., with Fred Maines as ordained minister. In 1932 the Radiant Healing Centre was established. In 1935 Jenny Pincock ceased connection with William Cartheuser and with the Church of Divine Revelation. In 1937 she moved to Kitchener, Ont and in 1942 she purchased and moved to property formerly owned by her grandfather near Madoc. She died in 1948 or 1949.

A book of verse by Jenny Pincock entitled Hidden Springs was published posthumously (Privately printed, 1950) with an introduction by E.J. Pratt.

The Pincock/O'Hara/Maines circle of friends was wide, and included E.J. Pratt and his wife, Viola Whitney Pratt; B.F. Austin, the noted Canadian spiritualist; the widow of Sir Charles G.D. Roberts; Phoebe Watson; William Arthur Deacon; W.W.E. Ross; Mildred Ghent, wife of Toronto Telegram writer, Percy Ghent, and many others interested in spiritualism in Canada and elsewhere.