McPherson, Aimee Semple (ĕmā`, məkfûr`sən), 1890–1944, U.S. evangelist, founder of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, b. near Ingersoll, Ont. Born Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy, she was converted to Pentecostalism as a young girl and married a preacher, Robert Semple. The couple went as missionaries to China, but when he died a year later, she returned to the United States. Not long afterward she married Harold McPherson, but she left him to take up a life of itinerant preaching, holding revival meetings along the Atlantic coast. With her mother, Minnie Kennedy, as business manager, she went to Los Angeles in 1918. There she became phenomenally successful and was noted for her healing sessions. In 1923, she opened Angelus Temple in Los Angeles and began to preach the religion of the foursquare gospel (see Foursquare Gospel, International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, International Church of the, fundamentalist Christian Church and evangelistic missionary body organized in California by Aimee Semple McPherson and Minnie Kennedy in 1927.
..... Click the link for more information. ). Her disappearance in May, 1926, while swimming in the Pacific, and then reappearance in June with a bizarre tale of kidnapping caused a huge uproar that resulted in a trial for fraud. Although she was acquitted, her business activities as head of Angelus Temple resulted in numerous other legal actions. She died as a result of an allegedly accidental overdose of sleeping pills.

McPherson, Aimee Semple

orig. Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy

(born Oct. 9, 1890, near Ingersoll, Ont., Can.—died Sept. 27, 1944, Oakland, Calif., U.S.) Canadian-born U.S. Pentecostal evangelist. Born on a farm, she began preaching at age 17, and in 1908 she went as a missionary to China with her husband, Robert Semple. After his death she came to the U.S., where her second marriage, to Harold McPherson, ended in 1918 when she became an itinerant evangelist and healer. She settled in Los Angeles and founded the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. For nearly 20 years she preached to large audiences at her Angelus Temple; she also built a radio station, wrote books and pamphlets, and established about 200 missions. In 1926 she disappeared mysteriously for five weeks; on her reappearance her tale of kidnapping was greeted with skepticism. A third marriage ended in divorce, and she faced numerous trials for financial irregularities. She died from an accidental overdose of sleeping pills.

McPherson, Aimee (Elizabeth Kennedy) Semple (1890–1944) evangelist; born near Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada. Daughter of a Salvation Army soldier, she married a Pentacostal missionary and was widowed in China in 1910. She returned to North America with her daughter and set out on a career as an evangelist, offering a fundamentalist message of hope and salvation that brought in enormous money contributions over the course of some 25 years. She married and divorced, married and divorced again. Often accompanied by her mother, she traveled around the U.S.A. to conduct her revival meetings. Flamboyant and innovative, she expanded her Los Angeles-based (after 1918) evangelical empire by adding a radio station, a Bible school, and a magazine. She was often accused of improprieties, but nothing was ever proved. She died in Oakland, Calif., of an overdose of sleeping powders.