STUART, JOHN, Church of
England clergyman; b. 24 Feb. 1740/41 in Paxton Township (near Harrisburg),
Pa, son of Andrew Stuart and Mary Dinwiddie; m. 12 Oct. 1775 Jane Okill of
Philadelphia, Pa, and they had eight children; d. 15 Aug. 1811 in Kingston,
Upper Canada. John
Stuart received his ba from the College of Philadelphia (University of
Pennsylvania) in 1763 and his ma in 1770. Between these years he was a
schoolmaster in Lancaster County, Pa. Although reared as a strict
Presbyterian he became an Anglican, influenced in all probability by the
provost of the college, William Smith, a native of Aberdeen who had taken
orders in the Episcopal Church of Scotland. His intellectual and social
qualifications and even his height, well over six feet, earned him the
admiration of his contemporaries. In 1771, following his appointment as a
minister of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel at Fort Hunter,
N.Y., Stuart was dubbed “the little Gentleman” by Charles Inglis, later the
first Anglican bishop in British North America.
After the departure of John Ogilvie in 1760, the
Fort Hunter mission had been less closely tended than in the previous
decade. Two SPG missionaries, Thomas Browne and Harry Munro, had paid
regular visits to the mission, but both whites and Mohawks required greater
care. Accordingly Sir William Johnson, superintendent of northern Indians
and a member of the SPG since 1766, was much encouraged when he received
strong recommendations in favour of Stuart, who was willing to undertake the
task. In a letter dated April 1770 to Samuel Auchmuty, the rector of Trinity
Church in New York City, Johnson commented, “I sincerely wish he may turn
out to be a Man of Zeal and Attention proportionable to his Size, as you
observe.” This indeed
proved to be the case. Stuart left New York for England on 27 May 1770, and
was ordained deacon on 19 August and priest on 24 August, both by the bishop
of London. He then returned to New York without delay and by December had
entered on his work at Fort Hunter. He began immediately to hold services
for both Indians and whites in the chapel at the fort and to minister to
Indians at Canajoharie (near Little Falls). At the latter place he first met
Joseph Brant [Thayendanegea], who after becoming a widower in 1771 lived for
a short time with Stuart in the Mohawk parsonage near Fort Hunter. The two
men later collaborated in the translation of St Mark’s Gospel into Mohawk, a
work which by 1774 was nearly ready for the press but was not finally
printed until 1787. Stuart also supervised a school for Indian children and
conducted monthly services at nearby Johnstown. One of his first sad duties
there was to officiate at the burial of his friend and protector Sir William
Johnson in July 1774.
Stuart’s close connection with the Johnson family, avowedly loyal to Great
Britain, and his own undisguised political opinions soon made him an object
of suspicion to commissioners of the Indian Department who had been
appointed by the second Continental Congress to maintain the neutrality of
the various tribes. In August 1775, at a commissioner’s meeting held in
Albany, TeiorhéñhsereÃ, a Mohawk chief, asked that Stuart not be molested.
The request was apparently received favourably since the missionary remained
at Fort Hunter in 1776. In 1777 and early in 1778, however, he came under
renewed suspicion, his property was plundered, and his church was looted.
Soon afterwards, in June 1778, local rebels confined him to Schenectady on
parole. Feeling threatened, he went to Albany for brief periods in 1779 and
again in the spring of 1780, but on both occasions he was soon ordered to
return to Schenectady. In the latter year he was permitted to make a short
visit to Philadelphia. Finally, however, in early 1781, his situation became
so unpleasant that he applied for permission to leave for the province of
Quebec. He eventually obtained an exchange with an army officer held
prisoner by the British, quitted Schenectady on 19 Sept. 1781, and arrived
at St Johns (Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu), Que., on 19 October after a
fatiguing journey. He was accompanied by his wife and three small children
and was permitted to bring personal property, including black slaves.
The choice of loyalism did not come easily to
John and Jane Stuart. Both left relatives and friends as well as property
behind them when they made their difficult journey. They did not, however,
indulge in the bitterness felt by some loyalists. In the year of his
departure Stuart wrote to William White, later bishop of Pennsylvania, that
he left behind “no personal, altho’ many political enemies.” Correspondence
between Stuart and White continued for nearly 30 years. In 1783 Stuart
wrote, “I have taken the Liberty of directing a letter to your care for one
of my Rebel Brethren, for whom, notwithstanding, I feel the remains of
tenderness.” When his young son John had returned to Cataraqui (Kingston,
Ont.) after receiving kindness at White’s home in Philadelphia in 1785,
Stuart acknowledged the courtesy in characteristic bantering fashion: “I
just received him home. Time enough to save his political Principles. Six
months more would have reconciled him to Republicanism.”
Stuart spent four active years, agreeably
peaceful after his unpleasant time in New York, in Montreal. He was given a
chaplaincy in the 2nd battalion of the King’s Royal Regiment of New York by
Sir John Johnson. He operated a school that was open to all denominations,
for a short time assisted the clergyman at Montreal, David Chabrand Delisle,
as evening lecturer in the Recollet chapel then used by the Anglicans,
preached occasionally at St Johns, and gave oversight to the Fort Hunter
Mohawks who were making a temporary home at Lachine [see John Deserontyon].
In the summer of 1784 he travelled as far as Niagara (Niagara-on-the-Lake,
Ont. ), where he was welcomed by members of his former Indian flock who had
congregated near by and had built a church on what is now the American side
of the river. Both going and coming he ministered to loyalist settlers and,
as prospects of obtaining a parish in Quebec were poor, he decided to move
to Cataraqui, where he hoped to become rector and to obtain the chaplaincy
of the garrison. In August 1785 Stuart and his family arrived at Cataraqui,
his permanent home until his death in 1811.
In that quarter century Stuart saw the community
grow from the day on which the land adjacent to the fort was laid out in
lots. His contribution to the religious development of the Kingston area
cannot be overestimated, for, until age began to take its toll in the last
decade of his life, he showed himself to be a missionary of almost boundless
energy. Shortly after his arrival he started the first school west of the
Ottawa River, initially in his home, then in a government building. Still
later, in 1795, a grammar school was opened in which his son George Okill
was the first teacher. At the beginning, church services were held in the
barracks and then in a new church, known as St George’s, built in 1792 and
twice enlarged. Joseph Brant’s sister, Mary [KoñwatsiÃtsiaiéñni], was a
member of this church. Stuart kept a watchful eye on the Indians at the Bay
of Quinte, and in 1788 he visited the larger Six Nations settlement on the
Grand River, taking with him most of the Queen Anne silver formerly used in
the Fort Hunter chapel (three pieces stayed with the Bay of Quinte Mohawks).
In 1792 a missionary trip in the countryside around Kingston covered roughly
200 miles, and on one occasion he made a 140-mile tour of the “lower
settlements” in the Cornwall area. In 1792, after being appointed chaplain
of the Legislative Council by Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe, Stuart
visited Niagara, and then York (Toronto), as required. He had attended the
visitation of his former acquaintance Charles Inglis, now bishop of Nova
Scotia, at Quebec in 1789, and was appointed by Inglis commissary for the
“western settlements,” an office that was again given to him by the first
bishop of Quebec, Jacob Mountain. The post of commissary, the title of which
was later changed to “official,” entailed considerable visiting of pioneer
settlements and the oversight of a few clergy as new missions were opened.
In 1799, at his own request and with the support of Bishop White, he was
given an honorary dd by his old college in Philadelphia.
In addition to performing his official duties,
Stuart devoted himself to the interests of a large family of eight children
and allotted such a proportion of his resources to their welfare that even
at his death he had accumulated little wealth beyond a few thousand acres of
land. When, for example, Sir John Johnson gave him 500 acres on Amherst
Island in 1803, he resolved to use it as a portion for one of his daughters.
He himself gave basic instruction to several of his children, he sent his
boys to school and to college in Schenectady and then to Bishop Inglis’s new
institution of learning in Windsor, N.S., and he supported his eldest son,
George, for a year at Harvard; two girls attended private school in
Montreal. At his death George, incumbent of York for a decade, succeeded him
as rector of St George’s; the third son, James, had been solicitor general
of Lower Canada; the fifth, Andrew, was well on the way to a brilliant
career in law and politics in Quebec. Two other sons were local sheriffs;
his daughter Mary had married Charles Jones of Elizabethtown (Brockville), a
prominent businessman who later was to sit both in the House of Assembly and
in the Legislative Council.
Throughout his long years at Kingston Stuart
received no stipend from his parishioners, but his income from his position
as bishop’s official and from government sources, as well as a small sum
from the SPG as “Missionary to the Mohawks,” enabled him to live in comfort.
His Kingston farm provided basic security and gave him deep satisfaction.
Even before settling at Kingston he wrote, “I am fond of farming and promise
myself much Pleasure in the Improvements I intend to make in that new
world.” Stuart’s
judgement of men was generally sound and invariably objective and
independent. Of Bishop Mountain he wrote, after due reflection, “He is a man
of fine Talents and a good Heart.” Of John Strachan he commented in 1802,
“He is a very good young man but I doubt he will not be a good public
speaker.” He was dubious about the propriety of the ordination of Richard
Pollard, SPG missionary at Sandwich, and his patience was perpetually
exercised by the oddities and religious bigotry of John Langhorn, his
clerical neighbour at Ernestown (Bath). Langhom’s type of old-fashioned high
churchmanship led him to confront “schismatics,” whether Methodist or
Presbyterian, in uncompromising fashion. He apparently read his sermons and,
as Stuart wrote to Bishop Inglis in 1788, in his “attention to Church
Rituals . . . he is scrupulous to the smallest Punctilio.” Stuart, on the
other hand, was no less faithful to his principles than Langhorn, yet as a
colonial American he was more at home in pioneer society, adapted to it more
easily, and met with more success in his ministry than the crusty Welshman.
He told the SPG in 1792 that he found it expedient in his late journeys to
deliver his discourses without reading. On occasion he even made an
extempore prayer before the sermon.
John Beverley Robinson, who lived with Stuart
while attending Strachan’s Kingston school, remembered him many years later
as “about six feet two inches in height – not corpulent, and not thin, – but
with fine masculine features, expanded chest, erect figure; straight,
well-formed limbs, and a free, manly carriage, improved by a fondness in his
youth for athletic exercises, particularly fencing.” Jacob Henry Brooke
Mountain, son of Jacob and brother of George Jehoshaphat, third bishop of
the diocese of Quebec, wrote that Stuart was “a very fine elderly man, of
lofty stature, and powerful frame; very kind to me, and to every body,
though rather caustic and dry in manner. . . . He was diligent and
charitable, and sought health and recreation in cultivating his farm and
garden . . . and in fine summer evenings he loved to sit on the shore and
play upon his flute. . . .” According to Strachan, Stuart was “the Father of
the Episcopal Church in this Province.” This assessment of his legacy to
Ontario Anglicanism is justified, but his total contribution was wider
still. In his own person, as well as through his descendants and those whose
lives he touched, he exerted an influence on Canadian life in the 19th
century that few other loyalists could match.
His son, George Okill, clergyman, born in Fort
Hunter, New York, in 1776; died in Kingston, Ontario, 5 November, 1862, was
graduated at Harvard in 1801, after first studying in Windsor college, Nova
Scotia, was ordained priest in 1804, and was rector of a church in York (now
Toronto) till 1811, when he removed to Kingston to succeed his father. In
1820 he was made archdeacon of Kingston. He received the degree of LL D from
Windsor college in 1832, and in 1848 that of D. D. from Harvard. In 1862 he
became dean of the newly created diocese of Ontario.--
Another son, Sir James, bart., jurist, born in
Fort Hunter, New York, 2 March, 1780" died in Quebec, Canada, 14 July, 1853,
studied at Windsor college, Nova Scotia, read law with Jonathan Sewell, and
was admitted to the bar in 1801. He was assistant secretary to the
lieutenant-governor, Sir Robert S. Milnes, for several years, at the same
time practising law in Quebec, and in 1825 was appointed solicitor-general
for Lower Canada. In 1808 he was elected to represent Montreal in the
legislature. He was removed from office in 1809 in consequence of a
difference with the executive. He remained in the assembly till 1817, and
was in that body the foremost representative of the English party and an
eloquent opponent, of Chief-Justice Sewell. In 1822 he was sent to England
as a delegate of the people of Montreal to advocate the reunion of the
provinces, and while there received the appointment of attorney-general for
Lower Canada. He became an executive councillor in 1827, and the same year
was elected to represent Sorel in the provincial parliament. His political
course led to his suspension from office in March, 1831. This act of the
governor-general was approved by the British minister for the colonies in
November, 1832. The succeeding colonial minister, to repair the injustice
that had been done to Mr. Stuart, offered him the post of chief justice of
Newfoundland ; but he declined, and resumed the practice of law in Quebec.
In 1838 the Earl of Durham, at the conclusion of his inquiry into the state
of the Canadian provinces, appointed Stuart chief justice of Lower Canada in
the place of Jonathan Sewell, who was retired. During Sir John Colborne's
administration he acted as chairman of the special council of Lower Canada,
and framed the law for the registration of titles and mortgages, the
corporation acts for Quebec and Montreal, and a general municipal system for
the province. He prepared the act of union that was passed by the British
parliament in 1840, and in that year was created a baronet.
Another son, Andrew, lawyer,
born in Kingston, Canada, in 1786; died in Quebec, Canada, 21 February,
1840, was educated in the school of Reverend John Strachan, studied law, and
was admitted to the bar in 1807. He established his reputation as an
eloquent advocate in 1810, when defending Justice Pierre Bedard, and from
that time till his death was employed in nearly every difficult or important
suit. He entered the provincial parliament in 1815 as representative of the
lower town of Quebec, and afterward represented the upper town until the
constitution was suspended in 1838, except in 1834, when his defeat and that
of others who sought to curb popular passions led to the formation of the
Constitutional association, of which he was chosen chairman, and by which he
was sent in 1838 to England for the purpose of promoting the union of Upper
and Lower Canada. From 1838 till his death he held the office of
solicitor-general. He contributed five papers on historical and antiquarian
topics to the "Transactions" of the Quebec literary and historical society
and published "Notes upon the Southwestern Boundary-Line of the British
Provinces of Lower Canada and New Brunswick and the United States of
America" (Quebec, 1830) ; "Review of the Proceedings of the Legislature of
Lower Canada, 1831" (Montreal, 1832); and, with William Badgley, an "Account
of the Endowments for Education in Lower Canada" (London, 1838). |