Chignecto Covenanters: A Regional History of Reformed Presbyterianism in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, 1827-1905 9780773566200

Table of contents :
Contents
Illustrations, maps and tables
Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 The Reverend Alexander Clarke: From Ulster to Chignecto
2 Irish Reformed Presbyterian Heritage and the Chignecto Covenanter Tradition
3 Chignecto Covenanter Converts
4 Alexander Clarke's Labours and the Watershed of 1847
5 The American General Synod: Consolidation and Fragmentation
6 Revival and Resolution under the Reverend Joseph Howe Brownell
7 Covenanter Decline and Fall
Appendix: Chignecto Covenanter Congregations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
U
W
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Citation preview

The Chignecto Covenanters A Regional History of Reformed Presbyterianism in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, 1827-1905

Tracing the Chignecto movement from its roots in Irish Reformed Presbyterianism to its virtual assimilation into the Presbyterian Church in Canada in 1905, Eldon Hay chronicles the history of a unique religious community in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Drawing on unpublished stories, minutes, and reminiscences of Chignecto clergymen, Hay delineates Covenanter life, exploring its beliefs and traditions, leadership, relations with other Presbyterian bodies, and the causes of the movement's collapse. He focuses on two key figures in the movement, Reverend Alexander Clarke, an Irish missionary who established Reformed Presbyterian congregations in the area, and Reverend Joseph Howe Brownell, who consolidated the congregations and led them into the Presbyterian Church in Canada in 1905. The Chignecto Covenanters fills an important gap in the history of Canadian Presbyterianism and of the Maritime region. ELDON HAY is professor of religious studies, Mount Allison University.

MCGILL-QUEEN S STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF RELIGION

G.A. Rawlyk, Editor Volumes in this series have been supported by the Jackman Foundation of Toronto. \ Small Differences Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, 1815-1922 An International Perspective Donald Harman Akenson 2 Two Worlds The Protestant Culture of NineteenthCentury Ontario William West/all 3 An Evangelical Mind Nathanael Burwash and the Methodist Tradition in Canada, 1839-1918 Marguerite Van Die 4 The Devotes Women and Church in SeventeenthCentury France Elizabeth Rapley 5 The Evangelical Century College and Creed in English Canada from the Great Revival to the Great Depression Michael Gauvreau

11 Creed and Culture The Place of English-Speaking Catholics in Canadian Society, 1750-1930 Terrence Murphy and Gerald Stortz, editors 12 Piety and Nationalism Lay Voluntary Associations and the Creation of an Irish-Catholic Community in Toronto, 1850-1895 Brian P. Clarke 13 Amazing Grace Studies in Evangelicalism in Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States George Rawlyk and Mark A. Noll, editors 14 Children of Peace W. John Mclntyre 15 A Solitary Pillar Montreal's Anglican Church and the Quiet Revolution Joan Marshall

6 The German Peasants' War and Anabaptist Community of Goods James M. Stayer

16 Padres in No Man's Land Canadian Chaplains and the Great War DuffCrerar

7 A World Mission Canadian Protestantism and the Quest for a New International Order, 1918-1939 Robert Wright

17 Christian Ethics and Political Economy in North America A Critical Analysis of U.S. and Canadian Approaches P. Travis Kroeker

8 Serving the Present Age Revivalism, Progressivism, and the Methodist Tradition in Canada Phyllis D. Airhart

18 Pilgrims in Lotus Land Conservative Protestantism in British Columbia, 1917-1981 Robert K. Burkinshaw

9 A Sensitive Independence Canadian Methodist Women Missionaries in Canada and the Orient, 1881-1925 Rosemary R. Gagan

19 "Through Sunshine and Shadow" The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Evangelicalism, and Reform in Ontario, 1874-1930 Sharon Cook

10 God's Peoples Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel, and Ulster Donald Harman Akenson

20 Church, College, and Clergy A History of Theological Education at Knox College, Toronto, 1844-1994 Brian ]. Fraser

21 The Lord's Dominion The History of Canadian Methodism Neil Semple 22 A Full-Orbed Christianity The Protestant Churches and Social Welfare in Canada, 1900-1940 Nancy Christie and Michael Gauvreau

23 Evangelism and Apostasy The Evolution and Impact of Evangelicals in Modern Mexico Kurt Bowen 24 The Chignecto Covenanters A Regional History of Reformed Presbyterianism in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, 1827-1905 Eldon Hay

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The Chignecto Covenanters A Regional History of Reformed Presbyterianism in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, 1827-1905 ELDON HAY

McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Buffalo

© McGill-Queen's University Press 1996 ISBN 0-7735-1436-8 Legal deposit fourth quarter 1996 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Funding has also been received from the Marjorie Young Bell Faculty Fund, Mount Allison University. McGill-Queen's University Press is grateful to the Canada Council for support of its publishing program.

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Hay, Eldon The Chignecto Convenanters: a regional history of reformed Presbyterianism in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, 1827-1905 (McGill-Queen's studies in the history of religion, ISSN 1181-7445; 24) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7735-1436-8 1. Presbyterian Church - New Brunswick - History. 2. Presbyterian Church - Nova Scotia - History. 3. New Brunswick-Church history. 4. Nova Scotia Church history. I. Title. II. Series. BX9002.M37H391996 285'.27i5 096-900406-0

This book was typeset by Typo Litho Composition Inc. in 10/12 Palatino

Respectfully dedicated to the congregations of the Point de Bute-Jolicure United Church of Canada pastoral charge

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Contents

Illustrations, maps and tables xi Abbreviations

xiii

Acknowledgments Introduction

xv

3

1 The Reverend Alexander Clarke: From Ulster to Chignecto 7 2 Irish Reformed Presbyterian Heritage and the Chignecto Covenanter Tradition 17 3 Chignecto Covenanter Converts 34 4 Alexander Clarke's Labours and the Watershed of 1847 46 5 The American General Synod: Consolidation and Fragmentation 63 6 Revival and Resolution under the Reverend Joseph Howe Brownell 89 7 Covenanter Decline and Fall 103 Appendix: Chignecto Covenanter Congregations 119 Notes 139 Bibliography 195 Index 209

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Illustrations, Maps and Tables

ILLUSTRATIONS

Rev. Alexander Clarke 8 Mrs Catherine Clarke 9 Rev. Joseph Howe Brownell 90 Mrs Jennie Brownell 91 MAPS \ Chignecto Covenanter congregations 43 2 Eastern Presbytery in relation to the General Synod 44 TABLES 1 Statistics of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America, under the care of the General Synod, 1852 61 2 Statistics of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America, under the care of the General Synod, 1852: Finances 62

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Abbreviations

BC Banner of the Covenant CCM Cumberland County Museum, Amherst, Nova Scotia CIHM Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions, Ottawa, Ontario MAA Mount Allison University Archives, Sackville, New Brunswick MCA Maritime Conference Archives, United Church of Canada, Halifax, Nova Scotia NBM New Brunswick Museum, Saint John, New Brunswick PANE Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick PANS Public Archives of Nova Scotia, Halifax, Nova Scotia PC A Presbyterian Church in America Historical Center, St. Louis, Missouri PCC Presbyterian Church in Canada PRONI Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast, Northern Ireland. RP Reformed Presbyterian RPA Reformed Presbyterian Advocate RPC Reformed Presbyterian Church RPTS Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary Archives, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania UCA United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Toronto, Ontario ucc United Church of Canada

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Acknowledgments A history of the adventures of father Clarke in the provinces would be interesting, not only to those who have been there and enjoyed his hospitality [and] to the Church with which he stands connected, but to the world at large. John Alford, 1855

From 1978 until 1989 I was weekend locum tenens for the Point de Bute-Jolicure pastoral charge in the Chignecto presbytery of the United Church of Canada, and I became very interested in the history of the congregations. At first my attention was drawn to the Methodist roots of Point de Bute. Later, when I inquired about the little graveyard known as the Jolicure Old Presbyterian Cemetery, the Reformed Presbyterian roots of Jolicure claimed my attention. This book is the result of several years' research into the Reformed Presbyterians, or "Covenanters." I make three underlying assumptions. First, the interpretation of past events is a worthwhile venture in itself. Secondly, the proper method is to apply the analytical tools of modern academic historiography. (This approach is facilitated by drawing on Chignecto voices to delineate Covenanter life and witness.) Thirdly, the past is not dead but can enlarge our present and help us move creatively into the future. As Northrop Frye remarked, "We are not alone: we live not only in God's world but in a community with a tradition behind it. Preserving the inner vitality of that community and that tradition is what the churches are for."1 This notion owes much to the thinking of Alfred North Whitehead, which was mediated to me personally by John B. Cobb, Jr. I am greatly indebted to many persons and institutions in addition to those named in the notes. They include Cheryl Ennals and Donna Beal of Mount Allison University Archives, Sackville, New Brunswick; Carolyn Earle of the Maritime Conference Archives in Halifax; Allan Dunlop and Barry Cahill of the Public Archives of Nova Scotia in Halifax; Pat Townsend of Acadia University Archives in Wolfville, Nova Scotia; Rachel George and Carol Lowe of the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary Archives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania;

xvi Acknowledgments Joseph Hall and Jerry Kornegay of the Historical Center, the Presbyterian Church in America, St Louis, Missouri; David Carson of Geneva College, Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania; William Bynum and Robert Blade, the Department of History of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in Montreat, North Carolina and Philadelphia, respectively; and Adam Loughridge, Harold Cunningham, and Noel Simpson of the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Hall in Belfast. There are, as well, a multitude of helpful though unnamed persons at the United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Toronto, the Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, Fredericton, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast, and the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. Various societies and groups have assisted by listening critically to earlier versions of parts of this work; I especially mention in this regard the Canadian Society of Presbyterian History, John Moir, and Ernest Nix. Robert M. More, Jr, of Waddington, New York, has been generous with assistance and very encouraging in word and spirit towards the completion of this work. Scholars and colleagues at Mount Allison University have been able allies; I mention Colin Grant, William Hamilton, Maurice Leger, Jeff Ollerhead, and Charles Scobie, though there are many others. Deans William Godfrey, John Stanton, and Peter Ennals, and former research director Christine Storm have supported this study in various ways over several years. A good deal of the manuscript was completed during a sabbatical year granted by Mount Allison; obviously, I owe much to this institution and its administration. Braj Sinha, head of the Department of Religious Studies in the University of Saskatchewan, at Saskatoon, was a very amiable and helpful host. Of the scores of persons with whom I have conversed and had correspondence, I mention five in particular as being of outstanding assistance: Mrs Lois Peacock Trenholm (about Little Shemogue and Murray Corner); Mrs Elsie Finley Burris, Mrs Ruth Moore, Mrs Mabel Ferguson Patton, and Mr Norman Smith (about Goose River/Linden). Finally, I gratefully acknowledge the following contributions. I love Anne Pirie, to whom I am married and who has been very supportive through all stages of this work. I appreciate the people of the Point de Bute-Jolicure United Church pastoral charge, whose steadfastness and understanding over the years have been warm and sustaining. I salute the stellar secretarial services of Robin Hamilton, who typed up many of the sources on which this book is based. I thank Barry Cahill, who has been an indefatigable, persistent, and constructive editor and critic. Of course, I accept responsibility for errors or omissions.

The Chignecto Covenanters

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Introduction

This study aims to be a scholarly account of the Chignecto Covenanters, or Reformed Presbyterians/Of course, it builds on earlier works, three of which are particularly worthy of mention, (i) Robert M. More Jr's Aurora Borealis: A History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Canada (Covenanter), 1820-1967 (Philadelphia, 1967) was written when More, an American Covenanter, was serving the Almonte, Ontario, Reformed Presbyterian congregation. More surveys the entire Covenanter movement in Canada. (2) "The Reformed Presbyterian Church in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia or The Covenanters in the Lower Provinces" was Frank Archibald's BD thesis at Pine Hill Divinity Hall, approved in 1934 but never published. Archibald's study embraces all the Covenanters in the Maritimes. (3) William Michael Burns's History and Story of Botsford (Sackville, 1933) is particularly helpful in delineating the movement in the chief New Brunswick Covenanter community. My study, though narrower in scope than either More or Archibald, benefits from access to more and better archival sources. An attempt is also made to place the Chignecto Covenanters in their proper historical context. Furthermore - like all three authors cited above -1 attempt to rationalize the Covenanter experience. Comparatively speaking, Presbyterianism is the least written about and least understood denomination in nineteenth-century Maritime religious history. John Moir notes that regional histories of the Presbyterian Church in Canada are few and out of date;1 Laurie Stanley's study, The Well-Watered Garden: The Presbyterian Church in Cape Breton, 1798-1860, is a superb recent exception.2 David Weale has written knowledgeably about the McDonaldites of Prince Edward Island. While there are certainly books, dissertations, and articles about Presbyterianism in other parts of the Maritimes, there are few scholarly works about Presbyterianism in the Chignecto Isthmus region of

4 Introduction

northwestern Nova Scotia and southeastern New Brunswick. This may partly be due to the fact that the movement there was very largely Reformed Presbyterianism, one of the lesser bands on the Presbyterian spectrum. Moreover, Presbyterianism in Chignecto owed its beginnings less to Scotland than to Northern Ireland. The three Reformed Presbyterian communities in the Maritimes were founded by the Irish synod. They were located in the Saint John River Valley of New Brunswick, the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia, and the Chignecto Isthmus that links the two provinces. In other parts of the Maritimes, Presbyterianism was largely though not exclusively of Scottish origin.3 In addition to the three Maritime Covenanter groups, there was an aggregate of Covenanter communities in eastern Ontario and in Quebec, founded at approximately the same time but by the Reformed Presbyterian Synod of Scotland, and much later there was a group of congregations in western Canada, founded by Old School American Covenanters. The Reformed Presbyterian communities in the Maritimes and western Canada have died out, though a few small congregations survive in the Ottawa Valley.4 In 1827 the Covenanter pioneer missionary couple, Rev. Alexander Clarke and his wife Catherine McMillan, who had been married in Belfast, came from Ireland to Saint John, where, with their family, they settled for a short time. After Clarke made a brief visit to the Chignecto region in the autumn of that year, the family moved permanently to Amherst in the summer of 1828. Setting to work at once, Clarke soon established preaching venues at various settlements in Cumberland County, Nova Scotia, and in Westmorland County, New Brunswick. In 1831 a missionary colleague, Rev. William Sommerville, was sent from Ireland. The two men were instrumental in forming a presbytery in 1832, but a year later Sommerville accepted an invitation to Horton, and he was minimally involved in Chignecto thereafter. By the mid-i84os, churches had been constructed in the Chignecto communities of Little Shemogue,5 Jolicure, Goose River,6 and Amherst, and mission stations established in other settlements. Clarke's continual cry for more clergy to be sent by the Irish synod went virtually unheeded. It was not that missionaries did not come from Ireland to the New World. In addition to Sommerville in the Annapolis Valley, there was Rev. Alexander McLeod Stavely (18161903), who came to Saint John in 1841, and Rev. James Reid Lawson (1820-91), who came to Barnesville, New Brunswick, in 1845; but these men and their later colleagues7 laboured in fields far removed and offered no assistance to Clarke. In Chignecto he laboured alone. After a few years in the area, Clarke faced a momentous decision. A general election was held in Nova Scotia in 1836. Covenanters as a

5 Introduction

matter of religious principle did not vote, but Clarke felt constrained to do so by the pressure of events. By voting, he broke a fundamental Covenanter conviction. He was not expelled immediately, but when he voted in the decisive "responsible government" election of 1847, he was forced out of the Irish synod. In 1848 Clarke and his congregations joined an American Covenanter group, the General Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America, whose beliefs and practices were more congenial to the civic-mindedness of Clarke and his congregants. This new relationship brought Clarke clerical assistants who promised to expand Covenanter operations in Chignecto. Clergymen Henry Gordon, William Stavely Darragh, Andrew R. Gailey,8 John Alford (at the time a licentiate), and Alexander Robinson arrived in the late 18405 and 18503. With the exception of Alford they were Irish born, and all of them came to Chignecto via the United States. Again with the exception of Alford, they were ordained either before coming to Chignecto or while resident in the region. All of them except Darragh ministered for shorter or longer periods in the area; none of them spent his entire career in Chignecto. Meanwhile, the older churches expanded, and the newer mission stations already established by Clarke flourished and built their own churches; these communities were Nappan, Maccan, Athol, Mount Pleasant, River Hebert, and Amherst Head in Nova Scotia, and Port Elgin, Chapmans Corner, Sackville, and Rockland9 in New Brunswick. The new clergy contributed to this expansion, even though some of them were lost to the Chignecto Covenanter cause by the mid-i86os. Rev. William Stavely Darragh was one of the few who stayed. He laboured for a few years as a Covenanter, but in 1859, when the Covenanter movement in Chignecto was at its height, he broke with the Reformed Presbyterians and joined the mainline Canadian Presbyterian body10 - the "united presbyterians." (This name was given by Chignecto Covenanters, often derisively, to all Presbyterian denominations other than Reformed Presbyterian.) Darragh's decision caused much bitterness in Goose River, especially as he chose to stay in that community to minister to the faction that had followed him out. The Irish-born Rev. Archibald Thomson came to the region in 1858 and ministered to the several Covenanter communities, chiefly the remaining Covenanter congregation in Goose River and at River Hebert. In 1859 the Eastern Presbytery of the General Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America was formed, comprising all the Chignecto Covenanter congregations. Clarke, Robinson, and Thomson played a prominent role in its formation. Robinson was

6 Introduction virtually lost to the presbytery in the early i86os, being suspended from the ministry, though he continued to farm at Little Shemogue. Thomson's contribution was considerable, but he returned to the United States in 1870. In the mid-i86os, Rev. Samuel Boyd, also Irish born, came to minister in Little Shemogue, and he was still pastor there when Clarke died in 1874. Clarke's death was an irreparable loss to the movement. Shortly afterwards there was another lesion in the Covenanter corpus, caused by the 1876 defection of Rev. Boyd, together with a significant segment of the Little Shemogue congregation, to the newly organized Presbyterian Church in Canada. Boyd left Little Shemogue and served as a Presbyterian minister in Wallace, Nova Scotia, while in Chignecto the Covenanter movement limped along. Two Covenanter replacement clergy, Rev. Samuel Darrah Yates, another Irishman, and Rev. Samuel Rutherford Stormont, an American, came to Chignecto after Clarke's death and laboured for a few years, but they had neither the charisma nor the authority of Clarke. Moreover, being sickly, they both returned to the United States in the late i88os. Just after Clarke's death, there was the brief but effective ministry of Rev. George W. Brownell,11 who had been born at Northport in Chignecto. The untimely death of his wife, also a native of the area, led him to go to the United States, where he had a long Covenanter pastorate. George W. Brownell was but one of nine Covenanters from Chignecto who studied for the ministry, seven of them graduating. Rev. Alexander Roulston, Irish born, came from the United States to minister for two years in Little Shemogue in the mid-i88os but then left to minister to a Presbyterian Church in Canada congregation in Prince Edward Island. A fresh start was made by the ordination and induction of Rev. Joseph Howe Brownell in 1893. Also a native of Northport, Brownell was an exceptional pastor. His sphere of influence was much narrower than the fifteen or so communities established by Clarke; he ministered chiefly to the two main congregations of Little Shemogue and Linden (formerly Goose River). Brownell was a skilled ecclesiastic. After ministering for over a decade as a Covenanter, he was instrumental in 1905 in leading Little Shemogue Covenanters into the Presbyterian Church in Canada; Linden ceased to be a Covenanter congregation at the same time. The Little Shemogue entente cordiale, which had been some time in the making, was accomplished with the generous assistance of the resident Presbyterian minister, Rev. Joseph Howe Hattie. Indeed, clerical cooperation was one of the factors that made the subsequent union possible. Brownell remained as pastor of the amalgamated congregations until his death in 1920.

CHAPTER ONE

The Reverend Alexander Clarke: From Ulster to Chignecto

The Clarkes were sent to the Maritimes by the Reformed Presbyterian Synod of Ireland. The Irish synod's initial strategy was to serve its own members living in different parts of the world, though it was especially concerned with missionary work in the United Kingdom.1 In 1820 the synod decided "that it is desirable to take steps for sending missionaries of our Communion to preach the Gospel in New Brunswick and other places abroad where some of our people are scattered, and also in parts of our own country where there may be some individuals who are desirous of hearing the Word of Life by ministers of our Church."2 At Saint John, New Brunswick, a few Covenanters from Scotland and Ireland had worshipped together informally since the early iSoos, and in 1820 they applied across the border to the Reformed Presbyterian Church for preaching ordinances. A couple of ministers from the United States were then sent to Saint John; they organized the seven families into a praying society and returned to the United States. Then they wrote to both the Scottish and Irish synods, informing them of the situation in Saint John and urging them to take on the responsibility3 The Irish synod responded, though not quickly. Greater emphasis was placed on the dispersed and weakened congregations in Ireland itself. In 1823 the synod established the Missionary Society of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland, but the chief concern was still missions in the United Kingdom - money was expended, for instance, to support Covenanters in Liverpool. It was not until 1825 that the synod enjoined each presbytery to seek out missionary volunteers to answer the call from New Brunswick. In 1828 a much more clearly defined statement of the aims and objectives of the newly named Home and Foreign Missionary Society appeared.4 The secretary of the society was Rev. Thomas Houston, who had been

Rev. Alexander Clarke, ca 1859 (courtesy John Clarence Webster Collection, Canadian Parks Service, Fort Beausejour)

Mrs Catherine Clarke, ca4o !8(courtesy of the late Elton Fenwick Carlile, Palm Desert t_aiii.j

10 Rev. Alexander Clarke ordained but a few months earlier. Houston was to play a very prominent role in the missionary society for the next half-century. Why did Alexander Clarke and Catherine McMillan respond to the call of the Irish synod for missionaries to be sent to British North America? Information is available about their backgrounds that is sufficient to make an assessment of them and their purpose. Alexander Clarke, the son of William and Elizabeth Clarke (nee Craig), was born near Kilrea, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, on 16 July 1794-5 A Clarke descendant relates that Alexander belonged to a very large family, for his father married twice. In the first family there were nine children - eight sons and a daughter. In the second, by Elizabeth Craig, there were again nine children of whom eight were sons and one was a daughter. Alexander was one of the younger sons in the second family. The same tradition holds that the Clarkes were a branch of the titled Maxwells of Scotland.6 This family tradition probably signifies that Alexander Clarke was born into a family with some means and status, and that the values and ideals instilled in him were gentrified. It is clear in any case that William and Elizabeth Clarke were pious Covenanters and that Alexander was a devout child: "Some years ago, in Kilrea, county Derry, Ireland, a saintly mother was greatly impressed with the constant study her son, a boy about eight years of age, made of his Bible. This boy very early expressed his desire to study for the ministry. After he became matured this desire was fulfilled, and, in the providence of God, he [Rev. Alexander Clarke] was brought across the great Atlantic to work as a missionary in Nova Scotia."7 Clarke is said to have defended Reformed Presbyterian principles successfully in several youthful dialogues.8 Of Alexander Clarke's early years in Ireland not much more is known. Clearly, he studied in the collegiate division of the Belfast Academical Institution in the years 1819, 1822, and 1823.9 He married Catherine McMillan in 1821 in Belfast, and their first child was born a year later.10 Alexander received financial support from the Reformed Presbyterian Home and Foreign Missionary Society in 1825 and 1826 in order "to defray expenses at College."11 It is uncertain, however, which college this was. The minutes for the Eastern Presbytery (of the Reformed Presbyterian Synod of Ireland), where Clarke was a ministerial candidate, have been lost. Moreover, Clarke is not listed during these years as a student at either the Belfast Academical Institution or the Reformed Presbyterian theological college at Paisley.12 Perhaps he was "studying theology privately," under the supervision of a Belfast Reformed Presbyterian minister.13 It is certain that he was licensed by the Eastern Presbytery on 24 May 1827, together with Thomas Houston.14 Clarke alone was ordained on the same day, presumably

ii From Ulster to Chignecto

because he was soon to leave for North America.15 This is the full extent of what is known or can be conjectured about Clarke's life before leaving Ireland. Clarke recounted his summons more colourfully and his college interlude somewhat more cryptically when, years later, he wrote an autobiographical sketch: In the fall of '26 ... I went to hear specimens of elocution ... in the theater. This, I suppose accounts for my peculiar eloquence. Never before or since have I seen the inside of that thing called a theater. A Presbytery sat that night, and sent and brought me out of that den to ask me if I would accept the offer to go out as a missionary to the City of St. John, N.B., after my session of study would close, in which case they would make a preacher of me. A strange place to go to find stuff to make a preacher of, surely. But they did it and small wonder I am a hard-shell minister, both long-winded and longtongued. Every man must have some distinguishing feature, and why should not I? However, nine months after the time here referred to, found me a hard working missionary in the wild wilderness of British America.16

Clarke's wife, Catherine McMillan, was born in Ballymena, County Antrim, some forty kilometres north of Belfast, probably on 16 August 1800.17 She was destined to become "a young woman of influential standing."18 Her father, John McMillan, was a successful partner in Archer & McMillan, booksellers and publishers, Belfast, and was also a prominent if somewhat controversial Covenanter leader. His idiosyncrasy is explicable only against the background of Irish Covenanter affairs at that time. In the early to mid 17005, the lot of Irish Covenanters was very difficult indeed. This situation changed for the better, however, in the late 17005 and early iSoos. Covenanter presbyteries were beginning to be established, and membership continued to grow. Yet as Adam Loughridge observes, success was not without its difficulties. The local society meeting held its place, but presbyteries replaced the regional gatherings that had been known as "district" or "correspondence" meetings; these district meetings had been further united into a national or general meeting. Some Covenanters were loath to accept presbyteries, and an attempt to revive the district and general meetings was made by a group who called themselves the Friends of General Correspondence.19 There was an internal struggle between the Friends of General Correspondence and the Covenanter presbytery. The presbytery - first formed in 1763 - persisted in trying to weaken the power of the Friends, and it was generally effective. Some members rejected the authority of the presbytery, however, one of whom

12 Rev. Alexander Clarke was John McMillan, clerk of the Friends of General Correspondence and a leader of the faction. They published a pamphlet, written by McMillan, in defence of General Correspondence: An Address to the People of Ireland under the Inspection of the Reformed Presbytery.2-0 In this controversy, the faction led by John McMillan was ultimately to lose out.21 McMillan and his family emigrated to Saint John in 1818, almost a decade before Rev. Alexander and Catherine Clarke came to the same city. The McMillan family's experience in Ireland was in some sense carried over to North America. John McMillan, who died in 1847, was the founder of A. & J. McMillan, booksellers and publishers of Saint John.22 McMillan family piety was also transplanted to the New World, though very little was expended in Covenanter circles.23 There was certainly private devotion and public worship, but for the McMillans other than Catherine McMillan Clarke, it was destined to be given over entirely to mainstream Presbyterianism.24 Was Catherine Clarke the first woman missionary of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland? A statement to this effect is carved in stone as her epitaph in the old West Amherst cemetery,25 and it is also found in her obituary. Admittedly, the obituary was written by her grief-stricken husband, Alexander.26 Whatever her title, it is clear that the role she carried out was not that of an initiator, but rather that of consort and assistant. This was no mean achievement in itself, Catherine Clarke being the mother of ten children and managing a farm, while her husband was often absent on missionary visitations; but although her place was important, it was strictly subordinate: "Mrs. C. having accompanied her husband to the then unsettled region where he has been labouring for more than 30 years proved herself 'a helpmeet for him.' Her kindness, her gentle modesty, her energy of character, her unaffected piety, must have impressed all who had the pleasure of meeting with her in her hospitable home."27 The bulk of the Clarkes' missionary work was in the Chignecto region, though it had been their original intention to live and labour in Saint John, which was their first destination. The Clarkes set sail for Saint John in June 1827, having already buried two of their three children. Another daughter was born at sea on 21 June, "whilst the ship Wm. Booth was tossed upon the Irish channel."28 Alexander Clarke has left vignettes of the ten-week voyage to Saint John and of his early experiences there, including an account of the family's arrival: On the word of an honest man, we did all arrive safe in the harbour of St. John, N.B. on the 23rd of August, 1827. As to the hour, I have only to say it must have been before our dinner because we had nothing in the ship of which to make a dinner ... I arrived and landed from a small boat, at which

13 From Ulster to Chignecto is called Reed Point, the present landing of the international steamboats in St. John. I walked down Prince William St., as far as Mr. McMillans', my father-in-law, carrying a babe in my arms, no uncommon thing for an Irish immigrant to do. No matter how poor, this piece of furniture he is sure to have, because it is a never-failing article of the physiological produce of the Emerald Isle.2?

The Clarkes were shocked, on their first Sabbath in British North America, to find that "so many liberties are taken." Alexander was keen to start work, but almost immediately he felt discouraged because of the small number of Covenanters in the area: "A society had been in operation in the city, but it was broken up before I arrived, and the most efficient of its members gone to the United States; whilst the remaining few were so poor and so disheartened, they manifested very little desire for a reorganization, and, after the society was, once more constituted, some of that few never returned."30 Clarke discovered that "it was no easy matter for an RP minister to get into a church to preach at all." He attributed this to "the spirit of Toryism ... at that time quite rampant in St. John."31 Lay Covenanters were few and far between, though Clarke laboured assiduously to breathe life into the faith of the few who remained. Perhaps, Clarke thought, fellow Presbyterians might help; but when he asked a favour of the Reverend Dr George Burns of the Kirk, although the latter did not bluntly say "no," he dissembled. Clarke was hurt and offended: "I understood the doctor's remark as a refusal - contemptibly mean, contemptuous to me and the church I represented, and by no means complimentary to himself or his own church."32 Although Covenanters were scarce in the city proper, Clarke found himself in demand in areas outside Saint John. He recorded that a man "was delegated to wait on me in the City of St. John to invite me out towards Hampton and Hammond River, where there were a great many Scotch and Irish Presbyterians, but far more Baptists and Wesleyans. People were all very kind to me. All called me brother Clarke, which made me feel very proud to have, in my adopted country, so numerous a brotherhood, of whom I had never before heard."33 Clarke's Covenanter discipline ran into trouble, however, since many came with children to be baptized. "What a rush was on me to get the 'poor things christened/ and great was the astonishment when [I] hesitated till a mutual acquaintance could be effected. A distinction of character must be respected, the ordinance must be neither profaned nor dishonoured."34 His cautious attitude turned warm welcomes into carping criticisms. Moreover, Burns's shadow followed him even into remote areas. Clarke bitterly declared, "Dr. Burns claimed the

14 Rev. Alexander Clarke

right of registering the baptisms, charging only 2s.6d. a head." Yet in hindsight, Clarke could be grateful, however backhandedly, to the Reverend Dr George Burns: That charitable Christian minister did fully his share to send me to the place where God intended I should sow the evangelical seed and wait for the harvest. The doctor advised the people in the country to hold on to me, allowed I was a good hand to gather the people together, advised them to go on with building [a church], and by the time it would be finished, he would have a minister from Scotland when my services would be no longer required. How marvellously thoughtful, honourable, kind and generous a doctor of divinity!!! What a proof of his respect for the memory of Scotland's reformers! But thus were the people tampered with, and thus did some of them play foul into his hands. Can anyone blame me for escaping from such villainous treachery?35

Meanwhile, Clarke laboured faithfully: "Meetings for conference and prayer were appointed; instruction was given and received in good feeling; infants and adults were baptized."36 About this time, Clarke wrote to the Reformed Presbyterian Home and Foreign Missionary Society, whose report noted that he preached sometimes in Saint John, "but oftener making excursions into the country adjacent, to the distance of 25 or thirty miles, collecting together the people, and breaking the bread of life, to such as came to wait on his ministry." Clarke was instrumental in organizing "four Societies in different parts of the province."37 In spite of his success, the disappointments he suffered made him ready to accept an invitation from elsewhere. At the end of November 1827, he wrote, "A man from near Amherst, a Mr. McMorris, a native of Donegal, Ireland, visited St. John, and on me he called and insisted on my making a visit to Amherst. Had been in connection with the R. Presbyterian Church in Ireland; said Amherst was considerable of a town, and there was a vacant congregation of Presbyterians there ... He said there was a man there, one of whose sons had espoused R. Presbyterian principles. The paternal name [was] Hugh Logan, a native of the North of Ireland, a candid, honest man."38 With this encouragement, Clarke "made a visit to Amherst on the strength of friend McMorris' invitation" exactly three months after his arrival in Saint John: "Captain Wm. Spence had me in charge from St. John to Amherst Landing, which was at Fort Laurence [sic], on the 23rd of Nov. 1827."39 When he landed at Fort Lawrence, Clarke set out to visit Hugh Logan's home, though this proved to be more difficult than he expected: "After walking three miles from the landing to Amherst

15 From Ulster to Chignecto

[I] could not find the town. In somewhat over a mile of road I found nine or ten wooden erections called houses. This made Amherst proper. Mr. Logan's was not one of them. It was three miles farther on toward the s.w., a town by itself, being Amherst Point town. Hard frost and light snow, a clear night and smooth sea made up the complements of the state of the weather."40 "His [Logan's] was the first house at the head of the Bay, I ever entered to be refreshed, and having heard me state who, what, and whence I was, and what the object of my visit was, addressed me in these words - 'Sir, you need not stop here; there is no room for you here. They want none of your sort here, and I may say to you as was said to Mr. [Hugh] Graham, when he came - unless you can live upon potatoes and marsh hay, you could not subsist three months.'"41 "Such was the salutation with which I was met," observed Clarke, "and by as honest a man as ever I did meet."42 Strangely, he took heart from Logan's words. Perhaps it was their brutal candour that he found refreshing, a welcome contrast to the evasions and prevarication he had encountered in Saint John, particularly from the disingenuous Dr Burns. "I did not despair of being somewhat successful," Clarke recalled. "I believed I had a good cause and a glorious Master, and that he had not brought me so far without having some work for me to do. "43 During his weeks-long visit to the area in the autumn of 1827, Clarke preached at the house of Jeremiah Brownell, "12 miles from Amherst, on the New Brunswick side of the Bay," an event he reported enthusiastically to the Reformed Presbyterian missionary society in Ireland: "At [Brownell's] house were met on the occasion, his children, distant from him, on each side, 25 miles, so that my audience contained individuals 50 miles distant. No people could do more to get me to go with them, and proposed sending for my family, to prevent me from returning. But my desire was to keep up the attendance at as many places as possible, till better provision might be made. I promised to pay them another visit. We parted on the condition that I would return to them as soon as my other engagements would permit."44 Clarke returned to Saint John. "During the remainder of November and the whole of December, he was employed in searching out persons friendly to the cause, and in preaching when opportunity offered."45 The following winter, he again made missionary expeditions from Saint John: "I continued to make visits all around those parts, up the Canebecassis [sic] and Sussex, during the autumn and ... winter."46 The prospects for success in the city itself were not bright, but an enlarged sphere of usefulness was opening for him in the surrounding country.47 Nevertheless, Clarke's compass was clearly

16 Rev. Alexander Clarke pointing him eastward towards Chignecto. He returned there in March 1828 and enlarged the scope of his visit both temporally and spatially: "From this second visit I returned under an obligation to remove my family, by the first opportunity, to Cumberland. This event took place by the ist of the June following."48 The family moved to Chignecto, which was to be the main sphere of Clarke's life and work. Clarke, following Jeremiah Brownell's counsel in choosing a place of residence,49 "selected Amherst, Nova Scotia, as the centre of his operations."50

CHAPTER TWO

Irish Reformed Presbyterian Heritage and the Chignecto Covenanter Tradition The distinctive Covenanter principles that Rev. Alexander Clarke held can be summarized as follows: 1 Christ is head of both church and state. 2 Since Christ is not yet recognized as head of state, Covenanters do not hold public office, do not swear oaths, do not vote. 3 The Bible is the supreme law in state and church; what is not commanded in the Scripture about the worship of God is forbidden. In church services, hymns are prohibited; only psalms are sung. All musical instruments are excluded from worship. All secret societies are forbidden. 4 Covenanting - public witness - is a command of God. The central principles of the historic covenants are to be recalled and remembered, hence "the Covenanters." 5 There are two sacraments: baptism, which is open to adults and (more normally) members' infant children; and communion, which is open to members only. The origins of Reformed Presbyterianism lie in Scotland, the home of the covenants,1 which were eventually formed there as a result of John Knox's return from exile in 1560 and his stirring preaching. "By these covenants those signing pledged their lives and their substance to the maintenance of the cause of Christ."2 After much ebbing and flowing of ecclesiastical and political tides, a significant breakthrough occurred between 1638 and 1649. The National Covenant of Scotland, enlarged from its predecessors, was signed in Edinburgh in 1638 by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of nobles, ministers, and people alike.

i8 Irish Reformed Presbyterian Heritage The General Assembly abolished the episcopate, and the First Book of Discipline was approved. In 1643 the Westminster Assembly drew up the Solemn League and Covenant, which embraced the civil and ecclesiastical polity of England, Scotland, and Ireland. It established the Reformed Church in the three kingdoms. A directory of worship, a confession of faith, and a larger and shorter catechism were also promulgated. From the Covenanter point of view, this was the golden age of faith, the genuine Church of Scotland manifested. It could not last and it did not. At the Restoration of 1660, when King Charles II resumed the thrones of England and Scotland, the gains previously made were severely threatened. This threat became a reality within four years of the Restoration, when four hundred ministers quit their manses and charges in protest against the increasingly episcopal nature of the church in Scotland. Yet they did not cease preaching and administering the sacraments. The reformed clergy and people gathered together in houses and met as "the Church in the fields." Great were the penalties - even death - for conducting such services. The roll of martyrs from "The Killing Times" is one of the bravest and saddest pages from the history of Scotland's church.3 There was much hardship and suffering, holy wars, and bloodshed. James Renwick was the last of the prominent martyrs. A weary nation was looking for a way out of the impasse, which the Settlement of 1690 seemed to offer. It was a compromise solution, which most Scottish people welcomed because it signalled an end to the long and bitter religious struggle. But the compromise was not accepted by the Covenanters, alias the Reformed Presbyterians. Under William of Orange (King William III), episcopacy4 - the system of church government by bishops - was formally established in England. The Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) was established in Scotland, but the king, the civil ruler, was accepted as its head. Because Reformed Presbyterians did not accept this compromise, they witnessed to their conviction by refusing to take an oath in the name of the earthly sovereign, refusing to participate fully in civic life by abjuring the franchise, and refusing to hold public office. In short, they refused to accept the monarch as head of church and state, a title that belonged only to Jesus Christ, King Messiah. This was the most distinctive Covenanter principle. For most of their fellow subjects, the 1690 settlement brought a welcome resolution, but for the few tenacious nonjurors the compromise undermined the revelation and achievement of the golden age. "Looking back as they did wistfully to the attainments of the Scottish Church at such dates as 1560, 1638, and 1649, it is little wonder that the [Glorious] Revolution settlement did not satisfy the Covenanting party in Scotland."5

19 The Chignecto Covenanter Tradition

The situation in Ireland was different.6 There, beginning in the seventeenth century, huge tracts of land in the province of Ulster became available to Scottish and English planters. These tracts were vacant because of the event known as the Flight of the Earls: "As a consequence their lands were declared forfeit to the Crown."7 Further disturbances made it possible for "the Crown, backed by the full weight of English arms and English organisation, to confiscate a vast portion of the Province for its own purposes."8 By the terms of the plantation, estates were to be granted to a few categories of persons, chief among whom were English and Scottish landlords, who were to plant their lands with English and Scottish tenants.9 Thus, the Scots came to Ulster. A bitter rebellion broke out in 1641, an attempt by the Ulster Irish to overthrow English rule. It was quelled by ten thousand troops from Scotland. The coming of this army led to the setting up of a presbytery, whereby the church now known as the Presbyterian Church of Ireland was organized in conformity with the parent body in Scotland. Because the Church of Scotland was then experiencing its golden age, this new Presbyterian church became largely covenanted. In 1644, when the Solemn League and Covenant was brought from Scotland, it was warmly received and subscribed in many places: "Although it never received the sanction of the Irish Parliament, it was thoroughly adopted by the Presbyterians of Ulster to whom the terms had been clearly and carefully explained."10 In Ireland as in Scotland, however, the Restoration of 1660 threatened to efface previous gains. The Covenanters in Ireland assembled under threat of punishment. These small groups of Ulster Presbyterians wished to maintain a strong attachment to the Scottish covenants and therefore held separate meetings for fellowship. "They formed themselves into groups or societies and established a correspondence with the Covenanting Societies in Scotland ... They survived the days of persecution, perpetuated the Covenanting testimony in Ireland, and formed the root from which the Reformed Presbyterian church in Ireland grew."11 Covenanters in Scotland and Ireland were prepared to suffer and die for Reformed Presbyterian orthodoxy. The Covenanters were not Hutterites or recluses - they did not seek enclaves of holiness in a pagan world. Rather, they sought a church-state relationship which decreed that both church and state were under the headship of Christ. Since all authority in heaven and on earth belongs to Christ, He is as truly the ruler of the state as of the church. This makes both church and state equal in authority, though each has its own sphere of authority. The church is to preach the gospel and to make disciples for Christ. The state is to administer civil government on Christian

2O Irish Reformed Presbyterian Heritage

principles. When both acknowledge Christ as Lord and acknowledge the rights of the other, they can cooperate to the advantage of both and the glory of God.12 The model was Geneva, where Calvin was but a preacher, yet where even unbelievers could not and did not congregate or organize in the face of legally constituted authority. Servetus may have been the sole exception, and he lost his head for the achievement. Covenanters did not believe in compelling people to become Christians, but they were quite prepared to declare illegal and proscribe any attempt to proselytize except in the name of Christ, who was head of both church and state in all nations of the world. A summary of Covenanter distinctiveness can thus give rise to a more formal definition: "Reformed Presbyterians claim the name Presbyterian, because they believe Presbyterianism to be the only divinely instituted form of Government in the Christian Church; and they accept the Westminster Form of Church Government as justly setting forth in substance and outline the system of order appointed by Christ for His own house. They use the term, Reformed, to express their adherence to the principles and practices of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland in the purest times of the Second Reformation between the years 1638 and 1649." Covenanting may have come to greatest prominence in Scotland, but it had wider ecclesiological rationale: "They are also Covenanters because they have always as a Church held the principle, that Covenanting is an ordinance of God to be observed by Churches and Nations under the New Testament dispensation, and the National Covenant of Scotland as sworn and subscribed in 1638 and 1639, and the Solemn League and Covenant of the united Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, as taken by Christians of all ranks, in 1648, and by Parliament, in 1649, exhibit the true spirit of religious covenanting; and they consider themselves bound by everything in those Covenants, that is of moral obligation."13 This statement held true not only for Scotland, Ireland, and England, but also for overseas plantations, and it naturally had ramifications for Reformed Presbyterian relations with other Christian churches. Covenanters refused to unite with any church that did not maintain biblical doctrines, that compromised scriptural liturgical practices, or that denied the universal reign of Christ.14 The Clarkes' Covenanter ancestors did not perceive themselves as offshoots of the Church of Scotland, certainly not that church established by the Settlement of 1690. Rather, the Reformed Presbyterian Church was "the oldest of them all, the parent Presbyterian church" from which all other Presbyterian bodies deviated - especially the established Church of Scotland, the Kirk.15 A "small body called

21 The Chignecto Covenanter Tradition

The Covenanters' claimed to be senior to the Kirk and was represented in Nova Scotia by congregations at Amherst and Horton."16 Covenanters could see themselves as descendants of the Church of Scotland only if "Church of Scotland" was understood to be that body which existed in word and deed between 1638 and 1649.17 For the purposes of this highly specialized monograph, a detailed account of Reformed Presbyterianism in the American colonies is not necessary. It was in America, nevertheless, that basic decisions influencing the colonial development of Reformed Presbyterianism were made, some of which directly affected Clarke and the Chignecto Covenanters. One American contribution to Reformed Presbyterian distinctives in the New World - opposition to slavery - had minimal impact on Chignecto Covenanters,18 but they were strongly affected by American developments in three other significant areas; the first two were pertinent when Clarke began to work in British North America, the third when he joined the American New Light synod in 1847-48. The first concerned the "descending obligation of the covenants." As understood by Scots and Scots-Irish Covenanters, the covenants were morally obligatory on future congregations. The covenants had been conceived and delivered despite the opposition of a government which, in 1660, at the restoration of King Charles II, had broken the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643. After the American Revolution, however, the new confederated states had no residual connection with their former mother country. The democratization of Reformed Presbyterianism meant, therefore, that the "descending obligation of the covenants" did not cross the ocean to the United States. "There was no reason to testify in the United States about a covenant-breaking government."19 The moral and historical implications inherent in the "descending obligation of the covenants" were transferred to the communion service: One of the most affecting expressions of the [American Covenanter! faith was the gathering of the society people once a year for the celebration of the Lord's Supper. About this service there clustered emotions hard to appreciate and harder to describe. Part of the emotion was the sense of history. Covenanters were very conscious of their history; their church had been born, in a special sense, out of the rough and tumble of events. More than any other aspect of the church, the communion service bound Covenanters with their forefathers who had suffered and died for the faith and with the traditions of the country from which they had come. One of the "terms of communion" always read and explained during the service was "The owning of all the scriptural testimonies and earnest contendings of Christ's faithful witnesses,

22 Irish Reformed Presbyterian Heritage whether martyrs under the late persecution, or such as have succeeded them in maintaining the cause."20

The second area was closely related to the first. The Solemn League and Covenant had a clear concept of what government should do and be, but the Restoration had overturned this view. In the United States, Reformed Presbyterianism maintained "its position of dissent from the government, but shifted the basis of that dissent from the monarch as head of church and state to the secular nature of the new American constitution."21 Scottish Covenanters objected to the king, not as monarch but as a head of state who was not subordinate to King Jesus. American Covenanters objected to the republic, not qua civil polity, but as a government that was not subordinate to the reign of Christ.22 What Covenanters on both sides of the ocean held was that the civil authority ought to be subordinated to Jesus Christ and that the Church should be independent of civil authority and directly responsible to Jesus Christ. The final area relates to a painful split that took place in the Covenanter movement in the United States in 1833. Early in the nineteenth century, Covenanter fortunes in the United States ran high, but the spirit of optimism did not continue unchecked, and by the late 18205 it had run its course. The expected speedy triumph of Reformation principles had not materialized, and the divergence of Covenanters from the majority became much more conspicuous: "In such a situation, the tendency was for the church to move toward society. The need for dissent from the government and separation from other churches began to be challenged."23 The resulting controversy had several aspects, which may be conveniently reduced to one: whether Reformed Presbyterians could vote and hold public office yet remain faithful to Covenanter convictions. Until 1830, even to recognize such a possibility was to taint oneself with heresy. The controversy first arose at the annual meeting of the Reformed Presbyterian Synod in 1831, and it came to a head at the synod meeting two years later. Those who held that dissent - articulated by refusing to vote or hold public office - was vital to the church's witness became known as the Old Lights, or Old School (officially, the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America). Those who were prepared to alter the strict Covenanter doctrine allowing voting and the holding of public office - became known as the New Lights, or New School (officially, the General Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America). The philosophical and theological justification for the New Light viewpoint seemed quintessentially American. Since the republican government was not

23 The Chignecto Covenanter Tradition

illicit - since, on the contrary, it could be argued that in the United States popular, or democratic, government had a stronger claim to legitimacy as the ordinance of God than any other - it could not be sinful to vote. On the other side, the Old Light protagonists contended that the American constitution did not realize the revealed will of God; it acknowledged no subjection to the Lord Jesus Christ.24 Although it was peculiarly American, the 1833 split was reflected in Ireland by a similar difference of opinion over relations between church and civil magistracy in 1840, when a schismatic Eastern Reformed Presbytery was set up, in effect an Irish "New School" body.25 In Scotland, the schism within the Covenanters happened in 1863, resulting in the formation of a Majority Synod (New Light) and Minority Synod (Old Light).26 Likewise, the Chignecto Covenanters splintered in 1847, when Clarke and his followers were expelled from the Irish synod.27 Covenanter distinctiveness was manifested early in Chignecto, because the names of the Scots and Irish martyrs fell easily from the lips of apostolic missionaries such as Clarke and his early colleagues - all of whom had been born and bred in the motherland of the faith.28 This corporate history was communicated in vivid technicolour as long as the witnesses directly transplanted from the old country could testify to its power and efficacy. The tradition was not so brilliantly illuminated for the possibly less pious, average Covenanter in Chignecto. The relation also tended to be less powerful when the narrators no longer had firsthand or eyewitness contact with the original sites of heroic witness. There were no comparable opportunities for martyrdom in Chignecto at that time, or indeed anywhere else in British North America. There can be little doubt, however, that the faith of the protomartyrs, who had been prepared to give up their lives for their convictions, had a direct impact on Chignecto Covenanters when facing their own peculiar difficulties and concerns. At the death of Jeremiah Brownell in 1908, it was said: "Early in life he joined the Reformed Presbyterian Church at Goose River, of which church he lived and dies a staunch member. As he often said[,J the religion that upheld the Martyrs was good enough for him. "29 Yet the difficulties of the Chignecto Covenanters were entirely different from those faced by their forebears in either Scotland or Ireland. That prodigious letter writer and observer of the church scene in Nova Scotia, Rev. John Sprott, who was sympathetic to Covenanter ideals without being an advocate of them, wrote: "My old countrymen, the Rev. Drs. Clark and Sommerville, are ministers of talent and acquirement, but it is difficult to engraft their peculiar views upon a floating population like Nova Scotia."30

24 Irish Reformed Presbyterian Heritage It is possible to provide a comprehensive account of Chignecto Covenanter practice from the session minutes and from four largely unpublished authors, all of whom were born in the Little Shemogue area. Samuel Crothers Murray (i857-i945)31 had a distinguished career in the Presbyterian and United churches in western Canada. The other three belonged to the same family: Margaret Borden, nee Duncan (i864-i935),32 her nephew William Duncan (1891-1972),33 and her niece Mary Lane, nee Duncan (1895-1983).34 As a young woman, Margaret Duncan married a minister, Rev. George Webster Borden, and moved from the region; many years later, she wrote the reminiscences of her childhood for the benefit of her grandchildren. William Duncan and his sister Mary Lane lived their entire lives in the area. Their grandfather, also named William (1824-88), was a ruling elder in the Little Shemogue Reformed Presbyterian congregation.35 The chief public expression of the religious life of the Chignecto Covenanters was their corporate worship, though the missionary situation (many preaching stations but few ministers) made regular clergy-led Sunday services infrequent.36 In order to meet this problem, the Covenanters could take one of three options. The first, worship without any clergyman, in a "society meeting," will be discussed below. The second, that of a Covenanter clergyman riding a circuit to more than one venue on Sunday, was a primitive Methodist practice that continued in some places even after Clarke had acquired assistant clergy.37 The third option, which is described here, was what Rev. S.C. Murray called the "great instalment" plan. Perhaps because the distance to be travelled was so extensive and because personal energy therefore had to be conserved, this was the practice at Little Shemogue, Goose River, and Amherst. In these communities, when services were held, they took up both the morning and the afternoon. The morning service began at 10 AM and adjourned shortly after 12 noon, followed by a half-hour intermission - strolling along the shore or eating lunch. Then the congregation reassembled and a somewhat abbreviated service was held. Finally, a little after 2 PM, the congregation was dismissed. Thanks to this arrangement, "the makers of the new settlement faced life's problems with greater courage than they would have done otherwise."38 Rev. Samuel Murray tells us that morning worship usually began with an invocation, after which Rev. Alexander Clarke announced a psalm: "This Psalm was not to be sung however until it was 'opened up.' This 'opening' or 'Exposition' the more learned called it, was greeted with keen interest."39 The congregation being seated, a portion of the psalm was then sung. A reading of Scripture followed, sometimes "punctuated with comments, making it more understand-

25 The Chignecto Covenanter Tradition

able." Then came the long prayer, with the congregation standing. "The 'long prayer' was not ill named. The good Dr. traversed the whole realm of Christian Experience with minuteness - not much escaped him." After the prayer, another psalm was sung without any exposition, all the worshippers being seated. "They had stood for prayer, as the old Scottish Covenanters had done, when Claverhouse40 was on their trail - but they sat through the singing." The sermon followed, always awaited with anticipation. For the most part it was a didactic homily, articulating spiritual truth. Murray had been too young to understand the sermon, but he recalled, "When I saw tears running down wrinkled cheeks I understood that more than intellects were gripped. This sermon would consume a full hour, sometimes more." Prayer followed, the collection was taken, and then another psalm was sung; there was no benediction. The congregation dispersed quickly and reverently.41 By one o'clock the congregation was again convened and another service conducted. There was no exposition of the opening psalm, and in all respects the afternoon diet was on a less extended scale, though equally rich in flavour. The long prayer was greatly reduced. The benediction was reserved for the close of this afternoon service.42 Covenanters had very particular ideas about posture during divine service, especially at prayer. In public worship, they stood to pray and sat to sing. Kneeling was appropriate for private and family worship but was forbidden in public worship. Sitting for prayer was clearly prohibited. As with most Covenanter customs, these rules allegedly had a scriptural warrant.43 Although the strictures about posture were explicit, there was some variation across Maritime Covenanter communities.44 Another Covenanter practice - the "lining out" of hymns - seems not to have been sustained. This practice "originated in the want of books and the qualification to read them."45 Either the precentor or the minister would apportion one or two lines, and after these had been sung, the leader would read the next line or two lines, and so on to the end of the psalm.46 "This practice continued long enough to establish it as a law, which, at length, it was considered profane to violate, many considering the practice necessary to the acceptability of the worship."47 It is clear that Clarke never shared the latter sentiment: "All this, and much more of this sort of evil, grew out of the want of educational facilities."48 Of course, organs and other musical instruments were strictly forbidden in all Covenanter churches.49 Covenanter church architecture dictated that the design of the churches be plain and simple, though it was some time before even such modest buildings could be erected. The first recorded service in

2.6 Irish Reformed Presbyterian Heritage

Little Shemogue was held in a barn,50 and Covenanters often met in private homes. What was said of the American Reformed Presbyterians was true also in Chignecto: "The place of worship was less significant to Covenanters than the manner of worship." Although many types of building were used, as soon as possible congregations erected buildings of their own for worship. "But theology and finance dictated that these should be simple. To Covenanters, there was nothing sacred about the building - nor did the service require an elaborate building."51 Of the some fifteen to twenty original Chignecto Covenanter church buildings, three alone remain.52 When no clergy could be present, another liturgical option was exercised - "meetings for prayer and Christian conference," which could be held without the benefit of clergy and which in Scotland, Ireland, and the United States were also called fellowship meetings or, more commonly, society meetings. Very soon after the formation of the Reformed Presbytery of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, which took place in 1832 and in which Clarke and Sommerville closely cooperated, the presbytery drew up guidelines for these society meetings of Covenanters. Indeed, at two meetings of the presbytery held that year, a preamble and fifteen rules were developed.53 These rules may have been based on the experience of Clarke (who had established four such societies during his first few months in New Brunswick) and Sommerville; both men would also have known the Irish precedents and parallels. Such societies probably operated in the churches and mission stations of Chignecto, though direct evidence of their existence is generally lacking. In the United States, "every male member was expected to participate, and women might be invited to do so."54 It is probable that in Chignecto women were involved from the outset. One of Clarke's biographers, his daughter Lavinia, drew attention to the fact that in the early days, Clarke "was ably assisted and strengthened in his work by a few godly women in the different congregations."55 In the early days, sabbath school was held in the schoolhouse nearby Little Shemogue church; school was for the youngsters, while Bible class was for the adults. In the only extant statistical report concerning the New School Reformed Presbyterians there is a column headed, "Children in Sabbath School & Bible Class."56 There was very little formal organization and there were no teacher aids. Normally a book of the New Testament was selected as the basis for study over the summer, one chapter being read each Sunday. Adults spent time discussing the chapter in Bible class, while the superintendent listened to the children repeat a psalm they had memorized and drilled them in the shorter catechism. The superintendents were the

27 The Chignecto Covenanter Tradition Scotts - three generations in succession - Adam Sr, Robert, and William. "These three - father, son and grandson directed that School for seventy five or eighty years." It was far from being a model school, at least in the early years, yet good work was done. Murray remembered it fondly: "I have heard dear old grandfather [Adam] Scott threaten to 'tak his cane to our heads if we didna learn our Psalms' - but we were not afraid. The cane was put to better use."57 In some Chignecto Covenanter homes, Sundays were dreaded by children, as one of them later recalled: Never will I forget the cold, blank "Sabbaths" of my early youth, made miserably dreary by the exactions and the "thou-shalt-nots" of organized religion. With a sense of suffocation the day was greeted, no matter how bright it might have been in natural sunshine - indeed, its very brightness served only to make its restrictions more unnatural and unbearable. Its black hours, each one a long eternity, dragged themselves away at last; but how anything so endless could finally pass was always a mystery to my childish mind. In the end, however, a new day would always come, a day when it was not sinful for little children to play and be happy.58 The Sunday atmosphere in which Samuel Crothers Murray was raised, was very different from this. By the late 19305, it had become fashionable to enlarge upon the austerity and severity of the Reformed Presbyterians - especially their strict Sabbatarianism: "We have been told that not only was all labor banned, but play as well. There must be no cooking, and whistling was the unpardonable sin ... I was reared in the Covenanting faith, and I knew nothing of this Covenanter attitude toward the Sabbath."59 Murray remembered the sabbath as a delight. He did not have to pile wood, and care of the livestock was reduced to a minimum. Everyone dressed up for the sabbath. The dinner was special. All these efforts meant that ''the day was honored, distinguished from the other days."60 Murray recalled the daily ritual in which everyone gathered round the family table - father, mother, the six children, and usually a hired man. The paterfamilias sat near the bookcase, and when the morning meal was finished he would swing round and take from the shelf the well-thumbed family Bible. "He waled a portion wi' judicious care" and read in a clear and reverent voice, after which the other members of the family pushed back their chairs and reverently knelt while he prayed. There was time for everything. The morning worship was never "skimped."61 There can be little doubt that many Chignecto Covenanters engaged in fervent daily prayer and devotion, though the evidence for this practice is difficult to separate from family worship.

28 Irish Reformed Presbyterian Heritage The disciplining of Covenanters was the responsibility of the session, or eldership, the governing body of the congregation. Theoretically, any infraction of the religious or moral code could be brought to the attention of a ruling elder or the minister. Quite often, however, the perpetrators voluntarily came forward, especially in the case of a sin recorded far more frequently than any other - "ante-nuptial fornication."62 If the perpetrators were contrite - and confessing such a sin might indicate as much - they were rebuked by the minister or other members of session. The rebuke could be enhanced by withdrawing the privilege of participating in the next communion season. There were other matters directly affecting the personal lives of Covenanters which were also within the remit of the session. Marital disputes were sometimes brought forward, and the session would mediate and attempt a reconciliation between the parties.63 Quarrelling among neighbours was a more frequent occasion for sessional deliberation. The young Robert Scott, afterwards a venerable ruling elder, was once accused of this misdemeanour.64 Here again the session reproved individuals and encouraged reconciliation. Often, though by no means always, mediation and reprimand were successful strategies. Session discipline seemed to work - largely because justice was seen to be done in the eyes of the majority of the community. The ruling elders knew the congregants well enough that arrangements were occasionally made for visitation of families by session members.65 Although the ruling elders had to be of high moral standing in the community, this is not to say that their own behaviour was beyond reproach: John Cadman, an early Little Shemogue Reformed Presbyterian elder, committed suicide.66 Because the extant Little Shemogue session minutes begin only in 1854 - several years after Chignecto Covenanters became part of the American New Light synod - there is no mention of anyone's having been disciplined for voting. On the other hand, one Covenanter brought charges against another for belonging to a secret society.67 The Chignecto Covenanters also displayed a Reformed Presbyterian idiosyncrasy in the way they circumvented oath taking: "John Peacock ... in Dorchester Courthouse ... swore by uplifting his hand."68 Occasionally, the session was confronted with a situation with which it could barely cope. The Goose River session was rent asunder when presented with Rev. William S. Darragh's salary demands.69 In Little Shemogue there was a comparable split in 1876, when a majority of the session led a minority of the congregation out of the Reformed Presbyterian Church and petitioned for the establishment of a Presbyterian Church in Canada congregation.70

29 The Chignecto Covenanter Tradition

Although more is known about the Little Shemogue experience because of the survival of the session minutes, there is reason to believe that the sessions elsewhere worked equally well. The normal punishment for moral disciplinary infractions was a rebuke and/or the withdrawal of the privilege of attending communion for an upcoming season. Members could also be suspended from exercising the privileges of church membership for a year or more. The maximum penalty was excommunication. There are no recorded instances in the Little Shemogue session minutes of the imposition of this capital sentence. The most notorious scandale in Little Shemogue was the allegation of sexual impropriety against Rev. Alexander Robinson/1 which was never substantiated - to the satisfaction of either the Little Shemogue session or the Eastern Presbytery. If the Bible class was an essential part of Covenanter pedagogy, the Bible Society was an ecumenical forum where Covenanters worshipped and cooperated with non-Covenanters. Both Clarke and Rev. Samuel Boyd, who was then the Little Shemogue Covenanter pastor, addressed the Bible Society meeting in 1871. The secretary reported that they had collected "eighty-one dollars and twenty-six cents" and that "one district had not [yet] been heard from." Covenanters clearly dominated the ordinary membership of the society, but they did not entirely compose its executive and management committee; a Methodist was vice-president. On the executive and management committee there were thirteen men; women were completely excluded from the decision-making process, though they dominated the collecting process. A single paragraph - the last in the proceedings of the annual meeting - enumerates "the lady collectors." (In 1871, ten of the eleven Bible Society women collectors were unmarried.)72 The Chignecto Covenanters were proud of the manner in which they financially supported the Bible Society. In 1876 the Little Shemogue clerk of session, William Duncan (Margaret Borden's father), in his report to the General Synod, was somewhat apologetic for Little Shemogue's lack of support for the synod's schemes: "This may be attributed to a comparative scarcity of money among our people during the year ... It is but due, however, to the people to say, that they contribute yearly, liberally, to the British and Foreign Bible Society. "73 Covenanting was a central Covenanter conviction. Yet Clarke never addressed the matter of the descending obligation of the covenants or the renewing of the covenants, nor was it the subject of any indigenous Chignecto tradition. When Clarke began to introduce Covenanter tenets and distinctive customs, moreover, it would have taken considerable teaching and preaching to incorporate covenant-

30 Irish Reformed Presbyterian Heritage ing, or the renewing of the covenants, in any formal religious exercise. Yet there can be no doubt that Clarke himself was fully aware of the significance of the covenants; his Old School Maritime colleagues were staunch supporters of the inviolability of the covenants.74 The West Cornwallis Covenanter congregation, established in Grafton, Kings County, in i843,75 saw Rev. William Sommerville put the principle into practice/6 and his model seems to have been partly followed at Wilmot, Annapolis County.77 It seems probable that Clarke regarded the Covenanter communion service as the anamnesis through which the historic covenants were renewed. Certainly, he wrote about communion services and seasons with deep conviction, and several of his descriptions - written both before and after 1848, when he joined the New School General Synod - have survived. The two Covenanter sacraments were baptism and the Lord's Supper. The earliest and longest sermon by Clarke which has survived was occasioned by the baptism of his son at Nappan in 1831.7§ In sheer volume, Clarke's writings about baptism surpass all other subjects. While adult baptisms did occur, the vast majority of baptisms were of infants, and - particularly in his early missionary days Clarke insisted on proper instruction of the parents. Early and late in his career, Clarke's Covenanter baptism ideal brought him into conflict with the Baptists, who were always a potent force in Chignecto. The most notable confrontation occurred in the mid-i84os when Clarke was still in connection with the Irish synod. A controversy broke out in which several Chignecto clergy were involved, though the chief protagonists were Rev. Charles Tupper, champion of the Baptists, and Rev. Alexander Clarke.79 Baptisms - both adult and infant - frequently formed part of the communion season, which demonstrates the degree to which the two Covenanter sacraments converged. The significance of the eucharistic component of Covenanter worship cannot be overestimated. Baptists and Methodists had revival meetings, while "the Covenanter substitute for the revival meeting was the communion season."80 The Covenanter view of communion was that it reflected the most intense degree of personal relationship with God. The season also helped worshippers to recall and remember the historic covenants. Such an occasion was therefore marked by exceptional gravity and self-abnegation, manifested through the spirit and activity of fasting. As communion was open to members only, the Thursday of communion preparation was characterized by much personal gravitas, lest the intending communicant should enter frivolously into the presence of God.81 The Chignecto Covenanter communion season did not involve any open-air communion

31 The Chignecto Covenanter Tradition

services like those that took place among Presbyterians - Reformed as well as mainstream - in Great Britain82 and America.83 Secondly, there was no "question day" that excluded clergy but involved "the men" - a body of pious laymen "known for their fervent piety [and] personal experience of religion."84 Elder William Duncan sketched the outline of a communion season (though no specific year was indicated), which lasted four days, there being a service on the Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Drawing on accounts published in the Reformed Presbyterian Church newspaper in 1854 and 1855, one can flesh out the bare bones of Duncan's eye-witness sketch. Most useful for this purpose was the 1855 season, described by Clarke himself, in which the hard work of a new licentiate, one Alexander Robinson, was producing excellent results. The dynamism of the Chignecto Covenanter communion season can be gleaned from these sources, both of which were local and contemporary. "Thursday [was a] day for self-examination and evening service."85 It "was the day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer, at [Little] Shemogue. [The] text [for the evening's sermon preached by Clarke was] Acts x. 30, 31."86 The next service was held on "Saturday afternoon when new members were received."87 "[The service began at] i o'clock. [But] by 10 o'clock on Saturday morning [when Clarke] arrived at the church [he] found the elders and thirty-five applicants for admission to the fellowship of the church in waiting. Two more appeared subsequently. They underwent a searching examination till near i o'clock p.m., when the house was filled to overflowing, and public worship was commenced by Mr. Robinson ... Six adults were baptized."88 "At the close of this Saturday service, tokens were distributed. [And] a long table was set up the length of the church, the middle row of pews were removed."89 (The 1854-55 newspaper reports do not mention either the giving of tokens by the minister to those who were to take communion the following Sunday or the setting up of the long communion table, covered with clean linen, in preparation for service the next day; but it is known from other sources that both these liturgical practices were followed at Little Shemogue.) "Shortly after 10 o'clock on the Sabbath morning it was impossible to obtain a seat in the house. The weather was just right... The house was surrounded. The eloquence of babies was the only disturbance all day. The services were conducted by Mr. Alexander Robinson till the commencement of the 'action sermon.'"90 The "action sermon," which had Christ's death as the subject, was preached at communion.91 Again, although the newspaper accounts do not mention it, the

32 Irish Reformed Presbyterian Heritage Lord's Supper would have been prefaced by stern admonitions from Clarke in the "fencing of the tables/' thus clearly indicating the character of those who, even though members, were to consider solemnly whether they were fit to observe the ordinance.92 Then the "communicants received the 'Elements' seated around this [long] table. Several tables were served; persons came and went from the table singing psalms - no paraphrases were allowed."93 "From that time till the close of the deeply interesting table service the presiding minister [Clarke] was five hours on his feet," as he recalled, adding: "Blessed be the God of gracious promise, the last of that service was, by far, the strongest, freest, sweetest, BEST. Fifty-two sat at the first table, more at the second, and more than the second at the third, about one hundred and sixty in all."94 "The last table served was for the elders, served by the minister who was served last by one of the elders."95 The "Monday morning (service) following Sacrament Sabbath observed the Baptizims [sic] of children."96 Clarke recorded that "on Monday, at the close of the sermon by Mr. Robinson, a scene was presented, such as perhaps none of our living ministers ever witnessed before. Just imagine that you see parents with thirty-three of their children pressing towards the baptismal font from almost every part of a crowded house, yes, THIRTY-THREE."97 Even when there were no infants to be baptized, a service was held on the Monday; the session also met in order to conclude the communion season properly and formally. The communion season was a hallowed time, its very infrequency adding to its significance. In Chignecto, for many years, "communion services were held [but once] annually,"98 and Covenanters "hailed with delight the communion season."99 In 1855, as Clarke tells us, "the audience was assembled from very distant parts: some from Prince Edward's Island, in the mouth of the Gulf of St. Lawrence;100 some from Goose River, and some from the Amherst field ... This, too [in] the very heart of our harvest time." The result was that the 1855 communion season was "an occasion altogether long, long to be remembered. The presence of the Spirit of Christ was most manifest throughout the whole of this truly great solemnity,"101 yet "things were done in a quiet and orderly manner."102 "Some pronounced [the 1855 Shemogue communion season] a revival indeed."103 It is small wonder that the communion season was often seen as the Covenanter equivalent of the revival meeting that was characteristic of Protestant dissenting churches other than the Presbyterian.104 There can be little doubt that these various aspects of public worship provided a framework within which Covenanters practised their

33 The Chignecto Covenanter Tradition

religion. Of course, the Reformed Presbyterians were not the only eucharistic denomination; what Reformed Presbyterianism offered was also provided by the other principal churches - Roman Catholic, Church of England, Baptist, and Methodist - though sacramental elements and liturgical practice differed from denomination to denomination, as did the eucharistic theology. Despite the pioneer conditions, a period of perpetual flux, Covenanters could impose the regular pattern of religious ritual: early morning and/or evening family prayer, grace before and after meals, society meetings, a Sunday chiefly devoted to public worship, and an annual or biannual performance of Holy Communion. In short, American Reformed Presbyterianism, as embodied in the Chignecto Covenanters, imparted to its members and adherents a sense of direction during critical and uncertain times.105

CHAPTER THREE

Chignecto Covenanter Converts

After the Acadians1 were expelled from the region in 1755, Nova Scotia was hungry for settlers. It was also then safe for settlement, or so Governor Charles Lawrence proclaimed in 1758, looking especially to Great Britain and New England. The first group to immigrate after the expulsion of the Acadians were the New England planters. Most of those moving to Nova Scotia and the Saint John River Valley came from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and (pre-eminently) Connecticut.2 The Chignecto region, however, lagged behind planter settlements in Annapolis County and the Cobequid Basin. Later there was some migration of settlers between Horton/Cornwallis and Cumberland. It was among two of these New England planter families migrating from Horton that Clarke obtained some of his earliest converts: the Brownells and the Copps. Jeremiah Brownell and his wife Anna Copp were the only Chignecto names mentioned by Clarke during his visit to the area in the autumn of 1827. Clarke preached at Brownell's house and was warmly received by the Brownell family. Jeremiah Brownell3 was a descendant of the Puritan Thomas Brownell, who had come from London to New England in 1639 and was one of the first settlers of the town of Portsmouth, Rhode Island. One of Thomas's grandsons settled in Little Compton, Rhode Island, where he prospered and became an influential townsman. His son Aaron, who was the father of Jeremiah Brownell, died in Little Compton at age thirty-two. Aaron's widow, Alice Brownell (nee Southworth) left Little Compton and in 1761 moved to Horton Township, Nova Scotia, where she received a land grant. She was accompanied by her brother William Southworth, her son Jeremiah, and her daughter Lucy. When Jeremiah Brownell grew up, he left Horton and received land grants in Chignecto: "His name appears on the Tantramar Township Grant (1760-61), as well as the Sackville Grant (1768-1773) and the Cumberland Grant (1774)."4

35 Chignecto Covenanter Converts

In 1768 Jeremiah Brownell married Anna Copp, who had been born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1749-5 As a young teenager she had come with her parents and siblings to Horton; later the family moved to Chignecto.6 Two of Anna's brothers participated in the patriot insurrection of 1776, when "Jonathan Eddy, who was an early grantee of Cumberland and a large landowner there, obtained a commission from the authorities of Massachusetts and invaded Nova Scotia with a small force."7 The force was augmented by recruits from Eddy's compatriots in Nova Scotia, two of whom were Timothy Copp and Thomas Copp. The patriots' siege of Fort Cumberland was soon lifted, however, and Timothy fled to New England, while Thomas made his peace with the authorities and stayed in Nova Scotia. Although Anna Brownell's brothers were involved on the patriot side, she and her husband undoubtedly remained loyal to the government. "Most families (especially New England Planter families) had members on both sides of the dispute."8 Jeremiah Brownell became a civic leader who served on committees to establish boundaries in the towns near Fort Cumberland. He also prepared plans for (and was one of the six original subscribers who built) St Mark's at Mount Whatley, the first Anglican church in the area; he served as a vestryman of St Mark's in 1796. In August 1787 Brownell was commissioned by Lieutenant-Governor Thomas Carleton of New Brunswick to command a company of officers and men in the Westmorland militia.9 This, then, was the pillar of the community about whom Clarke spoke so approvingly. The religious odyssey of Jeremiah Brownell is no less interesting than his geographical peregrinations. His earliest domicile was Little Compton, a very strict Puritan community, which had been under the control of the Plymouth Colony for many years. Detailed records of the period have been published in Little Compton Families.10 Adherents of the Church of England would not have been tolerated in this small inbred community of Puritan zealots. Jeremiah's mother, Alice Southworth, was a Pilgrim Mayflower descendant on both sides of her family. Members of the Southworth family were leaders in the ultramontane Puritan Plymouth Colony. In Chignecto, by contrast, her son Jeremiah Brownell served on a committee to erect the Anglican church and acted as a vestryman.11 Brownell may have become acculturated as a result of the ministry of Rev. John Eagleson, who was the Church of England resident missionary in Cumberland until 1789. Eagleson was himself a former Presbyterian, "popular with his parishioners."12 The Congregational Church had been all but destroyed in Nova Scotia in the 17805, and not everyone preferred the New Light (increasingly primitive Baptist) alternative. It was easy enough to participate in the Church of

36 Chignecto Covenanter Converts England before 1825. Despite the pastoral visitations of Bishop Charles Inglis (1787-1816), the majority of Anglican adherents were unconfirmed. Until Brownell was forced to declare himself, he doubtless preferred a Church of England minister to no pastor at all. Lutherans on the south shore of Nova Scotia also conformed to this pattern, as did some Scottish Presbyterian communities. Among many cradle dissenters, such as Brownell, there was a presumption that the churches which the government was helping to build would be open to all bona fide Protestant clergymen, whether establishmentarian or dissenting. Although the established church was officially very hostile to such cooperation, the sharing of facilities did occur regularly. The attitude of the clergyman "on the spot" could therefore be decisive. Because most Church of England "missions" (as they were designated) were very large, the incumbent depended on the support of the leading citizens for salary supplements, for help towards erecting and completing buildings, and so on. Thus, it is not surprising that Brownell and the few Church of England clergy in the Chignecto area were somewhat opportunistic, and they derived mutual benefit from his role as a vestryman. There is in any case no reason to doubt the piety of Jeremiah Brownell and Anna Copp; their daily lives and activities were a reflection of deeply held religious beliefs. One gains a perspective on Jeremiah's religious orientation from an incident relating specifically to his grandson: "When only a little lad his grandfather [Jeremiah Brownell] showed him some money and asked him what he would buy if he had it. He replied that he would buy a bible. The grandfather was so pleased with the answer that he bought him a handsome edition in two volumes."13 Perhaps Jeremiah Brownell welcomed Alexander Clarke so warmly because his style and substance were reminiscent of Brownell's strict Little Compton origins and upbringing. In the Brownells' declining years, the character of this Irish Covenanter clergyman may have revived long-dormant sentiments in both Jeremiah and Anna. Whatever the motivation, they were probably among Clarke's very earliest converts. Anna Brownell's nephew, Thomas Copp, donated the land for the Jolicure Covenanter church. In Clarke's words, the Jolicure Covenanter church, built about 1833, was "erected principally by the Brownell and Copp families."14 Anna Copp Brownell died in 1829, before its erection, and her grave is in the church cemetery.15 When Jeremiah Brownell died in 1835, he too was buried there.16 The Brownells' sons, Jeremiah and William George, having crossed over to the Nova Scotia side of Baie Verte, made their homes near Northport, on the south side of the mouth of the Shinimicas River. The Brownell

37 Chignecto Covenanter Converts

family from that time onward were to be more closely associated with Clarke's Goose River congregation than with the earlier congregation at Jolicure. After the New England planters, the next groups to respond to Governor Lawrence's proclamation were settlers from Britain and Ireland - the Scots, the Scots-Irish, and Yorkshire people. Like the planters although poorer, especially the Scots and Scot-Irish, they came hungry for land and new opportunity. Some of them occupied lands formerly cultivated by the Acadians; others carved new homes "out of the wilderness," invariably close by the sea. In New Brunswick the largest Covenanter community was centred at Little Shemogue in Botsford Parish, while in Nova Scotia the largest was at Goose River (Linden) in Cumberland County. Botsford had been set off from Westmorland and Sackville parishes in 1805 and was named for the lawyer Amos Botsford (1744-1812), a Connecticut Loyalist who had settled at Dorchester.17 The area had also attracted settlers from the British Isles, "the English settling largely in the eastern and southern part of the Parish, the Scottish people in the north and the Irish in the centre, while the Western part of the Parish was early settled by the Acadian French."18 Although Clarke's visit to Chignecto in 1827 had introduced him to the Brownell family, the community first mentioned by him when he came to settle permanently in Chignecto a year later was Little Shemogue - variously rendered as Chemoguee, Chimoque, Chemoque or Chemogue (derived from the Mi'kmaq Simooaquik, possibly meaning "horned river" in reference to its many branches).19 This aboriginal toponym was given a variety of spellings not only in America but also (as the unfamiliar locution was transcribed or, rather, mistranscribed) in Ireland. The 1830 report of the mission board (the 1829 report is lost) commented: "The Rev. Alexander Clarke ... continues to maintain the character of a zealous and indefagitable missionary; and ... he has completed the erection of a commodious house of worship in a promising district called Chimoque and Botsford."20 The Scottish settlers in the area had been anxious to obtain a Church of Scotland minister. In 1826 many of the Scottish families and some of their non-Scottish neighbours had sent a petition to the Glasgow Colonial Society, requesting that a minister be sent to them, outlining their needs ("wandering like sheep without a shepherd"), and expressing their willingness to contribute as much as they could towards the maintenance of a resident clergyman.21 The petition was signed by some fifty-two men. Women as a rule did not sign, but their presence was noted in the request: "The women and Children belonging to the signers of this petition ... amount to about 150." Since

38 Chignecto Covenanter Converts the Glasgow Colonial Society sent out only Church of Scotland ministers, Clarke's coming to the area was unrelated to the petition.22 One of the signatories was William Peacock, who had been born in January 1785 on Prince Edward Island. His father, William senior, and his mother, who was born McKay, "came from the highlands of Scotland during the last half of the eighteenth century."23 William was their second child, born three months after his father "was lost in a storm at sea."24 Peacock's "history furnishes a bright example of the powerful influence which early training exerts upon the mind; for when quite a child his mother taught him the Shorter Catechism; and when, in after-life, his lot was cast for a considerable time among the Methodists, yet he never adopted their sentiments. In reviewing his early life, he used frequently to say, that but for this circumstance, most likely he would have been a Methodist."25 After Peacock's father died, his mother married Alexander Boyce, who had also emigrated from Scotland. In 1797 the Boyces and the two Peacock children moved to Botsford in New Brunswick.26 In 1810 William Peacock took up a grant of land beside his stepfather, Alexander Boyce. William had several Boyce half-brothers, three of whom also signed the 1826 petition to the Glasgow Colonial Society. About William's wife, Elizabeth (Betsy) Seaman, little is known,27 apart from the fact that she was born in Wallace, Nova Scotia, of parents who had moved there from New York. William and Betsy Peacock were the parents of nine children; their family was to be very active in the Covenanter congregation for generations. The Peacocks and Boyces were the first of a contingent of Scots who in 1826, when the petition was sent, numbered something over two hundred. The Little Shemogue church was the earliest built by Clarke, and the community became and remained the largest of all the Chignecto Covenanter congregations.28 If Jeremiah Brownell's adherence to Clarke and the Covenanters inevitably came late in life, William Peacock's seems to have happened much earlier: "His religious impressions were always favourable to Presbyterianism. And when the Rev. A. Clarke, of the Covenanting Church, Ireland ... arrived in the province, he was among the first to attend his preaching, and very soon applied for membership. Not long after this, when, by the divine blessing on the labours of Mr. C., the Reformed Presbyterian Congregation of Chimoguee was formed, he was nominated and duly ordained Ruling Elder. This office he continued to fill with much acceptance as long as he lived."29 As a ruling elder, William Peacock was one of the two laymen present at the formation of the Reformed Presbytery of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, at Point de Bute in 1832. William

39 Chignecto Covenanter Converts

Peacock died in 1849, Elizabeth Seaman Peacock in 1857. William was prominent enough for his obituary to be published in the Reformed Presbyterian church newspaper.30 As Alexander Clarke and Catherine McMillan Clarke were themselves Scots-Irish, it is not surprising that fellow Northern Irish were attracted to the Covenanting Church. Indeed, writing with the wisdom of hindsight in i846,31 and again as an old man in i872,32 Clarke mentioned two such persons as having been decisively influential in his choice of Amherst as the headquarters for his life and ministry: Matthew McMorris and Hugh Logan. The two were probably mentioned in Clarke's early letters, though their names do not occur in the reports of the Irish Reformed Presbyterian mission board. Clarke's own words, however, unedited by the mission board, mention Hugh Logan in particular - for instance, in Clarke's description of his arrival at Fort Lawrence in November 1827, when he set out to visit Logan's home.33 The Logan family historian relates that Hugh Logan arrived in Amherst in i76i.34 He came from County Antrim, Ulster, being planter Irish and therefore of Scottish descent and Presbyterian. Logan was eleven years old at the time and was accompanied by his widowed mother. Howard Trueman has asserted that Hugh Logan's father was one of the soldiers who laboured under Colonel Cornwallis in 1749 in the building of Halifax and that the younger Logan fell heir to the grant of land and accoutrements which had come to his father.35 However, the Logan chronicler warns that "this explanation is grounded in tradition" rather than in documentation. As to the precise "manner of Hugh's and his mother's coming, we know nothing," he writes, "and little more with certainty about their activites and way of life for some time thereafter."36 Hugh Logan clearly established the Logan homestead in West Amherst, and apparently he prospered - he was the first in Amherst to drive a light carriage called a chaise or whisky. Hugh Logan's wife was Margaret Dickey, whom he married in 1799. She was the daughter of Matthew Dickey and Janet Nesbit of Londonderry, Northern Ireland, where her father had been a linen merchant. Margaret Dickey was a cousin of Robert McGowan Dickey, magistrate, justice of the peace, assemblyman, and a staunch Covenanter. Margaret Dickey Logan's life, "much of it lived in a log house ... gives the impression of the steady and competent pioneer. She was ... the bearer of many children, and successful in bringing them to maturity. What a story should have [been] left to posterity had she written a personal diary! But to our knowledge there isn't a word surviving." The Logans strove successfully to provide

40 Chignecto Covenanter Converts adequate land for their sons. "Hugh Logan doubtless benefited from his contact through marriage with the well educated Dickeys."37 The Logans differed in their religious affiliation. Husband Hugh's sympathies lay with Clarke's Covenanters, and some of the children became staunch Covenanters. Wife Margaret, on the other hand, "was one of the earliest members of the little group forming Amherst Baptist Church." The family thus divided "between Baptist and Presbyterian." Son William was for many years the preceptor in the Baptist services; although a farmer, "his chief interest lay in religion, and the promotion and practice of worship." His younger brother David was "the precentor in the Covenanter church, starting the singing of the Psalms in Reformed Presbyterian worship. He sat in the corner of the front pew at the Minister's right hand."38 Hugh Logan lived for only a few years into Clarke's ministry, dying in 1832. It is probable that by then he had joined Amherst's Covenanter church. Clarke was glad to note that even in such a brief span, Logan's sharp and critical tone had changed to admiration and respect. Hugh Logan had also changed his mind about Clarke's prospects, as Clarke recounted: Calling to see him on his death bed, as I rode from one remote part of the field to another distant point, - leaning over him in bed, he explained his astonishment at the rapidity of my changes from one place of distance to another. "I wonder," said the good old man, "how you stand such enormous riding. Yesterday I heard of you being 30 miles to the North, and here you are today on your way 30 miles to the South, - Parrsboro." "Do you remember what you said to me," I asked, "when just in your house, about the potatoes and marsh hay?" "Yes," said he, "I think of it often. But the Lord sent you here, and will keep you here till your work is done."39 Another significant group of Chignecto immigrants to benefit from Governor Lawrence's proclamations were the English, most of whom were from Yorkshire. Beginning in 1772, these Yorkshire immigrants came chiefly in order to obtain more and better land and freehold tenure. They had two characteristics worthy of mention. First, the preaching of John Wesley had found ready listeners in Yorkshire: "Nowhere had he more sincere or devoted followers, many of whom were among the first emigrants to Nova Scotia."40 Secondly, in economic terms, the Yorkshire settlers were closer to the New England planters, who had migrated to Chignecto from the east and south of Nova Scotia, than they were to the Scots and Scots-Irish, who came from areas of Britain to the north and west of Yorkshire. F.W.W. DesBarres was correct in his belief that although the Yorkshire settlers were farmers, they belonged to the English lower-middle class.41

41 Chignecto Covenanter Converts

Among the Yorkshire settlers, the name Chapman is very prominent. Of Philip Chapman, however, we know only that he was "a descendant of the original" Chapman couple who came to Chignecto from Yorkshire - William and Mary Chapman (nee Ibbison).42 It was Elizabeth, Philip's wife, who best represented the English who were initially attracted by Clarke's Covenanter ministry. Elizabeth Chapman was born in Devonshire about i/gS.43 Of her early life very little is known, though clearly she came to Chignecto and married Philip Chapman. She was the mother of several children by the time she died in 1843 at the age of forty-five. Her obituary is purely formulaic in recognizing the "great moral worth of this woman. She was universally esteemed and regarded as an ornament in the community where she lived."44 Although always piously inclined, only latterly did Elizabeth attach "herself as a Communicant to the Reformed Presbyterian Congregation of Chimaguee, and became a decided advocate of its distinctive principles. Through every part of her conduct she acted up to her profession."45 Two of her sons, Frederick and Bowden Chapman, became ruling elders of the Covenanter Church (the latter was also a son-in-law of Clarke), and two of her grandsons, John Carritte and William Young Chapman, became clergymen. The descendants of American Loyalist refugees were among those attracted to the Covenanter movement. The Loyalists were "loyal" in the sense that loyalty to the British crown was "the distinguishing characteristic of those American colonists who gave up their homes and left their native land to remain British."46 They came as early as 1776, but chiefly in the years 1782 to 1784. The majority of Loyalists came from colonies outside New England, where the American Revolution began. "The immediate effect of the Loyalist migration was to augment the population by twenty thousand people. These formed one of the main stocks of population from which the present Nova Scotia has developed."47 Yet only one such group came to Chignecto, namely the Westchester (New York) Loyalists,48 among whom was Samuel Embree and his wife Sarah Hyatt. Samuel Embree "commanded the Light Horse Dragoons during the Revolutionary War, and at its close his landed estate was confiscated."49 Escaping to Nova Scotia, he settled in Amherst. "The British government did not forget his services, and he drew a pension to the end of his life."50 Sarah Hyatt Embree was a woman of great energy and flexible skills.51 James Edward Embree (1829-1902), a descendant, was a mason by trade, an excellent artisan,52 who built the walls of many public and private buildings in Amherst. His obituary noted that "while still a young man he united with the Reformed Presbyterian Church of

42 Chignecto Covenanter Converts

Amherst, of which the late Dr. Alex. Clarke was pastor."53 As Embree married Sarah, a daughter of Alexander and Catherine Clarke, one cannot help speculating about his motivation for becoming a Reformed Presbyterian - Covenanter doctrine or Covenanter preacher's daughter? There is reason to believe, however, that James Embree held a lifelong commitment to both family and church: "He was a considerate husband and father, interested in public affairs, and a staunch Liberal in politics. At his death, Amherst lost one of its most respected citizens ... On the Sabbath preceding his [mortal] illness he started to get ready for the morning service but not feeling able he remained at home."54 His wife Sarah Clarke Embree (1833-1918) "inherited the keen wit which distinguished her father, and in her younger days made her the brightest member of the household." Yet she also possessed balanced judgment and a well-stored mind. She was never wealthy in earthly goods, but she revealed to her family and friends "an untarnished character, a devoted and beautiful life of kindness and grace."55 The Chignecto Covenanters also had dealings with Irish Catholics, who began to settle the area in the 18205, favouring Westmorland County,56 where there was a common language and in many ways a common culture. There were also instances of friendship between Catholic and Protestant, which reached across the great gulf of antithetical religious traditions: "Phillip Fahey and William Darragh were both Irish immigrants and knew each other very well before coming to this country ... Although Phillip Fahey was a Roman Catholic and William Darragh a Covenanter they used to visit each other when time and opportunity permitted. It was in this way that Mr. Darragh learned of the need for a church building in this community [Mount Pleasant]."57 Normally, however, relationships between Covenanters and Irish Catholics were much cooler. Coming over from Ireland on the boat, endeavouring to bring order to a somewhat chaotic situation, Alexander Clarke had got into a fight. As he related the incident, "During the voyage I was attorney-general... barrister at law, minister of the interior, minister of justice and distributor of handcuffs, and on one occasion bestowed a pair of fisticuffs on an excellent brother."58 As the story was told later by his friends, Clarke's opponent was "a rude and burly Roman Catholic."59 The antipathy between the Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants (which included Covenanters) did not of course originate in Chignecto. It was fed by ancient memories, but they persisted in Chignecto: "Mary Savage was living on the [Melrose] family farm and one day, while returning on the train from Moncton, she met a

43 Chignecto Covenanter Converts

Map i Chignecto Covenanter congregations (Peter Ennals, Mount Allison University)

young man from Prince Edward Island and it was love at first sight. They corresponded and he proposed marriage but, because he was an Orangeman, the romance ended/'60 Further insight into this exclusiveness can be gleaned from the book Story of Melrose, written by Mary Savage's brother, Rev. Edward Savage. Savage was a native of Chignecto, born in Melrose in i859.61 He had assimilated the nativist tendency of Irish Roman Catholicism: "There was a family named Walsh ... One son, Alex., married a Miss Blacklock, and was lost to the Church."62 Savage put the matter simply and bluntly: "Mixed marriages [were] the greatest temptation and the greatest curse that confronted the newly arrived [Irish] settlers." Savage found biblical backing for his convictions: "Just as truly as intercourse between the Jews and the people that inhabited Palestine before their coming ... was an abomination; marriage with these [Protestants] in every case made for the moral destruction of the Catholic party."63 Savage spoke for the second generation of immigrant Irish Catholics. A statement about intermarriage originating from a similarly pious Covenanter would have been phrased differently, but the sentiments would have been much the same. On both sides, individuals, in spite of difficulties, held firm to the traditions of the elders. Savage's attitude was typical: "James Brown married one of James Barry's daughters, and settled in Tignish [Tidnish], operating a

44 Chignecto Covenanter Converts

Map 2 Eastern Presbytery in relation to the General Synod (Covenanter Witness, bicentenary issue, 22 May 1974, 29; slightly amended, used by permission)

saw mill. In his vicinity, at one time, there were quite a number of Catholics, but eventually they all seemed to become absorbed in the Protestant population. Brown, earnest and true, alone resisted the assimilation."64 In spite of fulminations on both sides, a few courageous or audacious people did "cross over." There were some conversions to the Covenanters from the Irish Catholics - the Bums

45 Chignecto Covenanter Converts family, for example. As Savage explained, "Two brothers, Michael and Patrick Burns, arrived from Ireland. Patrick took up a farm with the others. Michael, crowded, settled on the North Shore. Both married Protestants, and their memory is of the departed."65 Michael Burns "married Olive Fillmore, and ... cleared land from the forest and built a log cabin."66 One of Michael's grandchildren was Rev. Harry Burns, who joined the Little Shemogue Covenanter congregation, was ordained by the Presbyterian Church, and entered the United Church of Canada in 1925. Another grandson was William Michael Burns, for many years principal of the Model School, Fredericton; he was the author of A History and Story of Botsford, one of the chief sources of information about Chignecto Covenanters.67 With rare exceptions - such as the Burns family - Alexander Clarke's converts were the descendants of immigrant New England planters, Scots, Scots-Irish, Yorkshire English, and American Loyalists.

CHAPTER FOUR

Alexander Clarke's Labours and the Watershed 0/1847

After his visit to Chignecto in the autumn of 1827, Rev. Alexander Clarke moved permanently to the area with his family in iSiS.1 Having settled for a time on the Nova Scotia side of the Northumberland Strait, at Coldspring Head,2 Clarke came to realize that he could not support his family working as a missionary alone. As he remarked, "I never had a fixed salary ... Our people [were] few and widely scattered. The voluntary subscriptions ... never came up to the independent mark. Hence the necessity to work much with my own hands."3 In 1835, therefore, Clarke bought a lot of wilderness land (located in what is now East Amherst) which, by great effort, he converted into a productive farm and comfortable home, and where he resided to the time of his death. "His first barn was made by selecting four trees as near in the form of a square as could be found at a convenient distance from the house. They were sawed off several feet above the ground, roofed over and boarded in. This served until he could build a proper barn."4 He later observed, "It was with these hands I cleared away the dense wilderness where this comfortable edifice now stands."5 About his dual role as farmer and missionary, Clarke could joke with his young Baptist friend, Rev. David Steele, that he was able "to thrash seven days in the week; six days in my barn," explaining to Steele, "in his own inimitable manner, 'I thrash sinners on Sabbath/ "6 As a missionary, Clarke was on his own for the first three years. In Chignecto, as he had already done in the vicinity of Saint John, "Mr. C. in the spirit of Apostolic practice, preached 'from house to house/ proclaimed the Word in families, and endeavoured, on all occasions, to shew a readiness to make known to them the way of salvation."7 Winter travelling caused him particular hardship. Clarke once remarked, "How pleasant would I have thought it to have lain down

47 Alexander Clarke's Labours

on the snow, had I not been certain of freezing to death!"8 In Little Shemogue, Clarke's first public worship service was held in a barn.9 Samuel Crothers Murray imaginatively caught the excitement surrounding that first service: "News of the preacher's coming spread like wildfire through the community. The barn was put in readiness." An old-fashioned puncheon was transformed into a pulpit, and "expectations ran high." People came on horseback or on foot. The great highway was the sand beach along Northumberland Strait, and the pedestrians "forded the creeks and rivers as best they could ... The barn was packed."10 Undoubtedly, other such meetings were held - one apparently in William Brownell's barn at Northport in August 1828." The likelier venues for early meetings, however, were homes, where smaller numbers could more easily congregate. The earliest church building was started in Little Shemogue in i83O12 on the farm of Henry Lanchester:13 "That house stood for a few years."14 When it was discovered that there was a question about title to the property/5 the first site was abandoned. A site further east, on the farm of David Murray, was chosen, and a church built there. During the first three years, 1828 to 1831, congregations were formed, and session members were elected at Little Shemogue in 1828 and at Amherst in 1829.l6 Clarke preached in other places as well, notably Goose River. "The first eucharistical communion ever celebrated" in Chignecto was conducted by Clarke "on the first Sabbath of July, 1831" in Little Shemogue.17 A few days after this inaugural communion service, Clarke wrote to the secretaries of the mission society, who in turn reported to the Irish congregations through the church magazine. Entitled "Rev. Alexander Clarke," their report commended him as "this indefagitable Missionary" who, having left his native land four years earlier, had displayed "incredible labour."18 For one thing, Clarke did not make becoming a member of the Reformed Presbyterian church an easy matter. He insisted on proper instruction before anyone could have a child baptized or join the church, and the improper behaviour of a member could result in expulsion.19 Although the majority of people received Clarke gladly wherever he went in Chignecto, "not a few resisted him." Fifty-two participated in the first communion season, but many more than that attended; he had "a numerous audience from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward's Island."20 Because of Clarke's insistence on discipline, all active Chignecto congregations were destined to have many worshippers but fewer official members. The 1831 report of the mission board indicates that Clarke was on his way to Philadelphia to a meeting of the Reformed Presbyterian

48 Alexander Clarke's Labours

Synod, at which he was to appeal for clergy helpers.21 (The American body was already seething with disputes, which were to cause a rupture in the synod in 1833.) The report also indicates that Clarke was soon to be joined by a fellow clergyman, who arrived in Saint John in the summer of 1831. This was Rev. William Sommerville who, like Clarke, had volunteered for missionary work in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. William Sommerville (1800-78) had been born on i July 1800 in County Down, Ulster. He had studied at the Belfast Academical Institution and in Scotland, graduating with an AM from Glasgow University in i8i9-22 He then became a student at the Reformed Presbyterian Divinity Hall at Paisley, graduating in 1824.23 In 1826 he was licensed by the Southern Presbytery,24 and spent the next few years itinerating through Ireland.25 Having volunteered to be sent to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, Sommerville was ordained as a missionary on 31 May 183126 and arrived in Saint John on 16 August. "It was the design of the Mission Board to have Mr. Sommerville settle in St. John, and also minister to the adjacent societies in New Brunswick."27 There were a number of these preaching stations, "such as South Stream (Barnesville), Salt Springs, Jerusalem, Hope well, Chepody, Neripis and Londonderry."28 Sommerville lived in Hopewell/9 and early in the winter of 1831 he traversed the head of the Bay of Fundy and visited Clarke and his stations in Chignecto: "Continuing on around the Basin of Minas, he found urgent calls for his services in the Lower Horton [Township] district" of the Annapolis Valley.30 Before Sommerville moved there permanently, however, and probably at the instigation of Clarke, the two ministers decided to form a presbytery: it would provide mutual support as well as the opportunity for joint oversight. Thus, in Point de Bute on 25 April 1832, the two missionaries constituted themselves as the Reformed Presbytery of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, supported by Robert Cooke of Amherst and William Peacock of Little Shemogue as ruling elders.31 The minutes note that the four men were "honoured as instruments in giving existence to the first Presbyterian court of any name in the province of New Brunswick."32 Neither Clarke nor Sommerville had notified the Irish synod of their intention to form a presbytery. They established the new body, appointed Clarke moderator and Sommerville clerk, and then wrote to the synod for approval of what was a fait accompli. The synod in Ireland was not pleased. It disapproved "of the precipitancy and want of courtesy with which their missionaries have proceeded in constituting a Presbytery without consulting this Court." Synod,

49 Alexander Clarke's Labours however, did not demand restoration of the status quo ante: "Synod does recognize the Constitution, and directs them [the new Presbytery] to continue subject to this Synod, until reasons may occur and be assigned for placing them under the direction of another Synod."33 Quite apart from this fairly shaky start, it proved difficult to maintain good relations between the New World presbytery and the Old World synod. A certain amount of tension was generated between the two bodies, the one principal the other subordinate, which was worsened by the vagaries of ecclesiastical bureaucracy and by that other endemic British North American problem - uncertain transatlantic communication. Over the next few years, a sometimes discourteous palaver between the two Presbyterian courts was the rule. For a time the presbytery gave real support to its members. Clarke and Sommerville held each other to account, the elders also playing their part. Rules were prescribed for society meetings of lay people in the absence of clergy.34 The Clarke-Sommerville axis seemed further strengthened when Sommerville met and married Sarah Dickey, a member of Clarke's Goose River congregation, with Clarke officiating at their wedding on 20 June 1832.35 This mutual support and accountability continued when Sommerville moved permanently to Horton [Wolfville] in May 1833. For instance, in 1835 Sommerville went to Little Shemogue to assist at a communion season, and Clarke later travelled to Horton to assist Sommerville.36 Each man baptized one of the children of the other.37 Because Sarah Dickey Sommerville's parental home was in Chignecto, there was considerable toing and froing between Chignecto and Horton, as documented in The Diary of Deacon Elihu Woodworth 183 5-183 6.38 From the formation of the presbytery in 1832 until mid-i838 all went well, at least superficially. In 1838, however, the minutes of presbytery break off, the occasion being a sharp letter sent to Clarke by the congregation in Saint John. Neither minister lived there, yet both had some responsibility for congregational affairs. A new church had been opened there in i835,39 at which Clarke alone officiated.40 He was regarded by some as pastor to the congregation.41 At a presbytery meeting in 1838, however, it was made clear that the Saint John congregation were determined not to have Clarke minister to them any longer. From then on, Clarke and Sommerville did not cooperate. There had been contentious elements in the two ministers' relationship from at least as far back as Sommerville's move to Horton probably even earlier. From a letter that Sommerville wrote in 1833 to his American clerical friend and elder, Rev. Dr James Renwick Willson, it appears that the confidence that Sommerville had once reposed in Clarke had been shattered. Sommerville felt that Clarke

50 Alexander Clarke's Labours was acting against Covenanter principles. The Irish Reformed Presbyterian mission board and synod also cooled towards Clarke, that zealous agent of Irish Reformed Presbyterianism, and he no longer received a favourable press. Having for some three years been extolled as the sole "indefagitable missionary," and then, for a shorter span, as senior minister to Sommerville, Clarke's stock was falling. Sommerville, meanwhile, increased in wisdom and stature in the eyes of the synod. When the Reformed Presbytery of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia was reorganized in 1845, it was Sommerville of Cornwallis (Grafton) and Rev. Alexander McLeod Stavely of Saint John (an emigrant from Ireland in 1841) who made up the clerical section; Clarke was not present at all. To determine what caused the rift between the two, it is necessary to review Clarke's missionary activity between 1833 and 1847, after Sommerville had left Chignecto. In 1833 a church was erected at Jolicure, with the support of the New England planter families Brownell and Copp, though apparently no elders were elected. In 1834 the Goose River congregation was organized and elders appointed,42 and a church was erected. This meant that Clarke now had three regularly organized congregations: Little Shemogue, Amherst, and Goose River. There were also four preaching stations: Nappan, where services were held in a union church; Sackville, where worship was conducted in a temperance hall but where there was no session and only a few members; Jolicure, where there was a church but no session and only a few members; and River Hebert, which was subsequently to become a flourishing mission station. These were the seven churches of Chignecto. "Mr. Clarke continued to reside at Amherst, and made the circuit of these seven charges with perfect regularity."43 In most venues, crowds came to hear Clarke, though few in the audience would have been communicant members. Elders were appointed over the years for some of the congregations, including (at Amherst) David Dickey Logan, a son of Hugh and Margaret Dickey Logan.44 Amherst built a new Reformed Presbyterian church in 1838. If Clarke's missionary labours could not be faulted, what were the Reformed Presbyterian principles and practices that he allegedly transgressed? The situation becomes clearer when one examines the political and social climate of Nova Scotia during the first period of Clarke's ministry, from 1827 to 1847. In his classic essay "The Intellectual Awakening of Nova Scotia," provincial archivist D.C. Harvey characterized the years 1835 to 1848 "as a period when Nova Scotians were thoroughly awake."45 The tremendous advances made in Chignecto were noted by Clarke on the occasion of a donation visit held in his honour at Goose River in i847-46 The dominant political

5i Alexander Clarke's Labours

development was the "growing up of a feeling in favour of responsible government. "47 Despite Clarke's Covenanter achievements in Chignecto, his name was struck from the roll of the Irish synod on 14 October i847-48 The immediate reason for his expulsion was that he had voted in the general election of August 1847. A commentator sympathetic to him wrote that Clarke's departure was voluntary - that he was anxious to engage in the struggle for responsible government and that "in order to clear his conscience in the matter of taking part in politics and exercising his right, and that of his fellow church members, to vote, he and his churches ... left the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland."49 One colourful tradition recounts the circumstances of the transfer out of the Irish synod thus: "Mr Anderson said when he was a small boy his father [John Anderson] (an elder) took him to ... a meeting of Session. The houses were rather Primitive in those days and in this one there was a bed in the kitchen. Dr. Clark was lying on the bed with his three elders near him and after they were through discussing their own business he told them he had been ordered by the Presbytery (in Ulster) to return home and report conditions here in N.B."5° This incident must have occurred a long time after Clarke's permanent settlement in the Maritimes, for the members of his session were urging him to go: The old Gentlemen slowly raised himself up and let his legs hang over the edge of the bed and said "he could not afford to go much as he would like to nor they could not [sic] afford to send him" and he then and there proposed they would Join up with the R.P. Church of North America which had its Headquarters in Philadelphia. They had a Theological College there and held many of the courts of the Church there ... After a while the Session endorsed the change for convenience sake and on application the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland so far as Dr Clark and his several congregations were concerned were duly transferred to the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America. The question of voting ... was likely an incident in the matter.51

The orthodox powers gave a rather different account of the affair, and one that was much more judgemental. Clarke had indeed voted and thereby had "identified himself with ... the same government which had inflicted the persecution upon his forefathers in Scotland."52 Even though he claimed that his voting "was not contrary to the position of the church in civil relations," he had clearly "failed to satisfy the requirements of the presbytery ... absenting] himself from the meetings." Clarke, "having violated his church principles and

52 Alexander Clarke's Labours

ministerial vows, and having declined the authority of the presbytery and Synod, was formally suspended, and his name stricken from the roll October 14, i847/'53 In fact, Clarke's decision to vote in the 1847 election was the culmination of a process that had begun much earlier, perhaps even during his early days in Chignecto. In some respects, Clarke seemed to be rigorous and unbending in his Covenanter convictions. It was said that "during his early ministry, Mr. Clarke was uncompromising in his position on political dissent. He did not admit indiscriminately persons into the church."54 In a letter of 10 April 1833, Clarke expressed his "deepest concern of mind" about the growing discord among the American brethren - discord that was increasingly dividing the church into Old School (conservative) and New School (liberal) factions. "May the Lord send peace to our Zion," he wrote, "[this] is the prayer of ... Alexander] Clarke."55 Despite such hopes, the rupture took place at the synod meeting in Philadelphia in August 1833. Clarke also acted as agent for the Albany Quarterly, the organ of the Old School Covenanters, from 1832 through 1834. On this evidence, Clarke seemed to stand at the conservative end of the Covenanter doctrinal spectrum. In other respects, however, his attitudes and behaviour verged on the liberal. Clarke became closely associated with Robert McGowan Dickey, the Tory member of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly for Amherst Township, 1836-43, and for Cumberland County, 1843-51. It is not known when Dickey became a Covenanter, though he had apparently supported the Reformed Presbyterian Church from its beginnings in Chignecto in 1828. By the time of his death, in 1854, he was considered a very devout Covenanter.56 Dickey had established a good rapport with both Clarke and Sommerville; it was Sommerville - his son-in-law - who declared that Dickey's "house was a home for the ministers."57 In March 1828 Dickey had been commissioned a justice of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas.58 Since he was appointed a magistrate before Clarke settled in Chignecto - an appointment that necessitated taking an oath of allegiance to the crown - Dickey could hardly be blamed for breaking Covenanter tenets before he had heard of them. But in 1832 when Dickey was named a justice of the peace (having sworn the oath of allegiance to the crown on assuming this office), he presumably could not plead ignorance of Covenanter convictions. Other pertinent information comes from Sommerville's letter of 1833 to Rev. Dr James Renwick Willson, in which Sommerville states that he had initially placed great confidence in Clarke but that because of Clarke's "political course," the confidence was totally

53 Alexander Clarke's Labours

impaired: "Mr. C[larke]'s connection and mine is for the time ceased."59 Because of Robert McGowan Dickey's acceptance of the appointment as justice of the peace, and because of Clarke's acquiesence in it, both Clarke and Sommerville's father-in-law had forfeited Sommerville's trust. In one of Sommerville's Annapolis Valley congregations, "Mr. Beckwith was formerly a magistrate and ceased to act as such ... after Mr. Sommerville came."60 "The Covenanters hold that a person ought not to hold office under the Government under existing circumstances."61 Similar strictures against voting and participating in civic life held in Barnesville,62 Kings County, New Brunswick. Whatever his earlier conformism, Clarke dramatically shifted to the doctrinal (though not the political) left - well beyond the bounds of acceptable Covenanter behaviour - by voting in the December 1836 general election: "Mr. Clark[e] then gave ... his vote."63 Surprisingly, this decisive break with doctrinal first principles and practice did not result in Clarke's immediate ejection from the Reformed Presbyterian Synod of Ireland, whereas his decision to vote at the general election in 1847 did. How does one account for this apparent anomaly? The 1836 vote "was an election the likes of which Nova Scotia had never seen before."64 The 1830 election had raised expectations that the government would inaugurate political reform, but this did not happen. In 1836, therefore, the Reformers and Tories were contending strongly, and nowhere more vigorously than in Cumberland County. A depression had gripped the province since 1834, bringing in its wake devastating consequences for many. In Cumberland there were also crop failures, which by the mid-i83os had led to acute agrarian distress.65 An additional factor was the departure from Amherst of the House of Assembly member, Alexander Stewart, to take up permanent residence in Halifax.66 The ten-year assembly members Stewart and Joseph Oxley were Tories seeking re-election in Cumberland County, while the Reformers fielded Gaius Lewis and Andrew McKim, the latter of whom excited the most passionate interest and opposition. McKim, a farmer who was also a shoemaker, was a Scotch Baptist67 but "entirely unconnected with the Baptists" of Nova Scotia.68 He had taken up lay preaching around Wallace Bay, though with little apparent success.69 Well before the writs for the 1836 election were issued, McKim and Lewis began campaigning for the "farming interest" on a Reform platform. "There was a touch of radicalism to [the platform] and its democratic tone would have naturally produced a vehement conservative opposition."70 The long campaign of Lewis

54 Alexander Clarke's Labours and McKim, the radical nature of their manifesto, and the uncertain religious affiliation of McKim, aroused the deepest suspicions among the conservative clergy: "Stewart [and Oxley] represented caution; McKim [and Lewis] stood for immediate change."71 Clarke joined Amherst's Church of England rector, George Townshend, and Wallace's Church of Scotland pastor, Hugh McKenzie, in vehemently opposing the two Reformers. Townshend, McKenzie, and Clarke, given their classical education and theological training, were distrustful of the self-taught McKim, whose irregular ordination as a Scotch Baptist minister was highly suspect. Clarke's opposition led him onto the hustings, for in this election "candidates were judged in public meetings."72 At a campaign meeting in Amherst, Clarke effectively taunted and humiliated McKim by asking his opinion on the genicocknical (he meant "gynaecocratical,"73 as was later pointed out to him) part of the British constitution; the reference was to government by women, or "petticoat government."74 "Mr. Clark[e] spoke briefly before giving his vote."75 When the sheriff announced the official result, "he declared Lewis and Stewart elected."76 Although there was a split return in Cumberland, Reform members preponderated in the new assembly. The political alliance between the Covenanter pastor Clarke and the Church of England rector Townshend is remarkable, especially in view of their personal animosity.77 The incongruity of this marriage of convenience was not lost on keen Chignecto observers: "Who abjure prelacy [episcopacy] in one of the articles of their faith? answer, the Covenanters. Who on the Hustings declared himself friendly to an Established Religion? answer, the Rev. Mr. Clarke. Who is the Rev. Mr. Clarke? answer, a Covenanter."78 William Sommerville must have been deeply mortified by such innuendo. Yet the presbyterial relationship between him and Clarke though temporarily broken in 1833 - remained officially intact before and after the 1836 election.79 Perhaps Sommerville's knowledge of the situation80 - the fact that it involved a reform agenda advocated by the supposedly dangerous demagogue, McKim - made him acquiesce in this Hobson's choice and caused him to moderate his usual intolerant attitude. An additional factor may have been that Sommerville's father-in-law, Robert McGowan Dickey, ran and was elected as the Tory member for Amherst Township. Discretion being the better part of valour, Sommerville chose to remain neutral - for the time being. Such reasoning may explain why Sommerville overlooked Clarke's flagrant violation of Covenanter principles, but what stayed the hand of the Irish synod? Certainly, its members would have known of

55 Alexander Clarke's Labours

Clarke's fall from grace, though direct mention of it is lacking in extant Irish Reformed Presbyterian sources. Perhaps the members of synod hoped that Clarke would show repentance for his behaviour. Other than Sommerville, they had no Covenanter clergy in the area, and there was no replacement they could send out if they decided to remove Clarke. Nor could they libel the unblemished moral character of Clarke, "a clergyman well known for his virtuous walk and habits."81 Thus, the Irish synod took no action - for the time being. There was later an American parallel to Clarke's situation and the resulting inaction by synod. The American Old School Covenanter Robert James George McKnight (1878-1966) held "racist attitudes ... incompatible with Reformed Presbyterian doctrine and tradition,"82 and as principal of the Reformed Presbyterian Seminary he put his racist attitudes into practice, as a former student recalled: "Lawrence Bottoms (who was black) was not allowed to live with us [students] or use the same restroom. He had a little cubbyhole on [the] first floor beside the side entrance, and went to the cellar to use a bathroom."83 Yet Dr McKnight "not only dominated but was the Seminary for over thirty years, and his powerful personality was a dominant influence in the denomination."84 As in Clarke's case, a prominent Reformed Presbyterian clergyman of otherwise impeccable moral stature had flouted central Covenanter tenets yet had escaped the synod's censure or rebuke. While Sommerville was prepared to tolerate Clarke's aberrant behaviour in 1836 and while the Irish synod was prepared to overlook it, the Reformed Presbyterian community in Saint John was prepared to do neither. After Clarke had dedicated the new Reformed Presbyterian church there in 1835, he and Sommerville had shared the responsibility for supervising the pastorless congregation.85 New Brunswick held its own general election in the autumn of 1837,86 and the Saint John Reformed Presbyterian community made it clear in a letter to Clarke in 1838 that they wanted nothing more to do with him.87 Clarke brought the letter to the presbytery - of which he was the moderator and Sommerville the clerk88 - but there is no record of a response ever being made. This was the last meeting of the Reformed Presbytery of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia that Clarke attended, and it signified the end of the long-troubled ClarkeSommerville working relationship.89 In Clarke's Chignecto congregations, on the other hand, there is no indication that his voting in the 1836 election generated any controversy, even though Clarke and some of his followers voted Tory while others voted Reform.90 It is reasonable to suppose that these political differences would have caused some religious tension, yet

56 Alexander Clarke's Labours

people on both sides of the constitutional issue remained Covenanter. In the subsequent general elections of 1840 and 1843, Clarke neither voted nor played any significant role.91 Perhaps basic Covenanter instincts reasserted themselves, at least for the time being; or perhaps Clarke judged the election issues to be less important; or perhaps the ramifications of his involvement in the 1836 election were sufficiently cautionary to dissuade him from voting in either of the next two elections. Local tradition holds that those Chignecto Covenanters who in 1848 switched from the Reformed Presbyterian Synod of Ireland to the General Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America "remained exactly the same with the one exception that they allowed their members to vote."92 What is to be made of this tradition, which clearly sometimes was honoured more in the breach? There is no record of a Chignecto Covenanter having been disciplined for voting, as happened in the Saint John and Annapolis Valley communities. Indeed, there is at least one instance of the direct opposite - a Chignecto Covenanter voting and being proud of it. Jeremiah Brownell, "for nearly fifty years ... a consistent member of the Reformed Presbyterian Church and an earnest student of God's word," had been a "life-long Liberal and cast his first vote for Alex McKim and Gaius Lewis, the reform ticket in Howe's struggle for responsible government" in i836.93 Forty years later, when schism rent the Little Shemogue Reformed Presbyterian congregation, it was reported that "when the split took place in 1876 ... there was very few that did not Exercise their right of franchise."94 The principle stated an ideal; in practice, some Covenanters did vote before 1847, while others refused to do so even after 1847. The attitude of the Irish Reformed Presbyterian mission board and synod indicates that Clarke had fallen from favour long before his official expulsion in 1847. The 1838 action of the Saint John congregation was the first conspicuous blemish on Clarke's near-perfect record. In the 1839 synod report, for example, Sommerville's work was praised while Clarke was not so much as mentioned, though there was still talk of "our missionaries." The same report contained a veiled attack on Clarke's extra-curricular political activities: "The chief danger to the missionaries and members of the Church in the Colonies arises from political partisanship; and their condition, exposed to numerous and powerful temptations, demands the sympathy, prayers, and faithful counsels of the Church in these lands." The board wrote to the missionaries, "warning them against political confederation with the contending parties in the State, and tendering to them such directions respecting steadfastness in their profession."95

57 Alexander Clarke's Labours

It was certainly known that Clarke had been involved in politics. In 1840 Rev. Thomas Houston, the longtime secretary of the Irish Reformed Presbyterian mission board, informed an American colleague: "Clarke has been unhappily involved with [American New School Reformed Presbyterian leader] Dr. [Samuel Brown] Wylie ... and has been intermeddling with electioneering affairs ... This is greatly to be regretted - but these compliances with the times ruin all."96 The Irish Reformed Presbyterian synod had its own experience of an Old School/New School rupture, for in 1840 a New School faction broke away from the synod and constituted the Eastern Reformed Presbytery. In 1841 the Irish synod noted that it had received no word from Rev. Alexander Clarke, though it had written to him at least twice. In 1842 the mission board ominously warned that matters concerning Clarke had come up "which may require the Synod's mature consideration."97 Synod grasped the nettle, doing so the more easily because another Reformed Presbyterian missionary, Rev. Alexander McLeod Stavely, had gone to Saint John. The clerk of synod wrote to Clarke and Sommerville to the effect that Clarke should declare to his colleagues that his conduct had been improper and that he would not give offence again; and that Sommerville should accept the admission as sufficient, while Stavely was to be a judicious arbitrator.98 Clarke apparently paid no attention to the synod's admonitory letter. In 1843 synod expressed its dissatisfaction "with the conduct of the Rev. Alexander Clarke in refusing to submit to their decision, as expressed in the ... minute of last year." Synod thereupon commanded Sommerville and Stavely to "resuscitate the Presbytery."99 The mission board's report dwelt long and warmly on Sommerville and Stavely, and was short and begrudging on Clarke: "As the relation in which the Rev. Alexander Clarke, of Amherst, stands to the Synod, has not for some time past been satisfactory, [the board] refrains from offering, at present, any report respecting his stations or labours."100 Sommerville and Stavely did as they were instructed, reorganizing the Reformed Presbytery of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in May 1845, the former acting as moderator, the latter as clerk. At that meeting, "Mr. Stavely mentioned that he had written to Mr. Clarke of Amherst requesting his cooperation but has received no definite reply. He is enjoined to write Mr. C. [again] to ascertain whether or not he is disposed to unite with the members of this Court according to the directions of the Supreme Judicatory."101 Clarke was well able to write, however disinclined he may have been to do so, for in the same year he addressed a letter of inquiry to the Eastern Reformed Presbytery,

58 Alexander Clarke's Labours the Irish New Light group that had broken with the Reformed Presbyterian Synod of Ireland in 1840.102 Although Stavely had been instructed to write to Clarke a year earlier, he informed the presbytery in April 1846 that he had not done so, since he had been instructed by Rev. Thomas Houston of the mission board to refer the case to synod. This reason was "considered sufficient to justify the Clerk of Presbytery, in not having written to Mr. C."103 Once the matter was in the hands of the Irish synod, events moved inexorably towards Clarke's expulsion. For his part, Clarke was bellicose and boastful. Early in 1846 he wrote in the Irish ecclesiastical newspaper, the Banner of Ulster: "I was the first missionary from the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland to the British North American colonies. There was not a man, young or old, connected with the Synod willing to devote himself to the mission ... Neither were there funds in the hands of Synod at the time to carry on any plan which might have been suggested, with vigour."™* This was not a statement designed to win friends or conciliate hostile synod members. The mission board's secretary, Rev. Thomas Houston, published a letter in an American Old School Reformed Presbyterian journal which, though not directly naming its subjects, distinguished between officially sanctioned Reformed Presbyterian clergy in the colonies - Sommerville, Stavely, and James Reid Lawson105 - and the pariah, Clarke. The three orthodox champions remained "steadfast to the cause of our testimony," while Clarke "has evinced the disposition to follow the course of some who left us in this country [the schismatic Eastern Reformed Presbytery], and has not of late years been recognized as a missionary in connexion with the Synod."106 Clarke confessed in 1848 that "he had not considered himself responsible to the [Irish synod] for some time past."10? In the general elections of 1836 and 1847, Clarke is known to have voted for the Tories. Yet he was moved by the egalitarian tradition in North America. He later recalled of his early years, "People were all very kind to me. All called me brother Clarke, which made me feel very proud to have, in my adopted country, so numerous a brotherhood, of whom I had never before heard."108 On the other hand, again reflecting on his early days in the New World, Clarke observed that in "the young country, with few inhabitants, and that few very much divided in religious opinions, where the levelling principle is a ruling one ... a spirit of insubordination is regarded generally as a virtue."109 Ultramontane in religion, Clarke was a conservative in politics. Towards the end of his career, Clarke served on the Board of School Commissioners for Cumberland County. After an election in which

59 Alexander Clarke's Labours

the Liberals were victorious, James Shannon Morse, the elderly Amherst lawyer (who was more than ten years Clarke's senior) wrote to Joseph Howe, then premier of the province, suggesting that Howe kick out the Amherst lot, Tories all, and replace them on the board with good Reformers. Howe refused, though he did not deny that they were all Tories. "Why should an old clergyman like Mr. Clarke be degraded?" he asked.110 Although Clarke worked as a missionary throughout the isthmus of Chignecto, he lived near Amherst and might have been influenced by "Cumberland County's Tory preponderance."111 When he first came to the region, "Amherst was a hotbed of Toryism' and the Tories and Anglicans dominated every aspect of its life. Amherst was still a small village, for the whole County of Cumberland had only 5,416 people in 1827. "112 Clarke's relative isolation from other Covenanter ministers in the colonies may also account for his growing coolness towards the central Covenanter conviction that one should abstain from exercising the franchise. Clarke's close association with the longtime Tory member of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly, Robert McGowan Dickey, who was first elected in 1836, may also have inclined him towards voting Tory. On the other side, the Logans, who were an influential Reformed Presbyterian family in Amherst, held pro-Reform convictions; the same could be said of the Brownells of Goose River. Clarke voted in 1847 because he held the common view that the general election would be decisive. A writer from Amherst had warned Nova Scotians, "There is a great Constitutional battle to be fought, which is of more importance, touching on the destinies of this Province, than any which have preceded it since Acadia became an English colony."113 There was one other factor that may have helped more an ideological conservative, such as Clarke, into the Tory camp. The Tories campaigned on a platform of "No popery" and implicitly accused the Reformers of championing a "Catholic ascendancy," a charge that was vehemently denied.114 The Catholic card played in Cumberland in 1847 suggests that the virulently anti-Catholic Clarke was constrained by his conscience to exercise the franchise. Clarke may also have voted in order to remove an inconsistency between his own and some of his congregants' practice. His voting in 1836, and the vague charges of meddling in political affairs, had left him unconvicted but not above suspicion. In a sense, therefore, his voting in 1847, which resulted in his expulsion from the Irish synod, cleared up the matter. Clarke may also have deliberately voted on that occasion in order to provoke the severing of relations with the Reformed Presbyterian Synod of Ireland and thus open the way for

60 Alexander Clarke's Labours

union with the more congenial American New School Reformed Presbyterians. Chignecto sources sympathetic to Clarke see him as the initiator in the process - clearing the decks for himself and his congregants, so as to have an influence on Nova Scotia (and New Brunswick) affairs. There is no hint of criticism, let alone condemnation, of Clarke's action in these intramural accounts - indeed quite the opposite: Clarke is regarded as a champion of freedom and responsibility. Old School commentators, on the other hand, see the Reformed Presbyterian synod as having forced the issue. In their view, Clarke was justifiably condemned for sacrificing a principle for which his ancestors had been willing to sacrifice their very lives. The synod was purging itself of a dangerous deviant. Although Clarke's own version of the affair is not extant, there may have been yet other factors leading to his 1836 and 1847 breaches of discipline which caused his removal from the Irish Reformed Presbyterian synod rolls. First, Clarke was annoyed at the grudging approval accorded to the formation of the new regional presbytery and at what he construed as the synod's less than wholehearted attention to its welfare. Secondly, Clarke was disappointed that the Irish synod did not send him more ministerial assistants. He needed all the support he could get. Lacking it, he became increasingly isolated and alienated. While it had been overlooked in 1836, when Clarke first voted, the same breach of Covenanter discipline resulted the second time in Clarke's summary dismissal. The Presbyterian was thus left without a presbytery. But this situation did not last very long. Clarke had found - or been found by - another presbytery, and this opened a new era for the Chignecto Covenanters.

Table 1 Statistics of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America, under the care of the General Synod, 1852

Date of organi- Name of the zation congregation

1833

1832

1830

Elders

Attend Commu- prayer nicants meetings

Amherst,1 N.S., including the stations at Amherst, Nappan, Maccan, Sackville, Jolicure, River Hebert

90

Goose River,2 including the stations at Pugwash, River Philip, Mount Pleasant Goose River, Tidnish

145

Shemogue3

Children in Sabbath school & Bible class Teachers

Vols. in library

20

Papers taken for Sabbath school

50 50

6

150 150 80 100 100 100

100

25

30

Containing sittings for

50 50 50 50

90

Attendance on public worship Church buildings and property

Frame ch., galleried, 40 x 30 Frame church, 45 x 32 Frame ch., unfinished, 36 x 26

250 200 150

Frame church, 40 x 30 Frame church, 36 x 26

200 150

Frame church, 34 x 28 Frame church, 31 x 28

200 200

Frame church, 40 x 30

250

50

20 30 55 50

3 3 6 6

25 75 100

50

6

200

Source: Banner of the Covenant, December 1953, 390 1 Pastor's address: Rev. Alex. Clarke, Amherst, Cumberland Co., N.S. 2 Pastor's address: Rev. W.S. Darrach, Goose River, Cumberland Co., N.S. 3 Correspondent of congregation: Mr Wm Duncan, Botsford, Westmorland Co., N.B.

250 150 150 200 150 50

200

Table 2 Statistics of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America, under the care of the General Synod, 1852: Finances

Name of the congregation

Amherst, N.S., including the stations at Amherst, Nappan, Maccan, Sackville, Jolicure, River Hebert Goose River, including the stations at Pugwash, River Philip, Mount Pleasant, Goose River, Tidnish Shemogue

Other contributions for congreg. Pastor's purposes, salary or church supplies building, &c

Children's Theolomissiongical ary purses seminary

Synod fund

Home missions

Foreign missions

250

800

5

150

272

5

5.50

10

5

35.00

7

300

Source: Banner of the Covenant, December 1853, 392

Miscellaneous miss. con.

5

25

Total

Weekly average for congregational purposes (cts. mills)

Gross Weekly Weekly av. average for for each missionary church purposes member (cts. mills) (cts. mills)

$1,060.00

22.4

0.2

22.6

$ 467.50

5.6

0.6

6.2

$ 347.00

CHAPTER FIVE

The American General Synod: Consolidation and Fragmentation

Rev. Alexander Clarke joined the New School General Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America (commonly called the General Synod) through its Northern Presbytery on 21 April 1848, taking all the Covenanter churches and mission stations in Chignecto with him. Clarke's February 1848 petition to join the New School Reformed Presbyterians read as follows: The petition of Alexander Clarke of Amherst, Nova Scotia, Humbly Showeth, That, twenty years ago, petitioner was sent out as a missionary to these provinces by the Reformed Presbyterian Synod of Ireland, - that in the present field of his labour, petitioner found but one professed Covenanter,1 - that there was not a Presbyterian house of worship in the two counties [Cumberland and Westmorland] in which the petitioner's circuit lies, nor any suitable place for preaching, at all - that there were but few of the Presbyterian name, and those, in many instances, unworthy of even the name, - that now there are many stations, four houses of worship, a fifth in progress, other places of accommodation, and nearly two hundred communicants, - that in view of these facts, and aware that the petitioner stands alone, others wish to press into the field, that without immediate help no one man, in these shaking times, can hold these many posts together ... And as your petitioner's views of public policy are in accordance with those of your reverend body, - Therefore petitioner earnestly prays that you will, without delay, take him into your connexion, under your protection, and send him some assistance. And petitioner hereby promises, to follow no divisive courses, but to yield all due submission in the Lord. And petitioner, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c., &c. Amherst 2d February, 1848. ALEXANDER CLARKE.2

The Northern Presbytery welcomed Clarke with open arms,3 synod warmly approving the new arrangement at its meeting in New York

64 The American General Synod in October 1848. Clarke wrote a report informing synod about the Chignecto Reformed Presbyterian congregations and mission stations and the general state of Covenanter fortunes in the region.4 However much difficulty and pain the switch from Old School to New School may have caused Clarke, it was not apparently a matter of great moment in the Chignecto congregations. Clarke discussed it with the Little Shemogue session. Presumably, similar discussions took place in Goose River and Amherst, and the other congregations must also have been consulted. Since Clarke noted in his petition that "his views of public policy" (i.e., voting) were "in accordance" with those of the American Reformed Presbyterian body, it must be assumed that his views of public policy reflected most of those in the Chignecto Covenanter body. The engrafting of the Chignecto Covenanters onto the American Reformed Presbyterian synod seemed to be painless and easily effected, and it immediately brought mutual benefits. Chignecto sources insisted that the American synod "was exactly the same [as the Irish synod] with the one exception that they allowed their members to vote."5 Another exception, though it was not specified, was the right of Covenanters to hold public office. Although few Chignecto Covenanters were aware of it at the time, Clarke's contention that his views on public policy were in accordance with his American brothers and sisters covered an ambiguous or even anomalous situation. It is important to recall that the American Covenanters had taken a number of steps that distinguished them from their co-religionists in Scotland and Ulster. First, they had subsumed the descending obligation of the covenants under the communion service; secondly, they held that dissent from the American republican government replaced dissent from the crown; thirdly, New Light General Synod Reformed Presbyterians held that the republican form of government was not illegitimate and consequently voting was allowed. Clarke and the Chignecto Covenanters easily took the first step, but they had great difficulty with the other two. Clarke's Old School colleagues were thus able to charge him with dissimulation, not to say hypocrisy: "In the year 1847, Mr. Clarke identified himself with the government... under the British Crown ... the same government which had inflicted the persecution upon his forefathers in Scotland."6 Clarke's disingenuousness was shown by his allowing Covenanters to participate in politics and public life, yet "never once was the Queen or the Royal Family remembered in [his] public prayer. Her Majesty was omitted from the Covenanters' prayer list, because they refused to recognize the national Sovereign as head of the church."7 Clarke's opponents were not slow to point this out: "Reformed

65 Consolidation and Fragmentation

Presbyterians in the Maritime Provinces, voting at elections, serving as jurors in courts of justice or holding civil office from the crown, are practically at variance with the deliverance of their own Church on the subject of civil relations."8 In the halcyon days of 1848, however, both Chignecto Covenanters and the General Synod rejoiced in the new family relationship. Few people noticed or cared about the difference in culture of the two groups. The Chignecto Covenanters formed a distinct group of congregations collectively affiliating with the New School Reformed Presbyterian synod. No one was willing to examine too closely the status of this "distinct society" within the General Synod confederation. The Chignecto Covenanters were thus free to vote in general elections and could now do so with an easy conscience. The public figures in their midst - legislators such as Robert McGowan Dickey could hold civic office under the crown and dismiss any lingering doubts that they were somehow breaching their allegiance as Covenanters. The General Synod was overjoyed - with four new churches, a larger number of mission stations, an accretion of more than two hundred members, the congregations in Chignecto were "where they ought to be."9 Moreover, the synod now had Rev. Alexander Clarke, an "excellent brother," as a member of its clergy: "Mr. Clarke was known to presbytery, as a man and minister of the best character and standing; as firmly attached to Reformed Presbyterian principles, and as occupying a large and most important field of missionary enterprise."10 The editor of the church newspaper, Banner of the Covenant, made a special trip to Chignecto to report to his readers on this latest addition to their church. He reported on the physical contours of Chignecto, the character of its people, the condition of the congregations (which included a paean of praise for Clarke's past efforts), and the prospects for the cause of Reformed Presbyterianism in the area; and he concluded with a summons for clerical assistants for Clarke.11 Clarke had long complained of the Irish synod's inadequate support in supplying him with clergy, and he undoubtedly hoped that the new synodical jurisdiction would be more forthcoming. In fact, at the presbytery meeting at which Clarke presented his petition, a licentiate in the audience immediately offered his services. He was Henry Gordon (1824 [or i826]-i897), who went to the Chignecto area in July 1848. Gordon assisted Clarke at the communion service held at the end of August in Goose River, and Clarke was initially impressed by his qualities.12 Gordon was zealous and hardworking, but his inexperience and some of his ministerial practices annoyed Clarke, and at Clarke's instigation "the Northern Presbytery deemed

66 The American General Synod

it proper to withdraw Rev. H. Gordon from the field."13 In his later years, Clarke was very critical of this first helper sent him by the American synod.14 Perhaps because Gordon was a grievous disappointment, Clarke underwent a period of despondency.15 In a report to the 1851 meeting of the American synod, in which he noted that the Presbyterian community was "but a small minority" in spite of "the senior missionary having laboured so long a time in this field," Clarke said he was "unable to meet it much longer, and wishes to withdraw from the service."16 In fact, Clarke did withdraw from Chignecto for a few weeks, as the Philadelphia Presbytery reported: "Mr. Clark came within our bounds about the ist of April [1851], since which time he has been labouring in the Fifth Church, Kensington." Clarke was invited to become their permanent minister,17 but he declined the offer and returned to Chignecto (secondary sources never fail to mention this opportunity which Clarke turned down).18 Having recovered from his depression, Clarke resumed work in Chignecto with renewed vigour. As it happened, Clarke's isolation was already coming to an end. William Stavely Darragh (1824-1902) arrived in the summer of 1849 and served as scripture reader in the River Philip area. Returning that autumn to theological college in Philadelphia, Darragh came back in the spring of 1850 as a licentiate and was accompanied by another licentiate, Andrew R. Gailey (1822-83).19 Both men had been licensed on 30 April 1850, having offered themselves for the work in Chignecto.20 Darragh's field of pastoral activity was Goose River, while Andrew Gailey ministered in Little Shemogue. Both men worked effectively, and to both were extended calls from their respective congregations, which they accepted. Darragh was ordained on 12 November 1850 in New York City, with Clarke preaching the ordination sermon.21 Gailey was ordained in Little Shemogue on 5 February 1851, with Clarke and Darragh officiating.22 William Stavely Darragh was one of the ablest assistants whom Clarke ever had, and at first they worked very well together, accomplishing much for Reformed Presbyterianism between 1850 and 1858. The Covenanter cause in Chignecto flourished under the clerical triumvirate of Clarke, Darragh, and Gailey. The statistical report from i85223 lists three full-fledged congregations - Amherst, Goose River, and Little Shemogue - as well as nine mission stations and eight church buildings. The grand total of communicant members was 325, there being 145 at Goose River (and its stations), 90 at Amherst (and its stations), and 90 at Little Shemogue. Total attendance at public worship was given as 1,780. The discrepancy between the number of

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communicant members and the number of worshippers who attended services was frequently commented on by Clarke. At Nappan, for instance, he noted, 'The attendance here is large, although the number of church members in communion with us is but few as yet."24 Given Clarke's figure of "nearly 200" communicant members in 1848, the increase in four years is remarkable. Covenanter statistics cannot be read from the provincial census, however, for at least two reasons. First, there is a scarcity of census returns, both nominal and statistical, for Cumberland County.25 Secondly, when the first extant complete census appeared (in 1861), no distinction was made between Presbyterians and Reformed Presbyterians; Reformed Presbyterians were also enumerated in other denominational categories. Clarke referred to a number of gross miscalculations in the 1861 census,26 and others similarly commented on the unreliability of census statistics as a source for Covenanter numbers.27 As the 1852 statistical report shows, the number of churches had increased from four to eight in the period i848-52.28 Some of the new churches were presumably in an unfinished state. In Chignecto, for example, a church might be roofed and in a usable condition, but not have the interior completed with the pews in place. The 1852 statistical report indicates a church at Nappan, but its opening - when it was pewed and interiorly finished - did not occur until early in 1855.29 By the time the 1852 report was published (in 1853), Rev. Andrew Gailey had already left Chignecto,30 his departure apparently caused by the weather. He was not the last expatriate clergyman of whom it would be said that "the severity of the climate [was] too much for his constitution [so] he returned to the States."31 Gailey was given mild praise by Clarke: "Mr. G., an honest honorable man, stayed three years [as] pastor of Chimague congregation, and withdrew in an orderly manner." In Clarke's judgment, Gailey had managed to bring some peace and stability to "the scene of conflicting elements which G[ordon] had, Jesuitically put in motion."32 John Alford (1828-1914) was the next to arrive. He came to Chignecto as a licentiate in 1854 and ministered for a few months in various congregations.33 He was the first cleric to come who was not of Irish birth. Although he stayed in the region but a short time and was not ordained, his name is always listed among those who served with Clarke.34 Perhaps this is because he wrote about Chignecto when he ministered there,35 or perhaps because of his financial generosity.36 Alford revisited Chignecto briefly some twenty-five years after his original missionary tenure.37 In his collective judgment on Chignecto clergy, Clarke did not mention Alford, probably on account of the shortness of his stay in the region.38

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Not long after Alford's departure, the efforts of Clarke and Darragh were aided and augmented by the Irish-born licentiate Alexander Robinson (1819-86), who arrived in Little Shemogue in July 1855 and became the first resident Reformed Presbyterian minister there. Robinson worked hard, and his efforts were crowned with success by a large communion service at Little Shemogue at the end of August. Clarke was enthusiastic about the event: "Since the year '31, when the Supper was first dispensed there ... we have many times enjoyed much of the Divine goodness on communion occasions ... But never before, neither there, nor on any other such occasion, have we seen and felt as we did."39 The person chiefly responsible for the large crowd, as well as for thirty-three new members, six adult baptisms, and a number of infant baptisms, was Alexander Robinson: "Every house, family and individual - saint and sinner - Protestant and Papist, was ferreted out, around and along an extensive range, and freely and faithfully dealt with about matters of life and death."40 Robinson also demonstrated considerable energy in extending the Port Elgin mission station.41 Having been called by the Little Shemogue congregation in 1856, he was ordained on i July in New York City/2 and on 14 July he was installed as pastor at Little Shemogue and Port Elgin. In March 1857 a new church was opened in Port Elgin, with Robinson presiding at the dedication.43 The land for the building site had been donated by Alexander Monro.44 Darragh meanwhile was prospering in Goose River, where his session book listed over 260 members.45 Covenanter witness was also flourishing at Mount Pleasant, where a new church was erected though not finished - in 1851.46 That same year, Darragh married Rachel Moore, who was from a Chignecto Covenanter family.47 The Goose River congregation was growing so rapidly that the original church, already close to twenty years old, was too small. The congregation therefore built a new one "in Goose River proper."48 No photograph survives and no actual measurements are known, but "this building was quite large, and had a gallery." Its seating capacity is also unknown, "but it must have been quite high for those days."49 Clarke wrote that the church, "a spacious house ... was occupied, in [eighteen hundred and] fifty-five, if not a little before."50 The building was the largest Covenanter church that had so far been built in Chignecto. The early to mid-i85os marked a significant consolidation of Chignecto Covenanter fortunes. Robinson strengthened the Little Shemogue congregation and added many more members at Port Elgin, as well as building a church there. Clarke presided at the official opening of the Reformed Presbyterian church in Nappan.51

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Although it was not reported in the church newspaper, a Reformed Presbyterian church was also opened in Maccan. Meanwhile, Darragh was busy in Goose River and Mount Pleasant, as well as at the other mission stations. The mid-i85os were also an important period for Clarke. In 1856 the synod elected him moderator and instructed him to make a visit to the Covenanter churches in Scotland and Ireland.52 Clarke thus made a once-in-a-lifetime return visit to the old country; he was lionized before, during, and after his journey.53 In addition to preaching the opening sermon at the next synod, Clarke duly reported on his journey. Thus, 1856 was a banner year for Clarke, so much so that most sources indicate that he was awarded an honorary doctorate;54 in fact, the degree was not conferred until i86o.55 It was at this time of the very zenith of its success that factionalism began to undermine the Chignecto Covenanter community in Goose River. There were probably several reasons for the congregational dissension, but the chief one seems to have been that Darragh supposed himself underpaid. He tried to gain a greater measure of financial security by demanding that the elders guarantee him a yearly salary of £100 sterling, the elders assuming personal liability for all delinquencies.56 Some of the elders agreed, but others did not. Among the latter was Alexander Ferguson, who had been appointed an elder during Clarke's earlier sojourn in the Goose River area. The salary problem festered and became the catalyst for other grievances, which Darragh did nothing to dispel. Elders resigned or were dismissed; there were appeals to the presbytery. An apparently happy and thriving congregation had become a disgruntled and divided congregation, and Darragh's stipend was still no better secured. The forces opposed to Darragh petitioned the Northern Presbytery in July 1856, stating that when he first came among them, "the congregation was in a flourishing condition and continued to flourish for some years afterwards," but now the situation had changed and "our prosperity is turned into adversity." There was clearly dissatisfaction "with Mr. Darragh's conduct respecting our three Elders and ... with his mode of preaching." Consequently, the congregation's "confidence" was "lost." The only alternative left them, they stated, was "to withdraw from the congregation and form ourselves into a new organization."57 Presbytery finally acquiesced in the formation of a new Reformed Presbyterian congregation there, called Goose River Second, which came into existence in i857-58 Presbytery offered a potential solution of the problem of who was to be pastor of this second congregation. Mr Archibald Thomson (1830-97), Irish born but recently arrived from the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland and duly accredited, was on his own application received under the

70 The American General Synod care of the presbytery as a student of theology. After undergoing examination, Thomson was licensed to preach and was assigned to Covenanter congregations in Chignecto.59 The Goose River Second congregation called licentiate Archibald Thomson to be their pastor on 29 March iS^S.60 On 16 November, Thomson was ordained in Amherst and installed as minister of Goose River Second and River Hebert congregations.61 Clarke and Alexander Robinson officiated at the ordination service, while Darragh was conspicuously absent. Goose River thus had two Covenanter congregations, which were not on good terms with one another. Even so, both congregations seem to have worshipped alternately in the same church building, and all went well for a short time - until "the locked church door" incident. The church was kept locked, and the janitor who unlocked the doors and stoked the fires was loyal to Darragh. In a hurry one morning, he left the key in the door when he unlocked it; and when the two-hour service was over, the key was missing. On the next sabbath morning, when Darragh and his followers arrived at the church, they were locked out.62 This incident did nothing to promote harmony between the Goose River Covenanter congregations. Darragh and his followers were offered a temporary home in the Baptist church across the road - a bitter pill for Darragh, who disapproved of Baptists. Thomson, meanwhile, ministering to the smaller group of surviving Covenanters in Goose River, also pastored in River Hebert. Darragh and the larger part of the congregation who had remained loyal to him, decided to join the mainline Presbyterians,63 and in the spring of 1859 they petitioned Truro Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church of Nova Scotia to be admitted.64 The meeting of the General Synod, hearing the report of the Northern Presbytery, ordered Darragh's name to be "stricken from the roll of Presbytery, and the pulpit of ist church, Goose River, declared vacant."65 Darragh's defection was the precursor of an escalating series of events. The Northern Presbytery, very likely at Clarke's behest, refused to give Darragh and his congregants regular certificates of demission; Darragh was severely embarrassed, in spite of the sympathy of his new co-religionists.66 The question of who owned the church - Darragh and the majority of the congregation or Thomson and the minority - was referred to the provincial legislature, which received petitions for and against the bill of incorporation.67 The decision rendered, which was that the church remain residual Covenanter property, was not without cost to the successful petitioners: "The meeting-house ... has been recovered for the Reformed Presbyterian Church, but at considerable cost to the legal trustees ... Messrs.

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Michie and Hunter."68 Alexander Clarke was furious: "The less said about this disorderly case, the better."69 Clarke was undoubtedly deeply wounded, the more so because he liked and admired Darragh, who was only doing in 1859 what Clarke himself had done in 1848 moving to a new and more comfortable denominational home. Darragh and his congregation worshipped in the Baptist church until a new building was erected. The new church was officially opened late in April 18657° though it had been pressed into service before then. It was called Renwick, a name that symbolized the perpetuation of the feud, for James Renwick (1662-88) had been the last and greatest of the Covenanter martyrs. Darragh, now a "united presbyterian," thus ironically named the new church after a muchvenerated Reformed Presbyterian hero. The bitterness, fanned and fuelled by both Clarke and Darragh and by events beyond the control of either, meant that there would be long-term hostility between the Covenanters and the mainstream Presbyterians in Goose River. "The charge of the clergy to the people was no longer of peace and good will but often of strife and of hate."71 Darragh's difficulties did not end with the realignment, but that is another story.72 He lived to be an old man, old enough to celebrate the jubilee of his ordination, and died in Linden in 1902.73 The storm of controversy surrounding Darragh and the Goose River Reformed Presbyterians in the late 18505 eclipsed a development among Chignecto Covenanters that would otherwise have received more attention. On 5 August 1859 the General Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America established the Eastern Presbytery, which had been discussed for a decade and in which the Chignecto congregations had their own court (see map 2).74 Clarke became its first moderator at the organizational meeting held in Amherst.75 The founding ceremonies were attended by the Reverends Clarke, Thomson, and Robinson and a number of elders, among whom was Robert Cooke of Amherst, who had also attended the formation of the Reformed Presbytery of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in April 1832.76 From its formation in 1859 until his death in 1874, Clarke was the Eastern Presbytery's only moderator.77 He was also invariably named as a delegate to synod and was frequently in attendance. Clarke was further honoured in 1860, when Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Divinity, honoris causa.78 Despite the initiative that led to the formation of the Eastern Presbytery, Rev. W.S. Darragh's defection permanently injured the Covenanter cause in the region. To this major internal crisis was added another in the early i86os, when Rev. Alexander Robinson found

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himself in difficulties in Little Shemogue.79 He either caused or provoked afama clamosa - literally "a clamorous, scandalous report/'80 or breach of moral discipline. The first intimation of trouble was given by Robinson himself at a meeting of the Eastern Presbytery on 6 March 1860, when he was providing the presbytery with a routine statement regarding his field of labour. He was heard at considerable length, and the presbytery sympathized "deeply with Mr. Robinson because of the slanderous reports of a few malignant [persons] tending to impair his usefulness."81 Despite this effort to clear his name, the pastoral relationship between Robinson and the Little Shemogue congregation was broken, by mutual consent, at a meeting of the Eastern Presbytery on 10 July i86o.82 The contents of the/ama clamosa were then made clear: "At the desire of the Rev. Alex. Robinson & with the concurrence of Mr. Duncan, Elder, & also in compliance with the action of [Eastern] Presbytery at its last meeting ... the following libel against Mr. Robinson was presented by Mr. Duncan."83 It read: Whereas familiarity with female servants of such a nature as to give reason to imagine is injurious to your standing as a minister of the gospel & brings Scandal to the Church, and whereas you Rev. Alexander Robinson are charged with said offence by Common fame, therefore you should be proceeded against by the censures of the house of God designed as they are for your edification & not for your destruction. The specifications of the charge against you, are, that in the month of December 1858 you were found in your stable scuffling with your servant girl Ellen McGinnis. In the month of January 1859 you were seen in your stable with the said Ellen McGinnis between two cows you having your arm upon her shoulders talking. And again, in the same year & about the same time a noise of scuffling was heard in your stable and you were seen scuffling with the said Ellen McGinnis. And lastly on or about the loth of January last you were seen crouched down beside Elizabeth Niles your servant girl, who was in the position of milking & you had your arm lying upon her bosom, With all this you are charged, and an opportunity is now afforded of presenting your defence if any such you have to make.84

Robinson was being accused of what is now known in the Criminal Code as sexual assault. "After a long & most minute examination" by various members of presbytery, it was determined "that inasmuch as nothing really affecting the moral character of Mr. Robinson has been advanced by the witnesses,"; the presbytery unanimously resolved "that a certificate of character be given to Mr. Robinson, that he may consistently with the dignity of the Christian profession exercise the office of the ministry in whatever places the providence of God may

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hereafter call him/'85 Rev. Archibald Thomson, clerk of presbytery, published a letter incorporating this resolution, because "various reports are in circulation to the injury of the character and usefulness of an esteemed brother in the ministry."86 Despite the termination of the pastoral relationship between the Little Shemogue Reformed Presbyterian congregation and Robinson, he was still partly employed by the Eastern Presbytery. When either Clarke or Thomson supplied at Little Shemogue, for example, "the pulpit of the minister officiating there [was] occupied by the Rev. Alexander Robinson."87 Robinson attended meetings of the Eastern Presbytery during 1860-63 and was listed in General Synod minutes as a minister serving in the Eastern Presbytery from 1860 to 1862. At the presbytery meeting of 3 March 1863, the clerk was again "authorized to give a certificate of character & standing to the Rev. A. Robinson, on application in the event of his removing from the bounds of ... Presbytery."88 Robinson was present at the meeting, and relations between him and his clerical colleagues seem to have been cordial enough. By the time of the next presbytery meeting, on 28 April, the situation had altered. Robinson was not present; he had applied to the clerk for a certificate of character and standing but had been refused, because since the last meeting a criminal prosecution had been instituted against him. Presbytery deferred the matter,89 but its attitude towards Robinson steadily hardened. Suspended from exercise of the pastoral ministry, Robinson acknowledged the justice of the penalty.90 The rationale was not clearly stated, but it appears that presbytery suspended Robinson on the grounds of immorality.91 An August pro re nata meeting92 was called for the purpose of investigating the charges brought against him: "Libel & summons to attend this court were served on Mr. Robinson" and subpoenas were served on other key figures involved. At the meeting, one "Mary Stillman was examined minutely & at some length by the Moderator," Rev. Alexander Clarke.93 Mary Stillman was the person who had laid the complaint that had led to the criminal charge against Robinson. Her public declaration against him was sharply felt by the presbytery and drew a pointed response from it, for the matter had now moved out of common fame idle or malicious gossip - into the secular courts. The specific nature of the criminal charge against Robinson is not known, though its general character can be ascertained. Information about Mary Stillman and her family is available from the census returns of 1851 and 1861 for Botsford Parish, Westmorland County. The Stillman name appears first in the census of 1851. There was a family of eight. David, the father, was forty-one, Irish and a farmer;

74 The American General Synod his wife Sarah, aged thirty-eight, was also Irish. Their children included John, who was aged nine, Mary, who was seven, and Sarah, aged three.94 By 1861, the Stillmans were no longer listed as a family, though the cause of their breakdown or removal is not known. The three children mentioned above were servants in Botsford households. John, now said to be twenty, was a servant in the homehold of Abner and Mary Trenholm;95 Sarah, now said to be seventeen, was a servant of William and Emma Wells;96 and Mary, said to be eighteen and a Methodist, was listed as a servant of Rev. Alexander and Mary Anna Robinson, Reformed Presbyterians.97 The evidence of the census returns, the original fama clamosa, and the Eastern Presbytery minutes confirm that Mary Stillman, a domestic servant in the Robinson household, had alleged a sexual assault on her by Alexander Robinson and had laid a complaint which culminated in criminal proceedings during March and April 1863.98 The scandal caused a protracted three-way struggle between the Eastern Presbytery, the General Synod, and Robinson, which continued intermittently until Robinson's death in 1886. The situation was exacerbated by poor communication between the two church courts, presbyterial and synodical, and by the Eastern Presbytery delegates' irregular attendance at synod. The presbytery wanted the General Synod to decide the issue, because of the presbytery's "numerical weakness and especially because of the complicated character of the evidence."99 For its part, the General Synod's Committee on Discipline kept urging the Eastern Presbytery to decide the issue itself, presumably because it was geographically closer to the locus of contention and because of the inadequate documentation. Robinson's attitude to both courts was erratic. For instance, on one occasion the General Synod committee reported, "The petition from Mr Alexander Robinson is respectful,"100 but on another it noted, "The course of the Rev. A. Robinson ... in manner and spirit, as expressed in his paper, is highly censurable."101 The presbytery and Robinson exchanged charges and counter charges. Robinson's appeals for full restoration were addressed to the synod, since he complained that the Eastern Presbytery was "prejudiced against him, and [would] not give him a fair and impartial hearing."102 Stung by this accusation, which it denied, the Eastern Presbytery countered by charging Robinson with unfairness.103 Within the Eastern Presbytery, moreover, Robinson could find no support among the lay members of the various congregations. During the short period in the late 18705 when the suspension was temporarily lifted and Robinson applied for appointments, not one of the existing Reformed Presbyterian congregations (all of whom were represented at the presbytery meeting) requested Robinson's services.104

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There were two matters, however, about which Robinson showed no ambiguity. He consistently and "solemnly denied that the crime with which he had been charged, and for which he had been suspended [had any basis in fact],"105 and he persistently appealed to synod, year after year, for removal of the suspension and for full restoration. Robinson was determined to minister. In 1868 he applied through Wallace Presbytery for admission into the Presbyterian Church of the Lower Provinces of British North America; but since he did not have a certificate of standing, he was denied accreditation.106 In 1875 he applied for admission through Wallace Presbytery of the newly formed Presbyterian Church in Canada, but again he was rebuffed.107 Robinson was eventually acquitted of the criminal charge against him108 and was reinstated by the synod in 1876.109 The reinstatement brought peace for neither Robinson nor the presbytery, and he was again suspended in 1884.110 This time the grounds were contempt for the established order of the church;111 the specific charge was "persistent contempt of ordinances, since his restoration in 1876, coupled with the absence of that general integrity and good moral conduct requisite in the minister of Christ." Robinson appeared, and was heard in his own defence, but the presbytery was not convinced by his arguments, and thus it suspended him.112 Nor did the presbytery's punitive action stop there: "We petition Synod at its next meeting to depose him [Robinson] from the office of the ministry."113 Synod, however, was not willing to countenance deposition. Robinson had bought a farm soon after his arrival in Little Shemogue, and there he continued to live. Neither finally expelled from the ministry of the Reformed Presbyterian Church nor fully readmitted to it, Robinson, for the last twenty-five years of his life, was an increasingly angered, embittered, and isolated man.114 He died in i886."5 The Eastern Presbytery had not been able to channel the energy of this passionate character; instead, its members had expended a lot of their own energy in attempting unsuccessfully to deal with "the painful and troublesome case" of Rev. Alexander Robinson.116 When Clarke later assessed the Chignecto clergy, he made but a passing reference to Robinson, and it was in connection with an unrelated matter."7 Marginalized during his lifetime, Robinson dropped out of the collective memory of the Reformed Presbyterian movement in the area."8 It is ironic that Clarke and Robinson, such bitter antagonists for the last decade of Clarke's life, should be honoured on the same memorial cairn in the present-day Pioneer Cemetery at Murray Corner."9 Robinson was replaced by Samuel Boyd (1824-97), another Irishman, who came to Little Shemogue in 1864 - not as a mere licentiate

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or newly ordained minister, but as a mature clergyman with previous pastoral experience. Ordained in 1858, Boyd had been pastor of Somonauk congregation in the Chicago Presbytery.120 Having demitted that charge, he was available for reappointment and in October 1864 was assigned to Little Shemogue in the Eastern Presbytery.121 In February 1865 he was called by Little Shemogue and Port Elgin to be their pastor, and he was installed in May.122 Boyd's pastoral experience and diligence led to an expansion of the Little Shemogue congregation. The existing church had become too small, and it was no longer conveniently located for many of the worshippers who wished to attend. The result was the erection of two new churches, one at Chapmans Corner, the other at Murray Corner: "About 1870, it was decided to build a church at Chapmans Corner and divide the district into two ... The eastern wing built at Murray Corner some two miles east of the ... [Pioneer] Cemetery."123 Information concerning the Chapmans Corner church, built on a site donated by Frederick Chapman, is relatively meagre.124 Much more information is available about the opening of the church at Murray Corner. This building was situated on land donated by or purchased from the gentleman farmer and suspended clergyman Alexander Robinson - Boyd's predecessor at Little Shemogue.125 An American General Synod clergyman who visited the area when the congregation was raising funds to build the church paid warm tribute to the Little Shemogue congregation and Samuel Boyd, "their diligent and faithful pastor."126 The building went well, and the Murray Corner church was "opened for divine services on the second Sunday of January" 1872.127 Clarke spoke more favourably of Boyd than of any of his other ministerial assistants. For instance, he noted that the Murray Corner church was "well attended by a numerous audience, highly favored with the excellent ministry of that excellent Christian man, the Rev. Samuel Boyd. This house was entirely builded by the contributions of the people who worship there ... [including] $80 contributed by the minister."128 Boyd's colleague was Archibald Thomson, who had been called to Goose River Second and River Hebert, had been ordained in Amherst, and had been installed as pastor over the two former congregations. Thomson lived in Amherst, at a point halfway between his two congregations.129 He was well liked by most of the congregants, who arranged donation visits in both Goose River and River Hebert.130 In addition, Thomson finished the church at Mount Pleasant and arranged for its proper deeding. This was the church that had been closed in, though not finished, by Rev. W.S. Darragh.131 Thomson was also associated with the congregation at Amherst

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Head and was largely responsible for the building of a church in that community around i865.132 As well, he was appointed to the Board of School Commissioners for the Eastern District of Cumberland County in 1864.133 Thomson left Chignecto in the autumn of 1870, to the genuine regret of his congregants/34 not to mention the aging Alexander Clarke, who was hurt by Thomson's departure; an able colleague was once again abandoning the Chignecto area. To be fair to Thomson, even after he had moved on to Lisbon Second Reformed Presbyterian Church in northern New York State, he never lost interest in the Chignecto region, and he occasionally returned for short periods to supply vacant Reformed Presbyterian pulpits.135 Yet the loss of Archibald Thomson as a resident minister in 1870 dealt Chignecto Covenanters a heavy blow. At Goose River he had been able to resist the potent force of that quondam Covenanter turned regular Presbyterian, William Stavely Darragh. He had also diligently pastored at another corner of the Eastern Reformed Presbyterian territory, in River Hebert, as well as at Mount Pleasant and Amherst Head. Thomson's departure left the Eastern Presbytery with but two ministers: Samuel Boyd in Little Shemogue and Clarke himself in Amherst. Alexander Clarke no longer possessed the health and energy he had had during the first period of his ministry. Years of unrelenting toil had weakened him. When Joseph Howe had referred to him in a letter in 1861, he had called Clarke an "old clergyman";136 Clarke was then sixty-seven years of age. In 1865 a longtime family friend, Letitia Simson of Saint John, had dedicated a poem to him, "suggested by the sad affliction of his partial loss of sight, and danger of total blindness; hoping they may soothe, in some degree, and convey the writer's sorrow for such a calamity."137 Clarke did not become totally blind, and despite his impaired vision he managed to work until his death in March 1874. But his declining contribution was that of an aged and infirm man. By the early 18705, the Chignecto Covenanters were far removed from the optimism of the early 18505, when Darragh and Gailey had aided Clarke in effecting a marked expansion in denominational numbers. They were also far removed from the early i86os, when the Covenanters, though weakened by Darragh's defection and the Robinson scandal, had still been a force to be reckoned with. In the i86os there had still remained a fighting spirit, which had been enhanced by the energetic work of Thomson and Boyd. But as a result of Thomson's departure and Clarke's decline, the Covenanters of the early 18705 were in retreat. Another reason for Covenanter decline was the growing strength of mainstream Presbyterianism.

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A Covenanter visitor to Chignecto in 1873 found evidence that the mainline Presbyterians were on the march: "Plans have been laid to allow Dr. [Clarke] to occupy his field undisturbed until he either resigns, or is disabled for his work by increasing infirmities. Then they will descend like the hawk upon its prey, and suddenly carry away our congregations."138 Clarke was aware of the danger: "The Reformed Presbyterian Church ... is to be blotted out. And this, some think, many think, is just what ought to take place. Her wisdom would be to step aside, and stand out of the way of more popular bodies. "^ What could the septuagenarian Clarke do? There were so many flocks to tend, and so few shepherds: "I am not a Knox, a Luther, nor a Paul. With stations ... in Amherst, Nappan, Jolicure, Sackville, Memramcook [Rockland], to say nothing of the seven churches of Goose River, River Philip and Hebert - what can I do? By the course of nature I am superannuated."140 Even so, Clarke was not yet willing to stand down: "I have a little pluck yet, and am willing to use it."141 Despite pleas for help, however, the situation did not improve. According to the report of the Eastern Presbytery to synod in 1872, "Owing to the large number of stations in the field, and the great distance of each from the other, and the fewness of the ministerial members of Presbytery, the age and infirmities of the senior minister, several of the stations are poorly supplied."142 Nevertheless, some 331 members were enumerated in the various congregations.143 There was one beacon of hope during the darkening days of Clarke's old age. Three men from Chignecto had begun to study for the Reformed Presbyterian ministry: William James Clarke, a son of Alexander and Catherine; and George W. Brownell and Aaron Finley, both of whom were from the Goose River congregation.144 In October 1873 Clarke wrote, "To-morrow the three students intend to start for the Seminary. Gloria Deo. This seems significant... God reigns."145 Alexander Clarke died on 15 March 1874. Though aged and infirm, he was busy to the last. An announcement in the Amherst Gazette of 6 March stated, "The Rev. Dr. Clarke intends to hold services in Amherst next Sabbath morning." In his diary for 15 March, Amherst's George Christie noted, "Dr. Clarke died this morning about 6 o'clock a very old Preacher of the Presbyterian church sick only a short time."146 Three days later he wrote, "In [the] afternoon... [we] attended Dr. Clarkes funeral there was about 100 carriages and a large number of all denominations Preachers present Rev Woodside of New York Stavely of St Johns Dr Stewart Sackville ... he was 79 years of age."147 Christie did not mention Rev. Samuel Boyd, who of course was present, though he did not officiate. Clarke's old friend,

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Rev. Nevin Woodside, presided and delivered the eulogy.148 All Chignecto Covenanters were in mourning. The effect of Clarke's death was to weaken further the fabric of Chignecto Reformed Presbyterianism. Added to the loss of a still active senior minister was a sense of desolation prompted by the loss of the patriarch and apostle who had been the heart and soul of the movement since its inception nearly fifty years before. Partly to offset this loss, Rev. Nevin Woodside convened a meeting of the Eastern Presbytery on the evening of Clarke's funeral, and at this meeting "Messrs W.J. Clarke, George Brownell and Aaron Finley were received under the care of the Presbytery as students of theology of the second year."149 Evidently, the students were being pressed into service in order to fill the breach in the clergy-deprived region. For "Mr. Brownell then being present and consenting thereto, and Messrs. Clarke and Finley since, agreeable to a resolution ... to that effect, were appointed as Catechists, and authorised to labor as such according to their gifts in the vacancies of the Presbytery."150 In addition, two experienced American pastors arrived during the summer following Clarke's death: Rev. S. Ramsey in July and Rev. Nevin Woodside in August. "The arrival of these respected brethren afforded seasonable help in dispensing the word and sacraments at Amherst, Goose River and River Hebert."151 Stopgap measures, however, could not fill the void left by Clarke, nor could they arrest the rampant growth of the encroaching mainstream Presbyterians, who were about to become much more powerful. The Presbyterian Church in Canada was formed in 1875 in order to bring together a large number of Presbyterian bodies in different parts of the country. There had been previous regional amalgamations in the Maritimes and elsewhere. In 1859, for example, William S. Darragh, the ex-Covenanter, together with the bulk of his Goose River congregation, had joined the Presbyterian Church of Nova Scotia, which in 1860 became part of the Presbyterian Church of the Lower Provinces of British North America. There had since been other realignments, but almost all paths led to the great act of union of 1875: "Strength through unity was the theme of union in i875/'152 Although the Chignecto Covenanters played no role in the formation of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, they must have noted what was occurring among other Presbyterians in the Maritimes and central Canada. A special effect of the uniting tendency was soon felt in Little Shemogue, where in 1876 Rev. Samuel Boyd demitted and entered the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Simultaneously with his departure, the majority of the Little Shemogue session and a significant number of Reformed Presbyterian members petitioned Wallace

8o The American General Synod

Presbytery to be admitted as a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.153 The Presbyterian Church in Canada congregation at Little Shemogue was formally organized on 23 August 1876, worship being held in the Botsford Parish Hall, Oultons Corner (Little Shemogue proper).154 The petitioners had assembled from all parts of the congregation - Chapmans Corner, Port Elgin, and Little Shemogue proper. The rupture caused tension and unhappiness because the members who had left the Covenanter churches did not amount to a majority; in his last accounting as Covenanter session clerk, William Duncan had reported, "The number of communicants in good and regular standing is one hundred and seventy-five."155 Those who left, however, were leaders - the minister and four of the six elders. The Little Shemogue session that had discussed the matter had consisted of Rev. Samuel Boyd and elders James Amos, John Anderson, Frederick Chapman, William Duncan, and Stephen Peacock.156 Elder Adam Scott was too old and ill to attend. Stephen Peacock, therefore, "stood alone ... He was a Reformed Presbyterian, and he meant to continue so."157 The rationale underlying the decision of Boyd and most of the Little Shemogue session to leave the Reformed Presbyterians and join the Presbyterian Church in Canada is not known. Boyd had presumably been thinking of doing so for some time, for he had attended Wallace Presbytery meetings in the autumn of 1875, immediately following church union.158 Moir comments that the "united churches [forming the Presbyterian Church in Canada] shared in a single Scottish and Scots-Irish tradition."159 Perhaps the Little Shemogue Scots wanted to join with others of their tradition in this new trans-Canadian venture. Certainly, the Little Shemogue people had kinship connections with Scots elsewhere in the Maritimes. Ruling elders William Duncan and John Anderson, for example, were married to granddaughters of the pioneer minister of Pictou, Rev. Duncan Ross.160 A later recollection of the Little Shemogue schism records: "When the split took place in 1876 the u.p.s were accused of not acknowledging Christ as the head of the Church but at that time there was very few that did not Exercise their right of franchise ... In 1876 the burning questions were, ist acknowledging Christ as the head of the Church 2nd open communion 3rd The use of hymns and Instrumental music in Public Worship or in the home on the Sabbath day."161 The congregation of the Little Shemogue Presbyterian Church in Canada "varied the service by bowing in prayer and all standing in singing the psalms and no long table [for communion] was used.

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They continued to have the Long Communion [season] however. Thursday [evening preparatory service], Saturday afternoon, receiving new members on profession of faith or by certificate, [and Sunday morning, communion proper]."162 Unlike William Stavely Darragh, Samuel Boyd did not remain where he had formerly ministered. He worked in various presbyteries under the Home Mission Board of the Presbyterian Church in Canada in 1877 and 1878, and was called and inducted into Knox Presbyterian Church, Wallace, on 9 July 1878, with Darragh preaching the sermon.163 Boyd continued as pastor until his death on 21 July 1897. From having had three strong, cohesive congregations, three church buildings/64 and one able minister, Little Shemogue now had four congregations, three church buildings - and no minister. The Port Elgin church immediately became Presbyterian: "Evidently members of the Port Elgin area were favourable [to the Presbyterians] for they held the Church at that place."165 As important as the number of members was the ownership of the church premises. The site had been donated by a former Covenanter adherent, Alexander Monro, but never formally conveyed to the Reformed Presbyterians; Monro was one of those entering the new congregation as a Presbyterian. Notwithstanding the change of ecclesiastical relationship, the new congregation in Port Elgin made it clear that the church building could continue to be used for Covenanter services: "The Trustees or others controlling the Port Elgin Church building are hereby required to open the Church to ministers of the Reformed Presbyterian church as hitherto."166 Would the churches at Little Shemogue and Chapmans Corner, which were firmly and legally held by the Covenanters, also be opened to the Presbyterians? A committee consisting of John Anderson, Frederick Chapman, and William Duncan was struck to negotiate with the Covenanters. They met with the Covenanter session, who asked for further time to consider the request. The session's reply finally came in a letter dated 31 (sic) April 1877: "The congregation refuse to grant your request as they are of the opinion that trouble and confusion would be the result if both parties occupy the House."167 A local paper, when reporting this refusal, commented: "The foxes have holes, and the birds have nests, but the Unionists have not where to lay their heads, except the [Botsford] Town Hall."168 Having received a negative response from the Little Shemogue Covenanter session, the Presbyterians unanimously resolved "that it is proper and necessary for the [Little] Shemogue and Port Elgin United Presbyterian Congregation to erect, build and complete

82 The American General Synod a church."169 Zion Church at Oultons Corner was dedicated on 15 June 1879. One of the clergy officiating at the service was Rev. William Stavely Darragh of Goose River.170 The Chignecto Covenanters were to sustain yet another irreparable loss when Aaron Finley of Goose River died in 1876. The death of this promising young theological student brought grief to the whole Goose River community: "The funeral was the largest ever seen in Goose River - attended, it was supposed, by over 500 people, and participated in by several clergymen of other denominations. He leaves a numerous circle of mourning relatives and friends."171 Finley's fellow seminarians eulogized him as "a man esteemed by all who knew him, both as a true friend and a courteous companion. Especially by his classmates was he considered honorable in his demeanour, zealous in his calling, and efficient in his studies. He appeared in every way to be a man of God."172 The Goose River Covenanter session, commenting on his death, wrote: "By this visitation our church has again sustained a severe loss - a tried man is taken from this Eastern Presbytery - a devoted student from our Theological Hall, and a faithful member out of our congregation."173 The first three Chignecto-born Reformed Presbyterians who studied for the Covenanter ministry - George W. Brownell (1842-1911), Aaron Finley (1851-76), and William James Clarke (1845-1904) - had begun their theological studies just before Alexander Clarke's death. In the eighteen years following, several others came forward as candidates for the ministry. John Carritte Chapman (1854-1936) of Chapmans Corner174 began studying in Philadelphia in the autumn of 1874; Hiram Huston Brownell (1855-1924), of the Goose River (Linden) congregation began studying at the Reformed Presbyterian seminary in 1875; James Harvey Smith Blacklock (1854-1944) of Little Shemogue proper175 studied in the seminary over the winter of 1879-80, but did not complete the course and returned home;176 John McCurdy Stephens (1859-1902), a native of Murray Corner,177 began studying theology in Philadelphia in 1884; Joseph Howe Brownell (1858-1920) of the Linden congregation began theological studies in i889;178 Stephen Peacock Brownell (1866-1953), who was also of the Linden congregation and was the last Chignecto Covenanter to become a Reformed Presbyterian clergyman, commenced his studies in 1892. Nine Chignecto men, seven of whom were ordained Covenanter clergy, attended the Reformed Presbyterian seminary in Philadelphia.179 The death of Rev. Alexander Clarke, the defection of Rev. Samuel Boyd together with a significant part of the Little Shemogue congregation, and the untimely death of theologue Aaron Finley - these

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were hard blows for the Chignecto Covenanters. That the community did not collapse altogether as a direct or cumulative result of them was undoubtedly due to the persistence, determination, and discipline of the surviving churches and mission stations. Although Aaron Finley had died, the Goose River congregation acknowledged "with gratitude the supplies received from our students,"180 George W. Brownell and William James Clarke. More mature clergy leadership was later provided by Rev. Samuel Darrah Yates (1842-92) and also by George W. Brownell, who went to Chignecto immediately after his licensing on 7 March 1876. Like most of his predecessors, Yates was an Irishman who went to the Eastern Presbytery via the United States. Appointed a commissioner to the Eastern Presbytery by the General Synod, he arrived in Chignecto in December 1875, his family joining him the following March, when they settled in Amherst. Yates had started theological studies in 1860, but because of ill health he did not complete them until 1871. He then had a two- to three-year pastorate before going as a missionary to the Eastern Presbytery.181 The dispirited Covenanter congregations still had one reason for encouragement and hope: the emergence of young men willing to study for the ministry. Hiram Huston Brownell of Northport was accepted as a student of theology sponsored by the Eastern Presbytery at the same meeting at which a certificate of demission was given to Rev. Samuel Boyd.182 At a communion service conducted by Yates in Little Shemogue in September 1876, "there were twelve young persons received," one of whom was Samuel Crothers Murray. Murray recorded that of these twelve, "three of us entered the ministry William Young Chapman, [John] McCurdy Stephens & myself."183 Moreover, since Hiram Huston Brownell had come forward from the congregation that had suffered Finley's loss, and since Samuel Yates and George Brownell were at work in the Eastern Presbytery, the General Synod was able to put the best face on an otherwise critical situation: "The Lord is raising up young men, whom we trust will soon give a good account of themselves in the field so long cultivated by the late Dr. Clarke. The Rev. S.D. Yates and Mr. George Brownell are on the ground."184 Brownell took seriously the desperate situation in Chignecto and resolved to do what he could to help. George W. Brownell had been born in Northport in 1842, but little is known of his early education. He taught school in the area for several years and married Elizabeth Ferguson, eldest daughter of the ruling elder Alexander Ferguson. In 1873 he began studying at the Reformed Presbyterian seminary in Philadelphia and the following year was named a catechist to the

84 The American General Synod Eastern Presbytery at the time of Clarke's death. He was licensed in Philadelphia in March 1876 and went immediately to the Eastern Presbytery, where he was at work as a licentiate when Boyd demitted Little Shemogue. Although it was reported that a call to Brownell was "contemplated by one of the congregations" in the Eastern Presbytery/85 it was apparently not made. Yet Brownell seemed anxious to remain, and the people were glad to have him: "The urgent request of the people of Nova Scotia, and the expressed desire of Mr. Brownell to labor in the field where his family reside, appeared to open the way" for his ordination in Philadelphia on 25 February 1877.l86 Brownell, who was a mature man and a solid pastor, did much together with Yates - to soothe a disaffected presbytery. Yates focused his efforts in the Amherst and River Hebert areas, while Brownell worked among the Little Shemogue and Goose River congregations. Although Yates did his best, he could not measure up to Clarke in terms of energy, charisma, or strength of character. Brownell stayed as a missionary in Chignecto only until the autumn of 1879, when the sudden death of his wife caused him to accept a call to Beulah congregation in the Pittsburgh Presbytery. Released from the Eastern Presbytery in 1880, he had a lengthy continuous pastorate in Beulah, where he died in 1911. The Covenanter congregations continued meanwhile to struggle for survival. The General Synod was able to send licentiates to Chignecto in the summer, and these stopgaps helped; and when any of the native-born Chignecto Reformed Presbyterian clergy came home, they were usually pressed into service in one or more of the congregations.187 Where the congregations were strongest - Little Shemogue, Goose River, and Amherst - society meetings or prayer groups helped sustain them during interregnums. Of necessity, however, some of the smaller churches and mission stations began to wither and to fade into virtual oblivion as places of Covenanter public worship. In such locales, the worshippers were absorbed into other churches - Methodist, Baptist, or mainline Presbyterian. The 1880 report of the Eastern Presbytery lists seven functioning congregations: Goose River, Little Shemogue, Amherst, River Hebert, and "three in a weakened and distressed condition" - Sackville, Jolicure, and Rockland.188 Rev. Joseph Hogg, a Moncton Presbyterian clergyman, related instances of Reformed Presbyterians becoming Presbyterians: "I had Communion Services at Dorchester ... Some were received from the Reformed Presbyterian Church." He added, "I have no doubt that the Rockland [Reformed Presbyterian] people will cast in their lot with us."189

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Despite the departure of Rev. George W. Brownell, Goose River was ultimately successful in calling a minister. Rev. Samuel Rutherford Storrnont (1836-99) arrived there in 1879, and was called and inducted as pastor on 12 August 1880. Presiding at his installation were Rev. Samuel Darrah Yates and a former Chignecto Covenanter minister, Rev. John Alford. Samuel Rutherford Stormont was the first nonIrish Reformed Presbyterian clergyman to be called as a minister to serve in Chignecto. He had been born in Ohio in 1836 and had been baptized and brought up in a Reformed Presbyterian congregation in Cedarville. Graduating from Miami College and the Reformed Presbyterian seminary in Philadelphia, he then "spent some years in teaching and Christian work in the Freedmen's mission of the Reformed Presbyterian Church at Alexandria, Virginia."190 Stormont was licensed in 1870 and ordained in 1871. He then engaged in mission work for the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Tennessee until his move to Chignecto in 1879.191 Stormont had never been physically strong, and his health did not improve as a result of Canada's severe winters: "The climate is generally healthy, but the winter generally cold, long and tedious, lasting from six to seven months."192 Ill health plagued Stormont during his stay in Chignecto; "a catarrhal difficulty seriously affected" him from the time of his arrival.193 In the winter of 1883 the Linden194 congregation (as it was then called) released their pastor from public ministry, hoping that he might be restored to health.195 Stormont was eventually able to minister again, but never as a fully active pastor. Further help meanwhile had come in 1882, when Rev. Alexander Roulston (1848-1938) visited Little Shemogue; he accepted a call and was inducted on 19 July as pastor of the Little Shemogue and Port Elgin Reformed Presbyterian congregations/96 Roulston had been born in County Donegal, Ulster, in 1848. He went to the United States twenty years later, studied theology at the Reformed Presbyterian seminary in Philadelphia, and ministered for four years in Concord, Illinois. Roulston was peripatetic; his purpose as a minister was "starting churches or developing those already founded."197 He made a move in this direction while at Chignecto by presiding over the reorganization of the Jolicure Reformed Presbyterian session.198 In spite of this new beginning at Jolicure, Roulston may have overestimated the prospects for success in Little Shemogue, for he stayed little more than two years. In the late autumn of 1884, he received and accepted a call from the Presbyterian Church in Canada congregation at Murray Harbour, Prince Edward Island.1" An even more discouraging fact was the demission from Little Shemogue's Reformed Presbyterian congregation of two promising young theologues who were

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already committed to preparing for the ministry, but not as Covenanters: Samuel Crothers Murray (1857-1945) and William Young Chapman (1859-1926).20° Both went on to have distinguished careers in the ministry, but outside the Reformed Presbyterian Church. The Eastern Presbytery by 1885 was thus left with two less-thanhealthy resident clergy: Rev. Samuel Darrah Yates at Amherst and Rev. Samuel Rutherford Stormont at Goose River. The Presbyterians were continuing to proselytize. Yet the Presbyterian pastor at Goose River-Linden, ex-Covenanter William Stavely Darragh, found the Yates and Stormont combination formidable enough. Late in 1884 Darragh wrote, "The denominational forces arrayed against our [Presbyterian] congregation and work, are of long standing and often have loomed up in great power in the two most blustering and selfasserting serfs that surround us."201 Moreover, Covenanter licentiates still made their way in the summer to the territory covered by the Eastern Presbytery. Charles McMillan Alford (1858-1921), John Alford's son, came in 1885 and again in 1886.202 At the end of July 1887, however, Stormont left the Eastern Presbytery, hoping to benefit from a change of climate.203 In the autumn of 1887 Yates also left: "With his family he came to the city of New York, in October, 1887 from Amherst as the physician there advised a change of residence."204 Sometime later the Yates family moved to Walton, New York. Until he died there on i January 1892 at forty-nine years of age,205 Yates was incapacitated and was dependent on the benevolence of the church to maintain himself and his family.206 At its annual meeting in 1888, the General Synod was presented with an extraordinary petition from Little Shemogue, in which the members of the congregation noted their destitute condition - that they were without gospel preaching for nine or ten months in the year. The petition asked that the synod "appoint Rev. G.W. Brownell to take the pastoral oversight of our congregation, and also of the other congregations within the bounds of the Eastern Presbytery."207 The petition was signed by five elders, eighty-seven members, and twelve adherents. The synod referred the request to the Pittsburgh Presbytery, within which Brownell was now situated, commending "the matter to the favorable consideration of Mr. Brownell."208 Brownell refused the invitation, though he promised to visit the Eastern Presbytery and did so late in 1889. His letter describing the visit outlined Reformed Presbyterian fortunes as he saw them. Brownell preached three Sundays in Little Shemogue and two in Linden; he lectured in Northport and preached once in River Hebert. He also alluded to the encroachments that were being made on the Reformed Presbyterians by the Presbyterians: "Our church in [Little]

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Shemogue (and it is the same with the other churches in the Presbytery) is surrounded with those who are in no way friendly to us, and they seem to think that our church ought not to exist. The Presbyterian Church of the Dominion of Canada is desirous to take possession of the whole field, and in a number of our congregations she has entered and caused division."209 Brownell mentioned the two strongest congregations, Little Shemogue and Linden, to the latter of which were added both Northport and River Hebert. No mention was made of Amherst. The more than fifteen churches and mission stations that had formerly existed had been reduced to four. Brownell held out an incentive in the shape of his first cousin and prospective ordinand, Joseph Howe Brownell, who eventually returned to the Eastern Presbytery - but not until 1893. In the meantime, the four congregations subsisted on meagre public worship during the summer months, whatever assistance students such as Joseph Howe Brownell and his cousin Stephen Peacock Brownell could render, and the occasional visit by compassionate American clergymen such as Archibald Thomson, who had formerly pastored in the region. Rev. John McCurdy Stephens, a native of Chignecto, during a hiatus between major American pastorates, ministered in the Eastern Presbytery over the winter of 1889-90. Early in 1890, Stephens wrote of the plight of the Eastern Presbytery thus: "The congregations in the Eastern Presbytery are in a very needy condition. There is not one settled pastor in the whole Presbytery. They have had very little preaching for the last two years. Our supplies seem disinclined to supply them. No wonder they are almost discouraged."210 In sum, the Covenanter clergy who served in Chignecto had been of varying ability and effect. Henry Gordon served but a brief time and was judged quite sharply by Clarke. The youthful Andrew Gailey did good work but ministered for only three years. The capable John Alford stayed such a short time that his overall effect was minimal. William S. Darragh was probably the ablest of Clarke's assistants, but his defection from the Reformed Presbyterians turned an able ally into a bitter opponent, with subsequent negative effects on Chignecto Reformed Presbyterians, especially since he remained in Chignecto. Alexander Robinson was a faithful if unspectacular minister, but he was removed from further contributions early in his career, and the resulting controversy was enervating on other Chignecto Covenanters. Archibald Thomson was an able and conscientious pastor, moving into the area at a critical juncture; the time of his leaving, however, left the movement considerably weaker. Samuel Boyd was a solid and competent minister, and his more than ten-year ministry was very effective; but his leaving the Reformed Presbyterian

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church vitiated this witness as far as the Covenanter cause was concerned, though his defection was somewhat mitigated by the fact that, unlike Darragh, he did not remain in Chignecto. George Brownell was a capable pastor, and if he had made a lifetime commitment to the Covenanters of Chignecto, the course of that movement might have been considerably different; his early departure blunted his overall influence. Alexander Roulston undoubtedly came with a strategy of helping in needy fields, but the conditions of the area were greater than his strategy could surmount, and he soon left. Samuel Darrah Yates and Samuel Rutherford Stormont served at roughly the same time; both were less than healthy, and since they laboured in the waning days of the movement in Chignecto, their efforts stayed but could not stop the Covenanter decline. The destitute condition of the Chignecto Covenanters would not improve until the return of the native, Joseph Howe Brownell, as resident pastor.

CHAPTER SIX

Revival and Resolution under the Reverend Joseph Howe Brownell

Joseph Howe Brownell was born in the Gulf Shore community of Northport on 18 November 1858, the fourth of the eight children of Aaron Davis Brownell and Mary Huston.1 Physically challenged from birth ("he was club-footed and had to wear special boots without overshoes"),2 Brownell "lived with constant pain"3 and probably was "never strong."4 Nonetheless, he "was educated in the common school of Northport, Pictou Academy, the Normal School, Truro,"5 and "was a teacher in the public schools of Nova Scotia before entering the ministry"6 His first cousins George W. Brownell and Aaron Finley and his older brother Hiram Huston Brownell had begun to study theology ahead of him, but it is not known whether this precedent influenced young Joseph Howe. Teaching for a time before entering theological school, probably in order to finance attendance, was a common practice; it had already been followed by George W. Brownell and was later to be followed by another first cousin, Stephen Peacock Brownell. In the autumn of 1889, when he was already thirty years of age, Joseph Howe Brownell entered the Reformed Presbyterian seminary in Philadelphia, remaining there for four years. A year after entering the seminary, he was officially received as a ministerial candidate by the Philadelphia Presbytery and "was authorized to act as a catechist in the Eastern Presbytery."7 Brownell may have worked in this capacity for the presbytery in 1891 and is certainly reported to have done so in the summer of 1892.8 Despite his attachment to the Philadelphia Presbytery, there can be little doubt that Chignecto Covenanters hoped and expected that Joseph Howe Brownell would come to minister among them. When he was accepted as a student of theology in 1890, the church newspaper commented, "J.H. Brownell is well known in the Eastern

Rev. Joseph Howe Brownell, ca 1905 (courtesy Patricia Wallace, Mill Bay, B.C.)

Mrs Jennie Brownell, ca 1894 (courtesy Patricia Wallace, Mill Bay, B.C.)

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Presbytery as a young man of excellent character and abilities who, under the blessing of God, will be of great service to our people in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick."9 When he was licensed on 12 April 1892 by the Philadelphia Presbytery,10 however, Brownell seems to have had other ideas. Late in 1892, just as he was beginning his last few months in the seminary, he was called by the Reformed Presbyterian church in West Barnet, Vermont. He accepted the call, and the congregation was satisfied with its choice: "He will doubtless do good work for the Master in that field."11 The Reformed Presbyterian congregants in the Little ShemogueLinden area must have been very disappointed, for J.H. Brownell had gone out from them and was expected to return to settle permanently. Robert Scott, the leading member of the Little Shemogue session, wrote on their behalf to the General Synod's Board of Domestic Missions in December 1892: We have been looking forward to the time when Mr. J.H. Brownell would get through his studies and return to labor in the East. But in this also we are doomed to disappointment... No doubt you are aware of the destitute state of the church ... not only in [Little] Shemogue, but throughout the entire field. There is not a minister of the gospel with us either in word or sacrament. In our congregation we have had only seven Sabbaths preaching in twelve months. Now under these circumstances the church cannot live long. We are loathe to give up the principles of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, to which we have pledged ourselves in covenant with God to uphold. But it appears at present that no man will come here to labor for any length of time, but as soon as the weather gets a little cold, they want to go south again and leave us to the mercy of those who seek to devour us. Now cannot the Board do something for us?12

What happened over that winter is not clear, though Joseph Howe Brownell, "pastor-elect of the West Barnet congregation," had been "supplying the pulpit there during January."13 The General Synod appeared to recognize the sad plight of Covenanters in the Eastern Presbytery/4 and the Board of Domestic Missions became involved and exerted pressure on Brownell. In the spring it was reported that "Mr. J.H. Brownell has declined the call to West Barnet, Vermont,"15 for reasons that were not disclosed.16 In West Barnet, the change "proved a serious discouragement to the congregation."17 The Board of Domestic Missions, however, "rejoiced to be able to say that the field in the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick [had] the prospect of an early settlement." It announced: "Mr J.H. Brownell has received and accepted a call to [Little] Shemogue and Linden Congregations."18

93 Rev. Joseph Howe Brownell

Joseph Howe Brownell had already arrived in the Eastern Presbytery in May 1893 when the Reformed Presbyterian synod, meeting in New York City, appointed a three-member commission to go to Little Shemogue to ordain and install him as pastor. The commission consisted of Rev. Matthew Gailey,19 a minister in Philadelphia who was a professor at the seminary; Rev. George Brownell, minister of Beulah and Fairview congregations in Beulah, Pennsylvania; and ruling elder Robert Scott of Little Shemogue.20 The commission proceeded to Little Shemogue, where it met with the congregation and its minister elect on 30 June 1893. Joseph Howe Brownell delivered a specimen sermon and was then satisfactorily examined in Greek, Hebrew, church history, and theology. "The ordination sermon was preached by Rev. Prof. Gailey," after which the usual questions were put to Brownell and he was "ordained to the office of Ministry, by prayer and the laying on of hands. He was installed pastor of the Congregation." Then Gailey addressed the pastor, and George Brownell addressed the people. Finally "the newly ordained Pastor received a hearty welcome from the members adherents and friends of the congregation."21 On the following Sunday, 2 July 1893, the sacrament of the Lord's Supper was dispensed: "Rev. Prof. Gailey preached a most excellent sermon and well adapted to the solemn occasion. A goodly number were permitted to gather around the communion table. Eight persons were received on profession of faith."22 A week later, a similar series of meetings and services was held in Linden: "On Saturday, July 8th, the Commission met in the Linden Reformed Presbyterian Church. Rev. J.H. Brownell had received a unanimous call from the congregation for half time, and he was installed pastor." This was followed by a communion service on the Sunday. "Between eighty and ninety persons sat down to the communion table. Some five or six were received on profession of their own faith." The Linden congregation was well pleased; "Rev. J.H. Brownell was cordially welcomed."23 Joseph Howe Brownell was thus ordained and inducted as pastor over the two surviving Reformed Presbyterian congregations. Although each was quite vigorous, it should be remembered that the other Chignecto Reformed Presbyterian congregations had all but disappeared, except for scattered individuals and families. Even in Amherst, the home for over forty-five years of Alexander Clarke, the Covenanter cause had been eclipsed. Most of the Reformed Presbyterians who had formerly been there now belonged to the Presbyterian Church in Canada. With his ordination and installation behind him, Brownell went back to Philadelphia in the autumn of 1893 and married Sarah Jane ("Jennie") Martin.24 She was a native of Woodbury New Jersey, but

94 Revival and Resolution had been living for some time in Philadelphia. This American-born woman was to bring energy, humour, and sensitivity to the Covenanter manse at Little Shemogue.25 From this nerve-centre, pastoral work in the Covenanter congregations went forward. The session minutes are extant, and they show the steady pattern of work and worship - the sacramental seasons, disciplining by the session, society meetings and Bible classes, and the regular weekly preaching of the word. Pastor Brownell led the elders towards retrenchment and consolidation. In the 1894 report to synod, the situation in Chignecto was honestly faced: some churches had to be sold and some mission stations terminated.26 A few Covenanters who had belonged to the defunct congregations joined the Little Shemogue and Linden congregations.27 Meanwhile, Brownell served as Covenanter resident clergyman for the entire Chignecto area. In 1899, for example, it was reported: "Death has made sad inroads amongst the [Little] Shemogue congregation during the year. Among those taken was the oldest member, Nellie Simpson, aged 96 years. She was the last survivor of the original congregation as organized by the late Alex. Clark, D.D. She was present at the first communion and the last prior to her death,"28 the latter service being conducted by Joseph Howe Brownell. There can be little doubt that although Brownell was very much on his own as a Covenanter clergyman, he did solid work. When addressing the General Synod, Brownell (as moderator of both sessions), together with the session clerks of Linden and Little Shemogue, reported that in both congregations meetings of session had been held, the ordinances had been regularly maintained, and the sacramental seasons had been well attended - despite the scattered condition of the congregations. Sabbath schools were flourishing, and prayer meetings and Bible classes were being conducted: "Eleven members have been added to the [Little] Shemogue congregation and fourteen baptized during the year. Five were added to the Linden congregation and [there were] five baptisms." Moreover, "three elders were ordained and installed over the Linden congregation. The church at Linden has been repaired during the year."29 As the sole Covenanter minister resident in Chignecto, Joseph Howe Brownell was isolated, though other clergy, notably Archibald Thomson, did come north occasionally during the summer for brief visits. The Covenanter cause had become so narrowly circumscribed in Chignecto, however, that at the synod of 1898 the Eastern Presbytery was dissolved and Little Shemogue and Linden reverted to the status of congregations within an American presbytery - the status quo ante 1859. The Northern Presbytery's name was changed to the

95 Rev. Joseph Howe Brownell

Presbytery of New York and Vermont, and Brownell's congregations became part of it.3° In 1900 Brownell was named moderator of this presbytery.31 "During the month of January our churches were closed on account of smallpox/' wrote the moderator in the spring of 1901. "In February every Sabbath was stormy, which interfered very materially with our church services owing to our scattered condition."32 Brownell was fighting the good fight: "Amidst many discouragements we labor here to uphold the Reformation Banner."33 In spite of being club-footed, Brownell was an indefatigable traveller at a time when rural transportation was still primitive. His granddaughter Pat Wallace was later told "of heating rocks in the fire to put under the robes to ward off the cold on the perishing cold drives by horse and sleigh through storms and blizzards to take services." She also remembered "seeing Grandfather's black curly lambskin hat and gauntlets in an old attic trunk."34 Until a few years before his death, she said, "he required the constant service of two horses" and "on many occasions he returned from his labors of love so exhausted it was necessary for him to climb the stairs on his hands and knees."35 At one point, his Covenanter session members "moved and seconded that Mr J H Brownell take a vacation whenever it suits him."36 The contribution of Philadelphia-born Jennie Martin Brownell to her husband's long pastorate cannot be overestimated. The Brownells "had a warm and affectionate family with a sense of humour that lifted the difficult times" - "probably a gift of Jennie Martin."37 The wives of previous pastors38 had been redoubtable matrons to be sure, but their contribution had rarely been revealed in the public domain. This was not the case with Joseph and Jennie Brownell. In 1903 the congregation held for the Brownell couple what would formerly have been called a "Donation Visit" but was termed "A Pleasing Function." It was held to mark the tenth wedding anniversary of the ministerial couple. Speeches were given by elders Robert Scott and William Blacklock. A special guest was William Michael Burns who, as a "stranger, regretted the fact that he had not had the privilege of listening to Mr. Brownell as often as some of the others present."39 Brownell himself had the last word: "It is very gratifying, after living amongst you all this time, to receive this token of your esteem. I . . . thank you most heartily. "4° Scarcely two years after the tenth anniversary of his pastorate, Joseph Howe Brownell ceased to be minister of the Little ShemogueLinden Reformed Presbyterian congregations. Joseph Howe Hattie, who in 1900 had become minister of the Presbyterian Church in Canada congregation at Little Shemogue-Port Elgin-Tidnish, stood aside in 1905. The Covenanters joined with the Presbyterians, and

96 Revival and Resolution

Brownell became pastor of the newly merged congregation, remaining so until his death in 1920. This amalgamation was the result of a number of factors. The General Synod - and the Presbytery of New York and Vermont in particular - was exercised by two controversies: whether musical instruments might be used in worship, and whether union with another American Presbyterian church should take place. Individual sessions were asked for their views on both matters and the Little Shemogue Reformed Presbyterian session voted in favour of maintaining the status quo.41 Whatever the outcome of the debate on such highly contentious issues, Brownell foresaw a split in the presbytery, which would make Little Shemogue's already isolated position even more tenuous.42 He may also have felt that a merger of some kind was inevitable: "The moderator thought a union with Presbyterians in Canada [would be] better than in the United States."43 The eponyms of Little Shemogue's Presbyterian and Reformed Presbyterian ministers - Joseph Howe Hattie and Joseph Howe Brownell - meant that however much the clerics might diverge over ecclesiastical matters, they looked back to a common political ancestor, Joseph Howe, the "conservative reformer." It seems clear that both clergymen worked diligently to make the merger as palatable as possible. As early as 1890, "most of the Sabbath Schools in [Little] Shemogue were union Sabbath Schools, the children of both the Reformed and United [Presbyterian Church in Canada] Presbyterians attending."44 Moreover, Joseph Howe Brownell had been participating in Presbyterian services for some time (for example, at the ordination in Port Elgin of the Presbyterian A.W.K. Herdman in i894).45 Brownell had also been guest preacher at one of the three services commemorating the dedication in 1899 of St James Presbyterian Church, Port Elgin.46 After Hattie's arrival, Brownell had become increasingly active in Presbyterian communion seasons,47 a fact which suggests that interministerial cooperation launched the union initiative. Brownell also had some effective lay supporters, chief among whom were James Harvey Smith Blacklock, Covenanter, and David Scrimgeour, Presbyterian. Blacklock had been a theological student during the winter of 1879-80 but had returned to live at Little Shemogue.48 He worked towards union for years,49 personally visiting all the Reformed Presbyterian homes in order to solicit support for the merger. Other factors bearing on the union initiative were the respect with which the congregations held their two Joseph Howes; the willingness of Joseph Howe Hattie to withdraw from the field altogether; and the support and affection felt across denominational lines and

97 Rev. Joseph Howe Brownell

throughout the community for Joseph Howe and Jennie Brownell. Chignecto had known comparable mergers before - for example, Goose River (Linden) in 1859, which had been a very painful process and still lingered; and Little Shemogue, at the time of Boyd's departure in 1876, which had been less painful but continued to have some residual bitterness. The Reverends J.H. Hattie and J.H. Brownell cooperated closely in order to ensure that the Little Shemogue union in 1905 would be free of such anguish and resentment. At a meeting of the Wallace Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, held at Amherst in May 1905, Covenanter "J.[H.] Smith Blacklock appeared before Presbytery on behalf of the [Little] Shemogue Congregation of the Reformed Presbyterian Church stating that he had visited all the members (one hundred and five or more) of that Congregation in reference to union with the Presbyterian Congregation in that vicinity and found that they were all willing to join the Presbyterian Church in Canada and its said Congregation, provided the united Congregation retain the services of the present Reformed Presbyterian pastor, Mr. J.H. Brownell."50 Ruling elder David Scrimgeour of the Presbyterian Church in Canada congregation supported Blacklock's petition, "indicating the desirableness of the union and the readiness of the Presbyterian people to meet the wishes of the other Congregation as far as possible."51 Rev. Joseph Howe Hattie also "briefly addressed the Presbytery."52 Presbytery granted the petition, and under the terms and conditions put forth by Blacklock, Scrimgeour, and Hattie, steps were devised for effecting the merger in an orderly manner. The terms and conditions approved by the presbytery were all successfully negotiated. In the meantime, "the Reformed Presbyterian [Church] held its last communion using the long table for the last time where the Sacrament was dispensed at a number of tables; around the table the communicants sat; the last table served by the minister was for the elders served by the minister who was served last by one of the elders. This was in the summer of 1905."53 A short time later, Rev. J.H. Brownell was duly called to the (Little) Shemogue - Port Elgin - Tidnish congregation of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.54 The induction service was held at Oultons Corner (Little Shemogue proper) on 9 August 1905: "The people welcomed Mr. Brownell with a heartiness which showed that their acquaintance during the twelve years of his ministry in the reformed Presbyterian Congregation of that place, has ripened into friendship."55 This public celebration symbolically drew together the first Covenanter pastor, Alexander Clarke, and the last, J.H. Brownell, who had been born the year before Clarke founded the Eastern

98 Revival and Resolution

Presbytery, whose dissolution Brownell had overseen. The Presbyterian Witness reported: "With Mr. Brownell his former congregation comes into the Presbyterian church, thus crowning the debt of our Church to the Reformed branch. The Rev. Alexander Clarke, D.D., landed at Fort Lawrence, Cumberland County, in Nov. 1827, and to him and his coadjutors and successors we owe the preservation of Presbyterianism in the counties [of Cumberland, N.S., and Westmorland, N.B.]. All the congregations arising out of his first charge have now been added to our Church."56 The story from the point of view of the Reformed Presbyterian Church was told rather less sanguinely. At the annual meeting of the General Synod in Cedarville, Ohio, in May 1906, the Presbytery of New York and Vermont reported that "the pastoral relationship between Rev. Joseph H. Brownell, and the united congregations of Linden and [Little] Shemogue, formed in July, 1893, was dissolved; and on July 26,1905, Rev. Joseph H. Brownell was at his request, certified to the Wallace Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church of Canada [sic]. The [Little] Shemogue congregation, also at its request, was dismissed to the care of the same Presbytery."57 The situation at Linden, where the congregation perforce dissolved itself, differed significantly from that at Little Shemogue: "Subsequently ... it was reported on behalf of the Linden congregation, that it had held a meeting of the congregation last July, at which it was decided that they could not support a pastor, or continue the organization. In view of this report, and its knowledge of conditions existing there, Presbytery ordered the name of the Linden congregation to be taken from our roll."58 The dual congregations of Little Shemogue and Linden "were the last of the many organizations effected in the Provinces by the late Drs. Darragh and Clarke and their successors," the presbytery sadly concluded: "Thus terminates the history of our Church in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick."59 Of course, the Reformed Presbyterian Church, General Synod, continued in the United States for some time, though it eventually became part of the Presbyterian Church in America.60 Notwithstanding the somewhat unhappy, forced dissolution of the Linden Reformed Presbyterian congregation, the 1905 Chignecto merger was a conspicuous success in Little Shemogue, the larger and stronger of the two churches. All the men who had been elders of the Little Shemogue Covenanter session, including the most prominent elder, Robert Scott, eventually became elders in the new Presbyterian congregation.61 Gradually, liturgical practice was brought into line with prevailing Canadian Presbyterian standards, though the communion season was retained: "Thursday evening, Saturday afternoon

99 Rev. Joseph Howe Brownell

and Sabbath morning, omitting the Monday meeting. Such services continued during the pastorate of Rev. J.H. Brownell."62 In 1911 the Botsford native John Duncan of Boston gave the Little Shemogue Presbyterian congregation an organ, which was installed in Zion Church at Oultons Corner (Little Shemogue proper).63 The outcome at Linden (Goose River) was less satisfactory. Brownell's call and induction as pastor did not include Linden, where there was no such happy coincidence of ministerial cooperation as there had been in Little Shemogue. There was also the legacy of the 1859 schism, kept alive by Rev. William S. Darragh's long life, with acrimony on both sides. The climate for lay cooperation, so favoured in Little Shemogue by both J.H.S. Blacklock and David Scrimgeour, was totally absent in Linden. Presumably, some former Covenanters joined the Presbyterian church there - Renwick Presbyterian, built by Darragh. In the Renwick church, no organ was used, nor were hymns sung until some time after Darragh's death in 19O2.64 Although Darragh discarded other Covenanter practices when he became a Presbyterian, he remained adamantly opposed to hymns and musical instruments in divine service: psalms only were to be sung, a capella.65 Some Linden Covenanters transferred their membership to the Reformed Presbyterian parent body in the United States.66 Even Brownell's mother, Mary Jane (nee Huston), was unhappy with the outcome, faithfully adhering to obsolete and (after 1905) superseded Covenanter practices until her death in 1912: "Mary Jane B[rownell] never changed the customs of the RP church. She stood during the prayer and sat for the singing ... She was the only one who did so."67 Sometime after 1905, the Brownells moved to the manse in Port Elgin, where they were residing when tragedy struck in 1915. Hugh Martin, their eldest child and only son, was attending normal school at Macdonald College, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec. On the way home he took ill, left the train in Moncton to recuperate and apparently did so, but then suffered a haemorrhage and died of typhoid fever. He was twenty-one years of age.68 In March 1920 Rev. J.H. Brownell received a call from New Annan (Annandale), Colchester County, which was debated at a meeting of Wallace Presbytery in Amherst on 3 March. The Port Elgin and Little Shemogue elders earnestly requested that Brownell be allowed to remain in (Little) Shemogue-Port Elgin-Tidnish. "Mr. Chapman spoke very feelingly of the loyalty of the Congregation to their Minister and [declared] ... that after a pastorate of twenty six years during which Mr. Brownell had served there faithfully they would deeply regret his removal from the Congregation."69 They could accept Brownell's

ioo Revival and Resolution moving only if his indifferent health improved, for New Annan was smaller geographically and therefore a less demanding pastoral charge. The delegates from New Annan likewise argued that he be allowed to go there. Brownell himself was not present, on account of illness. The request was approved as a regular gospel call and the documents were forwarded to Brownell, whom presbytery left to make up his own mind. Before he could give his decision, Brownell died suddenly, aged sixty-one: "Had he lived he would probably have accepted this call."70 The community was shocked by his unexpected death: "For twenty-seven years ... his people looked up to him with passionate attachment."71 Brownell had proved an inspiration and a help "not only to his own congregations, but to all the people in the communities in which he had labored so energetically, so efficiently and so unselfishly."72 A few months later, in the autumn of 1920, Jennie Brownell went "to spend some time with her sister in New Jersey."73 One morning a few days later, the second child and only daughter, Eileen Brownell, who was in residence at Mount Allison Ladies College, "mentioned to her roommate the terrible dream she had had during the night - that her mother had fallen down stairs and died. Later that morning [October 8], Eileen received the word that this had indeed happened."74 Brownell was omega to Clarke's alpha. The Covenanter movement had begun in Chignecto with the 1828 arrival of Alexander Clarke and had concluded with the 1905 decision of Joseph Howe Brownell, James Harvey Smith Blacklock, and the Reformed Presbyterians in Little Shemogue to join the Presbyterian Church in Canada. By becoming a Presbyterian, J.H. Brownell both crowned the Reformed Presbyterian movement and dethroned it. A strict Covenanter would have objected that by agreeing to or even acquiescing in the use of organs and the singing of nonscriptural hymns, Brownell had utterly abandoned Covenanter liturgical principles. The playing of an organ during public worship was increasingly tolerated, however, even in General Synod congregations. More substantively, Brownell had violated Reformed Presbyterian principles through his membership in a secret society, the Independent Order of Oddfellows: "He was a ... Past Deputy Grand Master and could be depended upon to advocate those things which were in the best interests of Oddfellowship."75 The issue of Covenanter membership in secret societies was at least once the subject of discussion in the Little Shemogue Reformed Presbyterian session.76 Whatever the local practice might be, the General Synod remained formally opposed to Reformed Presbyterians belonging to such organizations.77

ioi Rev. Joseph Howe Brownell

As a pastor, Rev. Joseph Howe Brownell had been able to anticipate and project the future, envision it broadly, and plan for achieving objectives. He was known for his "executive ability."78 He well knew the desperate plight of the Chignecto Covenanters before he went to labour among them. After working for several years, moreover, he had concluded that there was no future for the movement. Brownell's organizational genius helps to explain why - facilitated by the effective lay leadership of James Harvey Smith Blacklock and the acquiescence of Rev. Joseph Howe Hattie - the merger of 1905 was successfully carried through. In Linden, all the unionists had to do was wait until the grand old man, William S. Darragh, the last of Clarke's contemporaries, left the stage. As the first Chignecto Covenanter minister to turn Presbyterian, Darragh cast the longest shadow. Unlike all the Covenanter ministers except Clarke (and Robinson), Darragh stayed in Chignecto; and just as he had precipitated a schism in the Reformed Presbyterian congregation in Goose River in 1859, so his memory and legacy bedevilled the union exercise in Linden in 1905. One remarkable layman added lustre to both the Covenanter and the Presbyterian ministry of Joseph Howe Brownell: James Harvey Smith Blacklock, the original "merger promoter" and unionist lay leader. J.H.S. Blacklock (1854-1944) was one of two sons born of John Blacklock and Agnes Smith of Oultons Corner. Of his early life, little is known, but presumably he was educated in local schools. Blacklock commenced theological study at the Reformed Presbyterian seminary in Philadelphia in 1879, having presented his certificate as a student of theology under the care of the Eastern Presbytery.79 At the conclusion of the academic term, in March 1880, he gave a discourse which was approved and he advanced to the second year.80 There is no further record of Blacklock's attendance at the seminary; but despite having abandoned his vocation, he played a significant role in the life of the Little Shemogue Reformed Presbyterian congregation. When the Eastern Presbytery experienced an Indian summer, thanks to the ministry of Rev. J.H. Brownell, the General Synod granted the request from Eastern Presbytery "that Mr. J. Smith Blacklock be authorized to dispose of any church property in New Brunswick that is now the property of General Synod ... all monies realized from such sales to be disposed of as General Synod may direct."81 Then in 1905 Blacklock made the decisive intervention in the meeting of the Wallace Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in Canada that led to Covenanter-Presbyterian fusion. Not yet a ruling elder, and identified only as "a representative of the Congregation of the Reformed Presbyterian Church at [Little] Shemogue," Blacklock

1O2 Revival and Resolution personally visited all 105 members of the Reformed Presbyterian congregation, urging the union agenda.82 This initiative unquestionably led to the successful merger of the two congregations - Covenanter and Presbyterian - at Little Shemogue.83 In 1908 Blacklock became a ruling elder.84 He was also a longtime Sunday school teacher,85 responsible for the adult class.86 Without the ministrations of James Harvey Smith Blacklock, the Chignecto (or, at least, the Little Shemogue) Covenanter movement would have died a slower, more painful death. Without lay leadership of such a high calibre, the clerical duo of Brownell and Hattie could not have engineered a local congregational union.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Covenanter Decline and Fall

Under the progressive leadership of Rev. Joseph Howe Brownell and his associates/ Chignecto Reformed Presbyterianism went out with neither a whimper nor a bang. Its fading away, and the manner in which the Little Shemogue congregation became Presbyterian, was not without dignity. Looking back from 1905 to 1827, however, raises the question of the causes of the Covenanter collapse. The Covenanters faced stiff competition from the other Protestant dissenting churches - Baptist, Methodist, and other Presbyterian. Always a minority in Chignecto, the Reformed Presbyterians flourished for a time thanks to a unique combination of circumstances: in Little Shemogue, there was a desire for Presbyterian ordinances,2 while in Amherst there were no other Presbyterian bodies to meet the need.3 Yet in both places, the Reformed Presbyterians were simply overwhelmed by other, stronger denominations, including mainline Presbyterianism. In Amherst itself, immediately after Clarke's death, the Covenanters suffered a sharp decline. One commentator asserted that this was due "to the popularity of a brilliant young man named [Rev. David Allen] Steele who had come to fill the Baptist pulpit"4 an ironical outcome in view of Steele's friendship with Clarke. Another disadvantage was that Covenanter services were not as variegated as those of the principal Protestant denominations. The exclusion of organs and other musical instruments reduced the range of emotions and feelings to which Covenanter worship might appeal. "The use of organ and of hymns was found by many worshippers to be helpful, and a worthy addition to the service of praise."5 Baptists, Methodists, and increasingly Presbyterians were perceived as making more joyful noises unto the Lord. There was also inadequate support forthcoming from the parent body, both before and after the change of ecclesiastical relationship in

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1847-48. From the time of Clarke's arrival in Chignecto and throughout the 18305, he implored the Irish synod to send out more clergy. They were not dispatched, partly because there were no available clergy to be sent and partly because, even if there had been, British North America was not a high missionary priority. The 1828 statement of the Reformed Presbyterian Synod of Ireland, which involved a remodelling of the young missionary society, is clear on this point: "The Society [is] ... chiefly to direct... [its] exertions to the extension of Reformation principles, throughout these Covenanted lands [i.e., Ireland]. While neither of the two stations that have been mentioned [Liverpool on the one hand, and New Brunswick and Nova Scotia on the other], could be given up without deep regret... it will be the aim of the managers of the Society, to provide more amply for those ... in comparatively a destitute condition at home, by assisting weak congregations."6 It is not surprising, therefore, that the annual reports of the missionary society normally placed the home mission field first and that of the British North American colonies second. After 1848, moreover, the American General Synod was beset with schisms and difficulties, so that there was never sufficient support forthcoming to meet the exigencies of the church at Chignecto. The zenith of Reformed Presbyterian fortunes in Chignecto was marked by the formation of the Eastern Presbytery in 1859, shortly before the General Synod reached its greatest extent in 1861.7 Thereafter, both courts were rent by schism.8 In 1868, for example, the synod was bitterly divided over the activities of the ecumenist George Stuart,9 and the resulting schism led to the abandonment of the church's mission field in India, the entire Saharanpur Presbytery having withdrawn.10 This loss - though a new mission field was afterwards established in India - was one of the chief reasons given by Samuel Crothers Murray for his 1883 demission from the Reformed Presbyterian Church and ministry: "If I remained with the Covenanters, I cut myself off from missionary work in a foreign land [because] ... at this time [Covenanters] were carrying on no Foreign Mission Work."11 The Chignecto Covenanters had of course been most isolated when they were associated with the Irish synod, but after 1848, even though the General Synod was geographically closer to Chignecto, it was still perceived as being too distant.12 In the first place, the General Synod minutes reflected American, not British North American, concerns. The American Civil War (1861-65) was necessarily of interest to all Covenanters because of the church's long-standing opposition to slavery, but the tendency of the discussion in the General Synod in the i86os was to treat the war (which grew out of a fundamental

1O5 Covenanter Decline and Fall

disagreement about slavery) exclusively as an American concern in which the Eastern Presbytery was but academically interested.13 Furthermore, in 1867, when the Eastern Presbytery might have drawn the synod's attention to British North American political developments, nothing was said. Secondly, although Clarke normally attended the synod annual meetings in the United States, the other ministers and the ruling elders attended only occasionally: "It would increase their sympathy with the spirit and work of the church if all the congregations could send delegates to the Synod frequently."14 Repeated invitations from the Eastern Presbytery to the General Synod to meet in Chignecto also came to nothing. A contentious issue, such as the future of Rev. Alexander Robinson, was addressed through the dispatch of a commission to Chignecto, but only after years of prevarication.15 The Chignecto Covenanter clergy thus felt isolated and alienated from their fellow Reformed Presbyterian ministers in the United States. In 1873 an unidentified General Synod minister - an American who was touring in the region - sojourned with the then Covenanter pastor of Little Shemogue and Port Elgin, Rev. Samuel Boyd. The visitor commented that this "pastor would be much pleased to have more frequent intercourse with his brethren in the United States. None but those who are far separated from their brethren can tell the value of a fraternal visit."16 The Reformed Presbyterian Church in Chignecto began and remained a mission; it never became fully self-sustaining. Financially, the movement was probably most self-reliant in the mid-i84os, when Clarke had broken virtually all ties with the Reformed Presbyterian Synod of Ireland. The congregations were subsisting independently - free of financial entanglements with non-Chignecto jurisdictions - but they were also very poor. Newly forged links with the American General Synod brought money and new clergy to the area, but also "retrograded" Chignecto to the infantile status of a mission. This state of affairs did not substantively alter even after the formation of the Eastern Presbytery in 1859. In spite of Clarke's enthusiastic interest in foreign missions,17 Chignecto Reformed Presbyterians were not in a position to contribute consistently or significantly to the programs of the General Synod: "It is a cause of regret that we have not... contributed to any schemes of the church. This may be attributed to a comparative scarcity of money among our people ... and to our great distance from the central influences of our church."18 Paradoxically, although mission work was endorsed and funds were subscribed by the Covenanter

io6 Covenanter Decline and Fall Rev. William Stavely Darragh at Goose River,19 the other projects of the General Synod seem to have been supported best during the terminal twelve-year pastorate of Joseph Howe Brownell.20 The underlying reason for the collapse of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Chignecto may in part have been the temperament and evangelistic strategy of the apostle of Chignecto, Rev. Dr Alexander Clarke, who began and ended his career in the area as an itinerant missionary. Sent out to work in Saint John, New Brunswick, Clarke found the soil there infertile; the place was inundated with wnReformed Presbyterians whose attitude to him was unsubtly hostile. Clarke sought and found a more congenial mission field in Chignecto, where his brand of Presbyterianism was unopposed, at least for the time being. Although Amherst was his base of operations, Clarke became an itinerant preacher, ranging widely over the two provinces - a regimen that he maintained until his declining years.21 Since prospective Covenanter converts were thin on the ground, it is understandable that Clarke considered it necessary to spread the net widely.22 For reasons that he never explained, Clarke adopted the expedient of erecting church buildings regardless of the number of members. Perhaps he hoped that these edifices would witness to the Covenanter cause and draw intending worshippers. Perhaps building churches in different communities was central to his vision of the purpose of itinerant evangelism and essential to the building of congregations. The following journal entry from 1854 gives a typical picture of his activities: "I have just returned from Bay Verte. Saturday, left for Sackville; the cold almost visible. Lectured in the Hall on the forenoon of Sabbath. Hall quite full. Attention remarkably good ... On the afternoon was at Jolicuer [sic]. Monday, lectured at the Bay. Went on to Gaspereaux. Appointed a building committee, and let the foundation and frame of the house."23 Clarke was receptive to extradenominational offers of assistance in building churches, but if none were forthcoming the job could be done by the Reformed Presbyterians alone: "We are willing to share the burden of erecting these ... little sanctuaries with any of our brethren ... But if none should come ... we will have more labour, and men and angels will look with more wonder, for the work will be done."24 Clarke spent considerable time and effort in the United States attempting to raise funds for his church-building program. In 1850, accompanied by the young William Stavely Darragh, he accepted "a collection on behalf of the [Chignecto] mission."25 Twenty years later, when the Sackville Reformed Presbyterian church was built, "Dr. Clarke collected $400 in the United States."26

107 Covenanter Decline and Fall

The Covenanter cause would have been better served if Clarke had concentrated his considerable energies on Little Shemogue, Goose River, and Amherst, building a solid infrastructure within which succeeding clergy could have launched missionary ventures in other Chignecto communities. But Clarke thought otherwise and followed a policy of establishing as many mission stations and building as many churches as possible. He was sustained by his optimism that clergy would somehow be found to minister in them. By and large, they were not. The chronic shortage of resident clergy is another reason for the demise of Reformed Presbyterianism in Chignecto. The 1848 accession to the General Synod seemed to promise a solution to this problem, but it was neither effective nor long term. Clarke's pleas for help never ceased: "I have submitted to your notice thirteen preaching stations ... There are accommodations for preaching at every one of them. When you consider my age [seventy-nine] and many infirmities ... it is simply impossible for me to supply [them]."27 The church newspaper editor, Rev. Nevin Woodside, a good friend of Clarke's, added his voice in support: "Is there not among our young men one willing to take his place by the side of the distinguished leader, and support him?"28 Although several Covenanter clergy went to Chignecto, it was only Clarke, the patriarch, who remained there from beginning to end as an active Reformed Presbyterian. Clarke was frequently critical of the ministerial assistants who did arrive - and was even more critical when they left. Whatever positive attitude he may have had towards them during their early days in the region was almost invariably replaced by a negative attitude in retrospect. Possibly, his expectations of the clergy sent by the General Synod were too high. For instance, Clarke bitterly regretted his initial indulgence towards his original assistant, Henry Gordon. He had given the young minister the choice congregations of Little Shemogue and Goose River, reserving for himself the stations "which were the smallest in the number of members, and the feeblest in pecuniary resources."29 Gordon turned out to be a great disappointment, for he "Jesuitically put in motion" conflicting forces.30 Clarke complained that Gordon was "a specimen of the aid which the mission [Chignecto] and the writer [Clarke] have more than once received."31 Even those who, in Clarke's view, possessed merit were not overpraised. For instance, he described Andrew Gailey merely as "an honest and honorable man."32 Clarke's very specific criteria were that clergy should arrive, should work diligently within the Covenanter fold, and (most importantly) should remain in Chignecto. Clarke had real difficulty acknowledging

io8 Covenanter Decline and Fall the contribution of those who came and went. During Archibald Thomson's early ministry, for example, Clarke described him as "a scholar and an able minister,"33 but after Thomson left, Clarke vented his spleen in his "Church Property" article. Clarke's anger could also flash at those who came as Covenanters but subsequently demitted or seceded from the church - William Stavely Darragh being the prime example. Mercifully, Clarke did not live to see the same course of action pursued by Rev. Samuel Boyd, so his highest praise was reserved for the "excellent ministry of that excellent Christian man."34 In general, however, Clarke's record in dealing with clerical colleagues was not distinguished. His role as the apostle and unique abiding conservator of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Chignecto helps to account for his patriarchal, even proprietorial, attitude: "Rev. Dr. Clarke of Amherst had fatherly oversight of the Covenanters in two counties [Cumberland, N.S., and Westmorland, N.B.]. He had founded practically all the congregations, and when any became vacant he kept in touch."35 The disaffection among the ministry is partly attributable to the fact that the Chignecto Covenanter clergy were not well paid. Clarke bought a farm to supplement his meagre income, as did Darragh and Robinson. British North American congregations, especially those acting from Scots-Irish instinct in such matters, could not be persuaded to grant adequate salaries.36 Ecclesiastical discipline has also been cited as a reason for Chignecto Covenanter decline and fall. In his earliest days as a missionary of the Reformed Presbyterian Synod of Ireland, Clarke emphasized liturgical, doctrinal, and moral purity over the number of adherents. This rigorism had the practical result that there were fewer members: "Had he followed the method pursued by many missionaries abroad and ministers at home, of admitting indiscriminately persons to the privileges of the Church, and of dispensing ordinances to applicants, of whatever creed or character, he could easily have obtained large accessions of followers."37 When Clarke and the Chignecto Covenanter congregations left the Irish synod and joined the American New School General Synod, one significant obstacle was removed: many Chignecto Reformed Presbyterians could and did participate fully in public and political life, though they continued to adhere to other features of Reformed Presbyterian ecclesiastical discipline.38 The Maritime Covenanters were reputed to have a "rigorist and reactionary disposition";39 one reason for this was church discipline; the other was the institutional tradition translated from Scotland to Ireland and thence to British North America, in which persecution played so important a role: "If they were stern rather than charitable, let it be remembered that they had stern work to do, and that persecution hardens the mildest."40

109 Covenanter Decline and Fall

Another reason frequently adduced for the Covenanter collapse was the Maritime climate. It was said that prospective Reformed Presbyterian pastors "draw their coats more closely about them, when they read of deep snow and biting winds, and fields of ice, and muddy roads, and destructive tides, and bridgeless rivers, and sparse population; and they hope to be delivered from a settlement in such a country. Too many have looked upon the Lower Provinces as a sort of ice bound region fit only to be peopled by the Esquimaux."41 The harsh winter climate was cited as a challenge that needed to be overcome. A General Synod committee on the Eastern Presbytery reported, "The difficulty in the way of constant ministerial supply appears to be largely due to the severity of the climate," yet "it is equally true that the ministry as such MUST go wherever the human race is found ... Let not the example be forgotten of ... Clarke and his early coadjutors snow-bound while on their holy errands ... Let the [Eastern] Presbytery be maintained."42 A General Synod historian, who had never visited Canada, remarked that "the severity of the climate seemed to contribute to the illness, death or need to move further south of some ministers."43 In more general terms, the Covenanter movement failed in Chignecto because it never became fully autochthonous or acculturated: "One cannot help but feel that perhaps the great reason [for decline] was that, more than any other Church, the eyes of the Covenanter Church were ever on the past - ever on the lands beyond; and all the while the Presbyterian Church in Canada, a Church adaptable to Canadian conditions, 'indigenous to the soil/ was growing and spreading throughout the Provinces of the Dominion."44 Nor did the situation greatly improve when the Chignecto congregations joined the American General Synod in 1848. Clarke had intended the move to facilitate acculturation, but instead it made the Covenanters vulnerable to the charge of being pro-American. Immediately after Clarke joined the General Synod, an American reporter for the Reformed Presbyterian Church periodical made an extended journey through Chignecto in order to describe this new field of endeavour. He wrote, "We were happy to find that there was a strong and increasing feeling in favour of our own nation, and a political connexion with the United States appeared to meet with much favour."45 Yet it would have been unfair of mainline Presbyterians to accuse Reformed Presbyterians of annexationist sentiment or sympathy. An editorial in the Presbyterian Witness in 1891 - the year of Canada's controversial "unrestricted reciprocity" federal election - was able to assert, "The fact that [Reformed Presbyterian] ministers are all from the United States is no reflection on their loyalty as true British Canadians."46

no

Covenanter Decline and Fall

This was the high road, of course, and it was not always taken consistently. Damaging and hurtful to Chignecto Covenanters were the aspersions cast by William W. Rainnie, for example, who came to Linden as a theological student when the ex-Covenanter Rev. William S. Darragh was going into retirement. Rainnie speculated that Darragh and those leaving the Reformed Presbyterian Church "had become tired of the connection with the Church in the States," a connection "dictated by sentiment of a morbid kind with a Church in Philadelphia."47 It is small wonder that, in Linden, the mainstream Presbyterians spoke of Reformed Presbyterians as "Deformed Presbyterians."48 A related reason for the Covenanter decline was the unrelenting pressure exerted by the mainline Presbyterians, particularly after the 1860 merger of regional Presbyterian bodies into the Presbyterian Church of the Lower Provinces of British North America. There was a measure of truth in the claim that the post-1875 Presbyterian Church in Canada was better assimilated and acculturated than the Reformed Presbyterian Church, whose headquarters were in Belfast until 1847 and after that were in Philadelphia. Mainstream Presbyterians were sincere in their conviction that "the advancement of Christ's kingdom would be better served by unity among the professing Christians" living and worshipping together in Canada.49 The autumn following Clarke's death in March 1874 saw a beginning "made at Amherst by the Presbyterian church, - the two bodies, Kirk and Presbyterian combining." Such a congregation might well have been formed earlier, "only that there was a desire to avoid trenching upon a field in which Rev. Dr. Clarke had laboured for so many years."50 The mainline Presbyterian strategy was to recognize and affirm that the Reformed Presbyterian Church had once played a meaningful role but that its usefulness had ceased.51 Ex-Covenanter Samuel Crothers Murray succinctly articulated this view: "The Covenanters had done a great work. We should cherish their memory ... I came to the conviction that we could best honor their memory, by using what they had won, for the solution of the problems of our own day. The past was glorious, yet Forward be our watchword."52 Another reason why the Covenanter cause collapsed in Chignecto was that the laity - both men and women - were underutilized. Undoubtedly, in their society meetings and in their daily work, many laypersons witnessed effectively. The divide between clergy and laity, however, was too great for the generality of Covenanters to cross. Thus, there was no proper deployment of the capacities of able laypersons at the cutting edge of the missionary effort. There was no imitation of the Methodist model - however successful it may have been in this regard. Both theology and tradition prevented such a

in Covenanter Decline and Fall

model from influencing Reformed Presbyterian practice. There were effective laywomen no less than laymen in the Chignecto Covenanter movement; but in spite of Clarke's relative liberalism in this regard, women were not encouraged to defy cultural stereotypes in the evangelical missionary cause. In 1891 the student William Rainnie wrote, "It seems to be part of a modern Covenanter's creed that the minister and the elders have a monopoly of the talking in the meetings."53 The Chignecto Covenanters did not produce a dominant female personage comparable to Saint John's Old School Reformed Presbyterian poet, Letitia Simson.54 Instead, the Chignecto Covenanters accepted and even reinforced the sociocultural norm in their attitude towards women. In this respect, they were not essentially different from most other Christian groups, particularly the mainline Presbyterian churches, derived as they were from a patriarchal model of social organization and domestic economy.55 There was also the fact that Clarke demonstrated ambivalence towards church union, having left one Reformed Presbyterian body in 1847 to join another in 1848. In the i86os he formally supported General Synod union projects because he felt that the sponsors of such ventures "had no intention of abandoning any principles or practices of the Reformed Presbyterian Church until these were proven to be contrary to the law of God, or inferior to those of other Churches."56 The General Synod launched several unification attempts, obsessed by what one scholar called "the union craze,"57 and the fabric of the General Synod suffered. Not surprisingly, by the early 18705, Clarke had become distrustful of the union agenda and opposed all initiatives by the General Synod in that direction. Although Clarke became an opponent of union movements in the United States, he had a different attitude towards church union in Canada. As a fraternal delegate, he attended the Synod of the Presbyterian Church of the Lower Provinces of British North America in 1869. On that occasion, he obviously relished the deference shown to him as a pioneer and father in the faith, as well as appreciating the respectful hearing given his interventions; in short, Clarke played somewhat to his pro-union audience. It was reported that he addressed the court "in very felicitous terms," declaring "his ardent desire for union." He said that he "would rejoice with all his soul if he could do anything to strengthen the hands and encourage the hearts of the Presbyterians of this Synod. He spoke of himself as not only a Reformed but also a Liberal Presbyterian: a liberal but not a libertine." A courtship was in progress, he said, "which he trusted would end in marriage," and he announced: "Union must take place sooner or later; meanwhile let us co-operate."58 When Clarke reported to his

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own General Synod, however, although he mentioned the warmth of his reception, he described the proceedings more cautiously and omitted the coy image of courtship. He wrote: "In reference to the great question of the churches of the present time, Union, - your Delegate said, that it is desirable and must in God's time, come, - yet it would be unwise to force it."59 The mainline Presbyterians in Canada put forward some very tentative proposals in order to engage Clarke and the Reformed Presbyterians in constructive dialogue, but apparently these proposals were not seriously considered.60 In the 18705, when the tendency towards church union in Canada was combining with the appeal for open communion, the aging Clarke adamantly opposed it: "The cry for the Union of all the churches is becoming exceedingly fashionable ... In connection with the cry for union, the claim for open communion in all the churches is growing continually more and more rampant. Foremost and loudest is the cry for both union and open communion."61 If old age overtook Clarke, it was exhaustion that overtook the Chignecto Covenanters - a result of their progressive isolation, the unrelenting proselytizing of the mainline Presbyterians, and the ruinous schisms with their legacy of bitterness. Samuel Crothers Murray did not refer to the Goose River disruption of 1859, but he commented that when Rev. Samuel Boyd and a significant portion of the Little Shemogue Reformed Presbyterian congregation demitted in 1876, "there was long and bitter strife, which required 30 years to heal." When about fifty years later the question of organic union among Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists was causing discussion in many places, "these once loyal Covenanters passed quickly into The United Church of Canada without the formality of a vote. They had had their fill of fighting."62 Chignecto Reformed Presbyterianism also failed to articulate clearly and consistently the Covenanter attitude towards church-state relations, a failure that reflects the thinking and behaviour of Clarke himself. Clarke voted in 1836, not in 1840 or 1843, then again in 1847 hardly a consistent pattern. Of course, "the relationship existing between the Church and State was different in Canada from that in the Old Land. The persecutions and trials that brought the Covenanter Church into being did not exist in this new field."63 While the American experience successfully transformed Old World Covenanters into New World Reformed Presbyterians, there was no such evolution among Covenanters in British North America. Church-state relations were a contentious issue in Canadian Presbyterianism at large. After the Great Disruption of 1843 in Scotland,64 the debate was

H3 Covenanter Decline and Fall

carried on by the Free Church and its chief opponent, the Kirk, in British North America. Although the 1843 secession from the Church of Scotland precipitated a major debate about the relation of church and state in British North America, Clarke and the Chignecto Covenanters played no part in it.65 True, the move from the Irish synod to the American synod had the immediate beneficial effect of enabling Clarke and his co-religionists to play a constructive role in the political life of the region - as can be witnessed by the contribution of Robert McGowan Dickey, who was not only a prominent magistrate but was a member of Nova Scotia's House of Assembly for some fifteen years.66 Clarke himself served on the Board of School Commissioners in Amherst for a time,67 and Rev. Archibald Thomson was also a school commissioner.68 Moreover, Clarke's lateral move in 1848 allowed the Chignecto Covenanters, unlike those elsewhere in the Maritimes, "to feel that [exercising] the franchise was a duty and a privilege."69 The move to the General Synod was an attempt at indigenization, though an adequate rationale for the reaffiliation and an assessment of its implications were never provided. It appears that Clarke gave the question of church-state relations insufficient consideration. The only evidence that has survived is his petition to join the General Synod and his refusal to pray for the sovereign. There seems to have been little enough information within the community about Covenanter strictures in this regard. After 1848, the principle as understood by Clarke was that Chignecto Covenanters might vote and hold public office, but they did not pray for the sovereign because Christ is head of both church and state. However, the theological and historical rationale for this statement of belief and practice seems not to have been understood by Reformed Presbyterians in the Eastern Presbytery. One writer challenged the "neutrality" of the Chignecto Covenanters by asserting that either they ought to be firmly against any intercourse with secular government (as were Old School Covenanters such as William Sommerville in the Annapolis and Saint John River valleys) or they ought to enter wholly into the political arena and join the Presbyterian Church in Canada.70 Even Old School Maritime Reformed Presbyterians were not sufficiently educated about distinctively Covenanter tenets: "As soon as one comes to discuss the political relations of the Church in the Provinces [of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia], he finds that facts and modes of arguing that are effective in the United States, will not answer at all in Canada."71 The resulting confusion in Chignecto was demonstrated at the time of the 1876 Little Shemogue schism; by then most Covenanters exercised the electoral franchise, but not all did so.72 Ironically, Chignecto-born Rev. John Carritte Chapman, Clarke's

114 Covenanter Decline and Fall grandson, while serving as a Covenanter pastor in the United States, became a strong supporter of National Reform, a movement that provided for debate about the introduction of specifically Covenanter principles into national political life. There was no such vehicle for political discourse and dialogue in Canadian Covenanter circles. By joining the American "New Light" General Synod, Clarke and his congregations did little more than dissent from Irish, Old School discipline. Joining the General Synod, however, did not banish disciplinary and theological problems; the move simply replaced geopolitical difficulties with ecclesiastical ones. Chignecto "Covenanterism" became little more than a wholly owned subsidiary of American General Synod Reformed Presbyterianism. A final reason for the collapse of the Chignecto Covenanters was the cultural and religious milieu in which the movement operated after Clarke's death in 1874. The changes can be characterized by two parallel movements - the scientific study of Scripture, normally called the higher criticism,73 and the cultural movement from religion to religiosity. These forces affected all Protestant churches, but when combined with other factors, such as secularism, they influenced the Chignecto Reformed Presbyterians especially strongly. Clarke himself was staunchly orthodox in his understanding of Scripture. His views "would be regarded as sound in accordance with Calvinism as interpreted by Calvin himself, he had a horror of the liberal theology." His sermons were "richly evangelical," and he had an "earnest regard for the principles of Biblical interpretation."74 From this solid and antimodernist base, later Chignecto Covenanter clergy demonstrated a variety of approaches. Rev. John Carritte Peacock, who was ordained into the Baptist ministry in iQii,75 "shunned 'Modernism' in any form."76 When Stephen Peacock Brownell was ordained and installed as pastor of the West Barnet (Vermont) church in i896,77 he passed an examination before the presbytery, stating: "I believe in the plenary verbal inspiration of the Scriptures." The Reformed Presbyterian commentator noted, "It is refreshing in these days of Union Seminary teaching to hear a young candidate for the ministry speak [in this fashion] ... The Presbytery does not knowingly tolerate Briggsism78 within its ministry."79 There is a suggestion, however, that some colleagues of Brownell's in the Reformed Presbyterian ministry may already have been infected with the higher criticism virus. Frederick William Atkinson began his theological studies in 1896, "earnest of purpose," believing the ministry to be "a true and useful calling."80 But he became disillusioned at the seminary and later adopted an aggressively critical attitude, which eventually drove him out of the church. He afterwards

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articulated a strident secularizing modernism: "We are living in a wonderful age of intellectual alertness. A new history and historical criticism, a new biblical interpretation, a new literary criticism, an alert and tireless science, and the permeation of the scientific spirit through every line of intellectual activity, have made the world new. This new world can only be interpreted truly by fresh terms of expression. The old wine in old bottles is no longer intellectually possible. The old wine in new bottles is not more possible. The ancient terms, originated by men in a crude and narrow age, have become meaningless."81 The influence of the higher criticism was complemented by the trend from religion to religiosity. An illustration is provided by the degree of Covenanter involvement in the wider Christian community, as evidenced by contrasting the Reformed Presbyterian session minutes of Little Shemogue from 1854 to 1905 with those of the Presbyterian session minutes in 1906 and later. The Little Shemogue Reformed Presbyterian minutes, though not sparing of strictly ecclesiastical matters, obviously reflect and involve the totality of life of the Covenanter community. By contrast, the Presbyterian Church in Canada minutes deal far more extensively with denominational concerns; the sphere of religion has been narrowed to the ecclesiastical. Further evidence of the impact of the twin factors of higher criticism and the religion-to-church progression can be gleaned from the career choices and life choices which many Covenanter clergy were induced to make. Although their decisions were probably influenced by many factors, those indicated above were decisive in leading many Covenanter clergy out of the Reformed Presbyterian ministry or church. Of the fourteen Covenanter clergy serving in Chignecto, six left the church,82 while eight (57 per cent) remained Reformed Presbyterian.83 Of the seven native Chignecto Covenanter clergy, six left the church;84 only one - Rev. George W. Brownell - spent his entire ministerial career in the Reformed Presbyterian Church. Finally, although none of the others followed the radical trajectory of Frederick William Atkinson, seventeen seminarians who had Chignecto Reformed Presbyterian origins chose to minister in non-Covenanter churches.85 As a church, therefore, the Chignecto Covenanters collapsed under the weight of their isolation, deprivation, and alienation; they were overwhelmed by ferment from within and attacks from without. United Church minister Frank Archibald, the first historian of the Chignecto Covenanters, writing barely thirty years after the Covenanter demise, composed the following epitaph: "The message, the witness, the testimony of the Covenanters must never be lost. Though

n6 Covenanter Decline and Fall

the passing years may bring great changes in the thought of the world and in the conditions of life and though the Covenanter forms of worship and of organization may pass with the passing years, still, more than ever is needed to-day the spirit of the Covenanters of old the unyielding loyalty to principle, the stern devotion to truth as it was given them to see the truth, the steadfast courage in the face of life's great battles. And such must be their message for to-day."86

Appendix

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Chignecto Covenanter Congregations

Chignecto Reformed Presbyterian churches, mission stations, and preaching points are arranged in four distinct geographic groups: (i) WestmorlandNorthumberland Strait congregations: Little Shemogue/Murray Corner, Chapmans Corner, Baie Verte, and Port Elgin; (2) Cumberland-Northumberland Strait congregations: Goose River/Linden, Pugwash, River Philip, Mount Pleasant, Tidnish, and Northport; (3) Cumberland-Bay of Fundy congregations: River Hebert, Minudie, Maccan, and Athol; and (4) central Chignecto congregations: Amherst, Amherst Point, Amherst Head, Nappan, Jolicure, Sackville, and Rockland. WESTMORLANDNORTHUMBERLAND

STRAIT

Little Shemogue/Murray Corner

"The first Covenanter Church ever erected in the Provinces [of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia] was built at Chimoguee."1 The church building may have been started in 1829, for in an 1830 report it was stated that Rev. Alexander Clarke had "completed the erection of a commodious house of worship."2 It was thus the earliest Covenanter congregation to be organized (clearly, no later than 1830).3 A session was put in place and three elders were chosen: William Anderson, John Cadman, and William Peacock.4 The first communion service was held there on 3 July 1831.5 This first Reformed Presbyterian church at Little Shemogue was built on property formerly owned by Henry Lanchester.6 "That house stood for a few years,"7 but in the mid-i83os "a difficulty arose about the title to the property on which the church stood,"8 so the Lanchester church was abandoned.9 A new church was erected on property donated by David Murray.10 It was opened in the mid-i83os and is now the site of the Pioneer Cemetery at

12O Appendix Murray Corner.11 In 1870, Rev. Alexander Clarke noted that the Murray church "still stands."12 In the early 18705, however, the Little Shemogue congregation decided to "divide the district into two congregations."13 A new church was erected at Chapmans Corner on land donated by Frederick Chapman, and the Murray church was replaced by a house of worship on a site purchased from Rev. Alexander Robinson. In his 1872 report to synod, Clarke stated, "The old [Murray] house at Chimogue has been taken down, as also the first [Lanchester] that was ever built there, and have been wrought into [two] new and better houses [the Chapman and Robinson churches] within the last two years."14 Both of these new churches were built during the early 18705, when Rev. Samuel Boyd was minister and the congregation was undoubtedly at its strongest. After the schism in 1876, the Presbyterians erected a church, named Zion, at Oultons Corner (Little Shemogue proper).15 It became a United Church of Canada congregation in 1925, but it ceased to be a preaching point in i96il6 and was dismantled in 1974.17 The Robinson church burned in 1921 and was replaced in 1923 by the First Presbyterian Church at Murray Corner,18 which became a United Church house of worship in 1925 and was in use as such in 1995. William Duncan and Adam Scott became ruling elders at Little Shemogue in 1842.19 Except for a special session meeting relative to a discussion which Clarke had with the Little Shemogue session members in 1847,20 the regular minutes commence in 1854 and are extant until the disappearance of the Reformed Presbyterian congregation in 1905. The Little Shemogue congregation was badly damaged by the schism of 1876; despite the seceders, the congregation persevered21 until led by Rev. Joseph Howe Brownell and James Harvey Smith Blacklock to demit the Reformed Presbyterian Church and become part of the Presbyterian Church in Canada in 1905.22 Twenty years later, the congregation entered the United Church of Canada. Chapmans Corner When the Little Shemogue congregation made its decision in 1870 to divide into two districts, a new church was erected on land donated by Frederick Chapman.23 The church was dedicated early in 1871.24 The congregation did not split organizationally, so one cannot regard those who worshipped there as a separate congregation. In 1876 Chapmans Corner remained a Reformed Presbyterian congregation, but in 1905 it became a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. After 1925 it was a United Church congregation, and it continued as such for some thirty-five years. In 1961 the church at Chapmans Corner ceased being used as a place of worship;25 it was one of only three Chignecto former Reformed Presbyterian churches still standing in 1995-26

121 Chignecto Covenanter Congregations Bale Verte Among the settlements that Clarke enumerated in his 1846 report was "Bay de Verte," which, he noted, "has a few families and [is] a new station."27 It is likely that Clarke did not begin holding services at Baie Verte before the mid-i84os,28 but in 1851 he reported: "Chimoguee congregation ... has about 90 communicants, including Bay De Verte."29 In the mid-i85os, when Clarke was visiting Baie Verte as well as other mission stations, he wrote: "I have just returned from Bay Verte. Saturday, left for Sackville ... Lectured in the Hall on the forenoon of Sabbath ... On the afternoon was at Jolicuer [sic]. Monday, lectured at the Bay."30 The membership at Baie Verte must have grown, for "in May, 1856 ... a call was presented from the congregations of Chimoguee and Bay Vert, on Mr. Alexander Robinson, licentiate";31 then "on the i4th July, 1856, Robinson, who had been previously ordained in New York ... was installed Pastor of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Chimoguee and Bay Vert, New Brunswick."32 A year later, in 1857, Robinson was listed in the General Synod directory as minister of "Chimoguee and Port Elgin."33 The name Baie Verte was afterwards less and less used, the Reformed Presbyterians there undoubtedly becoming associated with the congregation at Port Elgin. Port Elgin Gaspereaux was the original name for this community, which Clarke visited in 1854: "On Sabbath afternoon was at Jolicuer [sic]. Monday, lectured at the Bay. Went on to Gaspereaux. Appointed a building committee, and let the foundation and frame of the house."34 "This house was set apart for public worship, on Sabbath, March 8th, 1857. "35 Services were led in the morning by Rev. Alexander Robinson, who was "truly eloquent,"36 while in the afternoon Clarke conducted the services. Towards the close, "he took occasion to refer to the wonderful change which the locality of Port Elgin Church presented. He had repeatedly travelled this way, and not a long time ago, when 'with one solitary exception,37 it was a howling wilderness,' without roads, bridges, or any facilities for travelling, except mere footpaths through the forest."38 Port Elgin had a new Reformed Presbyterian church building on a site given by Alexander Monro, but it did not have a separate body of elders. James Monro of Port Elgin was ordained an elder in 1856, though he rarely attended Little Shemogue session meetings. At the time of the Little Shemogue schism in 1876, Jarnes Monro was one of the members petitioning for a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. "Evidently members of the Port Elgin area were favourable [to the Presbyterian Church in Canada] for they held the Church at that place";39 Alexander Monro, who had given the site for the church, was one of the signatories to the petition.

122 Appendix The Port Elgin church, "erected during the pastorate of Mr. Robinson [was] ... never conveyed to any party/'40 and it stood on land that was therefore still owned by Alexander Monro.41 After the schism, it was made clear that those controlling the Port Elgin Church building were "required to open the Church to ministers of the Reformed Presbyterian church as hitherto."42 The earlier building was replaced in 1899 by the present St James, Port Elgin,43 which at church union in 1925 remained Presbyterian. The negotiations leading to the 1876 compromise and the 1925 arrangement were not without difficulties, but both were concluded without the acrimony that marked such occasions in other communities. CUMBERLANDNORTHUMBERLAND STRAIT

Goose River/Linden There may have been Covenanter services at Goose River shortly after Clarke's arrival in Chignecto; one was reportedly held in William Brownell's barn in nearby Northport in 1828.44 A congregation was organized no earlier than i83245 - 1834 being the likelier date, since Samuel Angus and John Cooper were elected elders in that year.46 "About the same time as [the building of the church in 1833 at] Jolicure, there was a small house of worship commenced at Goose [River] in N.S., but it progressed slowly for a time."47 "A church was built [at Goose River] in 1834."48 This original "small house of worship, built almost on the boundary between Linden and Northport [means that the site] is easily found, as there is a cemetery there."49 In 1842 elders Alexander Ferguson and James Burns were added to the Goose River session.50 There was clearly talk of building a new church in 1843, an