MILLAR, JAMES (1804-1865)

MILLAR, JAMES, principal of the County Grammar School, 1840-60; b. Dumfriesshire, Scotland, c1804; m. Elizabeth - ; d. Chatham, 2 Dec 1865.

A new Presbyterian parochial schoolhouse was built in Chatham in 1831. After it stood vacant for a year because no acceptable teacher could be found, Christopher Clarke, one of the trustees, "sent home for a master," and James Millar, "late of the University of Edinburgh," responded to the call. His appointment was announced in October 1832 by the Rev. James Souter and the Rev. William G. Johnston. A year later, when a school inspection was carried out by the Rev. Mr Souter, the Rev. John McCurdy, and two Presbyterian ministers from elsewhere in New Brunswick, both teacher and pupils were highly commended.

Millar taught the parochial school until 1834 but not in the fall of that year or during the first part of 1835, when The Gleaner again carried an advertisement for a teacher. He was re-engaged in June 1835 and continued to teach under church auspices until March 1838. His name was on the list of public schoolteachers in Chatham later in 1838 and in 1839, which suggests that the parochial school may have become a public school in 1838.

Anglican and Presbyterian educational interests were joined in Chatham in 1840 when Millar was engaged to succeed William Jenkins as principal of the County Grammar School. Between twenty-five and thirty-five boys were enrolled in his classes at this school, and he stated repeatedly in his reports that the method of English and classical instruction which he was following was the same as that used at the University of Edinburgh. Throughout the 1840s, both the school's examiners and The Gleaner were indulgent in their praise of the "distinguished seminary" taught by him. "We venture to affirm," asserted The Gleaner in 1844, "that there is no grammar school within the limits of the province that is under abler management." Assessments were only slightly less extravagant in the 1850s. A dissenting, not to say uncharitable, judgment was rendered many years later, however, by a former pupil, Prof. J. Frederick McCurdy, who stated that "Jimmy Millar" had been "eccentric, irritable, tyrannical [and] ignorant."

A parent painted a most unflattering picture of the grammar school too as it was in 1860: "...its windows conspicuous with shattered and patched panes of glass; the outer walls...grey and venerable with age, for a coat of paint it has not received for the last twenty years; the snows and blasts of winter driving under it; its grounds perfectly open and exposed, with not a tree or shrub thereon of any description to relieve the dreary wretchedness of the premises, but on which is frequently observed the neighbours' cattle roaming and bleating; to which there is not a fuel shed nor any description of outbuildings for the comfort of our children. Immediately upon entering this temple of learning the visitor will find himself in the one and only room which it contains, having a low ceiling and not a ventilator in it to carry off the heated and impure air. ...He will also find...only two pupils in the classics, a number of children scarcely beyond the alphabet, not able to read; and the majority of the pupils not sufficiently advanced for a grammar school teacher's time to be occupied with them." The writer also claimed that two pupils had recently been withdrawn from the institution and sent to school in Sackville.

In 1833 Millar was secretary of the Miramichi Temperance Society. In 1843 he was appointed to the County Board of Education, which evaluated applications for teachers' licenses. He was invited on several occasions to address meetings of the Mechanics' Institute and other societies. He was an elder of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church. His principal activity beyond the classroom, however, was his twenty-six years of service as superintendent of the St Andrew's Sabbath school, a labor which he performed jointly with "his good lady."

Millar was one of the highest-paid teachers in the province, and having no children to raise, he became quite "affluent." In 1861, after he had retired, he and his wife took a trip to Scotland. When he died at Chatham four years later he left everything to her with the proviso that upon her death the residue of his estate would pass to his male heir on his sister's side in Scotland.