MACLEAN, LACHLAN HUGH (1866-1953)

MACLEAN, LACHLAN HUGH, Presbyterian-United Church minister, Newcastle, 1917-42; b. Strathlorne, Cape Breton, N.S., 9 Jul 1866, s/o Alexander MacLean and Margaret MacLean; m. Edith Thompson, of Philadelphia, Pa.; d. Pictou, N.S., 24 Mar 1953.

Lachlan Hugh MacLean was descended from Lachlan MacLean and his wife Mary MacKay, who came to Cape Breton in 1826 from the Isle of Rhum, Scotland. He was educated at Pictou Academy and the universities of Queen's (BA 1894) and Dalhousie (MA 1897). He received his training for the ministry at the Presbyterian College in Halifax and was ordained in 1897. His first pastorate was at Port Hastings, N.S., after which he enrolled for postgraduate study at the United Free College in Glasgow, Scotland. Upon his return to Canada in 1904 he was inducted as minister of St Andrew's Kirk in Pictou. He stayed there until called to Newcastle in 1917, as successor to the Rev. Samuel J. Macarthur.

MacLean was the clergyman who presided over church union in Newcastle in the 1920s, when the St James (Presbyterian) and St John (Methodist) congregations were merged to form the Church of St James and St John, and he accepted appointment as the first minister of the new congregation under the United Church of Canada. The fact that a small body of Presbyterian anti-unionists carried their grievances all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada was extremely painful to him, but his patience and perseverance were exemplary.

MacLean was widely respected for his scholarship and was elected to numerous positions of trust by his colleagues. In 1936 Pine Hill Divinity Hall conferred an honorary DD on him. The following words are engraved on a plaque at the church:

IN MEMORY OF THE REV. L. H. MACLEAN, DD, WHO FOR TWENTY-THREE YEARS THROUGH CHURCH UNION WAS MINISTER OF THIS CHURCH. HE WAS AN INSPIRED TEACHER, AN ELOQUENT AND FORCEFUL PREACHER, AND AT ALL TIMES IN HIS MINISTRY GAVE FREELY OF HIS GREAT FAITH AND ENERGY.

MacLean was seventy-six years of age when he left Newcastle, but he continued with his ministry for eight more years at Clifton and Old Barns, N.S. He retired in Pictou in 1950. When he died three years later he left his wife, Edith Thompson, and an adopted son as his survivors.