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Provincial Archives of New Brunswick

Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

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MCQUEEN, ARCHIBALD (1781-1840)

MCQUEEN, ARCHIBALD, clergyman and first principal of the County Grammar School, 1819-26; b. Ayrshire, Scotland, c1781; m. 1808, Catherine McLeod; d. United States, 25 Aug 1840.

Archibald McQueen attended Robert Haldane's theological seminary in Edinburgh, which promoted an evangelical brand of Christianity associated with the Congregational and Baptist churches in Scotland. He emigrated in 1806 and was married in Halifax in 1808, as "Rev. Archibald McQueen." The officiating clergyman was the Rev. Archibald Gray, DD, minister of St Matthew's Presbyterian Church. Little is known about the particulars of McQueen's religious affiliations or activities in Nova Scotia except that he was examined for a grammar school license by the rector of St Paul's in Halifax and taught school for a number of years in Cumberland County.

McQueen was invited to the Miramichi in the winter of 1814-15 to minister to the Presbyterian residents, who had been without a pastor since the death of the Rev. John Urquhart several months previously. He agreed to commit himself to a five-year term and is known to have preached at the church at Miramichi Point and in the courthouse in Newcastle. However, because of theological differences, or for other reasons, he did not dispense "the sacrament of baptism." This was said to have caused many of the subscribers to his stipend to withdraw their support. Writing in 1911, Dr James McG. Baxter, who had deep family roots in the Presbyterian church in the Maritimes, stated that, "in 1816 dissatisfaction arose with the minister at Moorfield, and a congregation was started on the Chatham side of the river." He did not name the clergyman with whom the congregation was unhappy, but it was no doubt McQueen, whose ministry may have terminated at that time. The Rev. James Thomson, a Secessionist Presbyterian minister, was appointed in May 1816, with responsibility for a mission field which included both Chatham and Newcastle. Three elders from the previous church were still in office at the time of his arrival, but new elders were ordained in 1817, and his would appear to have been the only Presbyterian mission on the river after that date.

In 1816 a bill was enacted to provide for the establishment of grammar schools in the different counties of New Brunswick, and in January 1819 a board of trustees was formed to organize a Northumberland County grammar school at Chatham. At this time McQueen, who was reputed to be an excellent scholar, was retained to conduct the school. He was not an adherent of the Church of England, which had effective control over the grammar schools, but a letter of attestation written in support of his application for a teaching license, declared him to be devoid of the "fanaticism and debating arts made use of by the Methodists and other dissenters of that class." It was also stated in the letter that his character was "irreproachable," that he was "incapable of any deception," and that his conduct was "pious and exemplary."

The grammar school opened in April 1819 at McQueen's home east of Clarke's Cove and continued to be conducted by him for seven years, until the spring of 1826. Being deeply indebted at that time to the merchants William Abrams, Alexander Rankin, and John Clark, he assigned and returned to Nova Scotia. He sought compensation the following year for the school building, which he claimed to have erected at his own expense. His activities after 1827 have not been traced, but the death in 1840, in "Richmond, U.S.," of "Rev. Archibald McQueen," age fifty-nine, "father of Mrs Blakadar," was reported in the Halifax Times.

McQueen and his wife had three children in 1815. Their eldest daughter, Catherine McQueen, was married at Chatham in 1825 to Henry N. Blackadar, who until his premature death in 1852 was a lawyer in Pictou, N.S., and a member of the Nova Scotia Assembly. Catherine (McQueen) Blackadar died in Sydney, N.S., in 1894 in her eighty-sixth year.

Sources

[m] Weekly Chronicle (Halifax) 8 Jan 1808 [d] Times (Halifax) 29 Sep 1840 / Acadian Recorder 19 Nov 1825; Baxter; county records (25/524, McQueen to Clark et al); Fraser (C); Hoddinott; Mercury 20 Feb 1827; McQueen biog. data; PANB (grammar school records; petition #691, 1815); Presb. Witness 27 Nov 1852, 27 Jan 1894


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