CUTHBERT, THOMAS HINDE (1860-1910)

CUTHBERT, THOMAS HINDE, Reformed Episcopal minister, Chatham, 1888-90; Anglican rector, Newcastle and Nelson, 1901-06, and Derby and Blackville, 1907-10; b. near Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England, 1860; m. 1894, Estella Skull, of Guelph, Ont.; d. Millerton, 29 Mar 1910.

Thomas H. Cuthbert was appointed minister of Emmanuel Reformed Episcopal Church in Chatham in February 1888 and was ordained in a ceremony conducted in September of that year. The church, which had been established in 1875 through the efforts of Caleb McCulley and others, had a small congregation and had witnessed clergymen come and go in revolving door fashion: William McGuire, Thompson L. Smith, George Howell, Thomas Evans, John W. Treen, and numerous visiting and supply ministers. When it was "reopened" in 1888 under Cuthbert, however, the hope was expressed that a new period of growth and continuity had begun.

Cuthbert would appear to have established acceptable working relations with most members of the congregation, but he soon came into conflict with David G. Smith, editor of the Miramichi Advance, who accused him of writing "impertinent" letters of protest about routine items of church news published in the paper. In an exceptionally stern rebuke Smith called him "a very foolish young man" and invited him to bestow his "belligerent attentions" elsewhere.

Cuthbert's resignation and departure for England in February 1890 signaled the beginning of the end for Emmanuel Reformed Episcopal Church, which soon shut its doors for good. Canada had not seen the last of Cuthbert, however, who after a short stay overseas, during which he served as curate of Trinity Church in Cardiff, Wales, accepted an appointment in Guelph, Ont. His next move was to Wisconsin, where he was made a deacon of the regular Episcopal, or Anglican, church in 1896 and was ordained a priest by the bishop of Milwaukee in 1898. He was the rector at River Falls, Wisconsin, and Elk Rapids, Michigan, successively, until 1901, when he returned to the Miramichi as rector of Newcastle and Nelson. Soon afterwards, it was learned that he had fought bitterly with the senior warden at Elk Rapids and was continuing to argue the merits of his position in letters addressed to his former parishioners. He gave up the letter-writing campaign after the bishop of Fredericton intervened, but it would appear that he was quarrelsome by instinct. He identified politically with the English Radical school and was a zealous advocate of social reform.

After five years in Newcastle, Cuthbert resigned due to failing health and left with his family for England, but he returned once more, late the next year, to accept the rectorship of Derby and Blackville. For a few months he also had pastoral responsibility for the Ludlow and Blissfield mission. An important event during his tenure was the renovation, in 1908, of Blackville's sixty-six-year-old Trinity Church. He was fifty years of age when he died at Derby in 1910, survived by his wife, Esther Skull, a daughter, and a son.