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Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

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CORBETT, THOMAS (1848-1926)

CORBETT, THOMAS, Presbyterian minister, Blackville, 1898-1901; b. Gay's River, N.S., 3 Oct 1848, s/o Joel Martin Corbett and Elizabeth Ellen Annand; m. 1st, 1878, Agnes Harriet Crowe, of Truro, N.S.; d. Edmonton, Alta, 14 Feb 1926.

Thomas Corbett's mother was a sister of the Rev. Joseph Annand, DD, of Gay's River, N.S., who was a Presbyterian missionary in the New Hebrides for most of his life, and she was an aunt of the Rev. Edward E. Mowatt.

Corbett acquired his higher education at Dalhousie University (1872-75), and before he entered the ministry he worked for ten years as a teacher. During some of that period he was a school principal in Saint John. He then attended the Presbyterian College in Halifax and was graduated and ordained in 1888, at age forty. He was a minister in Prince Edward Island for some years and for short periods in Massachusetts and in two different New Brunswick charges. He was called to Blackville in 1898. Besides carrying out his pastoral duties there and at Millerton, he preached in the lumber camps in the winter and conducted special services for the stream drivers each spring.

After Corbett and his family left the Miramichi, where they had spent "the happiest five years of their lives," he occupied stations in Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. He retired twice: first at Gull Lake, Sask., and finally in Edmonton in 1924, at age seventy-six. He had always "sought the most difficult charges, and delighted in building them up."

Corbett and his first wife, Agnes H. Crowe, who died in 1906, raised a family of eight, which included a lawyer, a doctor, a civil engineer, and a Rhodes Scholar who became a professor at McGill University. The family also included a son known to the Canadian public as E. A. Corbett. Edwin Annand Corbett was the University of Alberta's director of extension in the 1920s and 30s and was the founder, in that capacity, of the Banff School of Fine Arts. He was also the author of a number of popular literary works, one of the most charming of which is Father, God Bless Him (1953), a loving tribute to his father's memory which contains a chapter entitled "Blackville on the Miramichi."

In addition to his children, Corbett's survivors in 1926 included his second wife, whose name does not appear in any of the sources noted below.

Sources

[b] census [m] Globe 26 Jul 1878 [d] official death records / Advance 2 Jun 1898; Advocate 18 Dec 1901; Can. Who's Who 1948 (re. three of the sons); Corbett; Edmonton Journal 15 Feb 1926; Encycl. Can. (re. Edward Annand Corbett); Frame; Halifax Sun 18 Jan 1847 (re. parents' marriage); Hist. UC Blackville; New Outlook 10 Mar 1926; Walkington


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