CRUDEN, WILLIAM (1832-1911)

CRUDEN, WILLIAM, Anglican missionary, Derby and Blackville, 1857-77; b. Pitsligo parish, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, 6 Dec 1832, s/o William M. Cruden and Mary Burnett; m. 1872, Flora McBeath, d/o Donald McBeath and Elizabeth Gordon, of Black River; d. Lower Riccarton, near Christchurch, New Zealand, 17 Aug 1911.

William Cruden was from a Presbyterian family but was sent to the Church of England's All Souls Grammar School at King's College, London. In 1850 he came to New Brunswick with his father and stepmother, Agnes Mitchell. In 1851 he was studying at the Newcastle Grammar School under John H. Sivewright. The following year he went to Toronto, where he was a member of the original class of Trinity College (BA 1855). After being ordained a deacon of the Anglican church in 1857, he was appointed curate of St Peter's Church, Derby, and Trinity Church, Blackville. In this position he was the successor of Charles F. Street, who served as curate in 1856-57 and was the first clergyman to have exclusive pastoral responsibility for the Derby-Blackville mission.

Cruden was ordained a priest in 1858 and remained to become the longest-serving rector in the history of Derby and Blackville. Prior to his marriage in 1872, at age forty, he resided at his father's farm on the Chaplin Island Road near Newcastle. Later he and his wife took his father into their home.

Cruden was a member of the Masonic order in the 1860s and 70s and sometimes addressed meetings of the temperance societies and the Newcastle and Douglastown Mechanics' Institute. To the mechanics he spoke on such topics as "Light," "Air," and "Electricity," and he became one of the only public speakers ever to be chastised by The Gleaner when one of his lectures was clocked at an hour and forty-five minutes!

Cruden was said to have won the admiration of his parishioners by his "kindly acts and unassuming manner" and would have been welcome to stay at Derby and Blackville for the duration of his ministry. However, after twenty years he resigned to accept the rectorship at Pictou, N.S. He stayed there only two years, before transferring to Lanark, Ont. Three years later he resigned again, and in the spring of 1881 departed with his wife, children, and father for New Zealand, taking passage from San Francisco on the SS City of New York. The particulars are known because his father, William M. Cruden, died on board, and his burial at sea attracted the attention of the press.

Between 1881 and 1904 Cruden had five different appointments as curate and vicar of churches in New Zealand. His last posting was in the town of Rangiora, north of Christchurch, where he retired in 1904. He died seven years later in nearby Lower Riccarton, leaving his wife, Flora McBeath, four daughters, and a son. At that time his son, the Rev. William Mocher Cruden, who had been born at Derby in 1873, was a chaplain in the army.