HARRISON, FREDERICK W. (1834-1900)

HARRISON, FREDERICK W., Methodist minister, Newcastle circuit, 1884-85, and Chatham circuit, 1885-88; b. Carleton Co., N.B., 20 Dec 1834, s/o Hugh Harrison; brother of George Harrison; m. 1865, Mary Louisa Fisher, a native of Cockermouth, England; d. Woodstock, N.B., 18 Jun 1900.

Frederick W. Harrison was teaching at Mount Allison Academy in 1859. In 1861 he entered the Methodist ministry on trial. Ordained in 1865, he served in New Brunswick and for short periods in Nova Scotia and Bermuda. A year in Newcastle in 1884-85 was followed by a three-year pastorate in Chatham. During his term there a "substantial and elegant" new church was built. An event staged in conjunction with its opening was a "funeral service" for the former Methodist chapel. This was conducted on 15 August 1886 by the Rev. Humphrey Pickard, who had preached in the chapel fifty years previously when he was an assistant to the Rev. Richard Williams. The new St Luke's Church was dedicated the next Sunday.

The Chatham World described Harrison as "one of the ablest preachers and one of the most original thinkers" in the Methodist church in the Maritimes, and as one whose theological views were "always subordinate to his ideas of common sense." During his twenty-seven-year ministry he was often ill and had to take time off to rest and recuperate. He retired twice from "nervous prostration and general debility." He first stepped down after the completion of his term at Chatham in 1888. He accepted a pension, but he returned to the active ministry at Sackville the following year and persevered until 1892. He and his wife, Mary Louisa Fisher, had one son who survived to adulthood and a daughter, Mary L. Harrison, who was the first wife of William B. Snowball.