STEWART, WILLIAM (1802-1892)

STEWART, WILLIAM, Presbyterian minister, St Andrew's Church, Chatham, 1849-60; b. Glasgow, Scotland, c1802, s/o John Stewart; m. 1853, Helen Scott, of Annan, Scotland; d. Toronto, 20 Jan 1892.

William Stewart, the son of a Glasgow merchant, did not enter the ministry until he was middle aged. Little is known about his life in Scotland except that he had a son born in the early 1840s. He was probably married at that time to a woman who died prematurely. Trained for the ministry at Glasgow, he was ordained in 1848 and sent to New Brunswick by the colonial committee of the Church of Scotland. After engaging in missionary work in the Saint John area, he was called to Chatham in 1849 to be minister of St Andrew's Church.

In the winter of 1850 Stewart delivered a two-part address on "Anatomy" to the Newcastle and Douglastown Mechanics' Institute. In the census of 1851 he was enumerated at Chatham with his son, John, age nine, and two servants. In November 1853 he was married in Halifax to Helen Scott. Three children of this union were baptized at Newcastle. After eleven years in the charge he resigned in 1860 to accept a call to Hornby, Ont. He ministered there until his retirement in 1882-83 and continued to live there until 1888-89. He spent his last years in Toronto. "A man of scholarly attainments and literary tastes," he was in his ninetieth year at the time of his death.