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Archives provinciales du Nouveau-Brunswick

Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

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MCNUTT, ARTHUR (1796-1864)

MCNUTT, ARTHUR, Methodist minister, Miramichi circuit, 1831-32 and 1840-43; b. Shelburne, N.S., 16 Apr 1796, s/o Martin McNutt and Rebecca Stewart; m. 1832, Abigail Starr, of Cornwallis, N.S.; d. Halifax, 12 May 1864.

Arthur McNutt, who was one of the first native-born Methodist ministers of the Maritimes, grew up in Shelburne, N.S., and Lynn, Mass., where his family moved in 1810. He was converted to Methodism in Lynn, but through "association with thoughtless companions, he lost relish for spiritual pleasures." Some years later he came back to the fold, and the family returned to their home province of Nova Scotia.

McNutt began his ministry in Guysborough County in 1822 as a local preacher. He was ordained in 1828 and was assigned to the Miramichi circuit three years later, as assistant to the Rev. Enoch Wood. He conducted the dedication ceremony for the first Methodist chapel at Chatham on 31 Jul 1831, and Wood officiated at the dedication of the new church at Newcastle the following Sunday.

In 1832 McNutt became the first Methodist minister at Woodstock, N.B. In 1838 he began a two-year term as the first travelling, or visiting, Methodist minister in New Brunswick. He came back to the Miramichi in 1840 as superintendent of the mission, the limits of which were at Bathurst, Shediac, and Boiestown. He was assisted on the Southwest by the Rev. Samuel McMasters and in the Richibucto area by Humphrey Pickard, a probationer who would later be the first president of the Wesleyan Academy at Sackville. In 1841 he and Pickard staged a big Methodist revival on the Miramichi, during which sixty-two converts were added to the membership rolls.

After he left Chatham, McNutt had assignments in Sackville, Saint John, and elsewhere in the region. He retired in Halifax in 1859 and lived there until his death in 1864, at age sixty-eight. His only daughter predeceased him in 1863. The record of his ministry indicates that he was an excellent preacher, well liked by all. While he was on the Miramichi, as a mark of respect, he was asked to sit for his 'likeness', and his portrait was still hanging in the church in Chatham in the 1860s.

Sources

[b] LDS-IGI [m] NB Courier 20 Oct 1832 [d] NB Courier 21 May 1864 / Cornish; Ganong Collection (scrapbook #5, re. Methodism); Gleaner 31 May 1831, 2 Aug 1831, 28 May 1864; Huestis; Smith; World 18 Aug 1886


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