Part 9

=Torrance, Rev. Robert=, D.D., Guelph, Ontario, was born at Markethill, county of Armagh, Ireland, on the 23rd of May, 1825, and was the youngest of seven sons. His ancestor on his father’s side—M. Torrance—left Ayrshire, Scotland, during the times of the persecution, and settled in the north of Ireland, and their descendants have lived there, in the same locality, ever since. Robert Torrance, the subject of this sketch, went to school at an early age in his native village, and remained under the same tutor until he was ten years old, when he began the study of the Latin and Greek languages. In 1837, his parents removed to Glenluce, Wigtonshire, Scotland, and here Robert entered the school in this place, and continued the studies he had already begun before leaving Ireland, and began others preparatory to the life-work selected for him by his parents. In 1839, he was enrolled as a student in the Royal Academical Institution, Belfast, then or shortly afterwards affiliated with the London University; then he studied Greek and logic, and _belles-lettres_; mental and moral philosophy under Dr. Robert Wilson; mathematics under Prof. Young; natural philosophy, including astronomy and optics, and Hebrew under Professor Harte, assistant to Dr. Hincks, who was then an old man, and confined his attention to the senior class. This Dr. Hincks, was the father of the celebrated Oriental scholar, Dr. Hincks, and of the late Sir Francis Hincks, whose name is well known in Canada. After the completion of his art course and passing the usual examination by the Presbytery in whose bounds he resided, he entered on the study of divinity, in the halls of the United Secession Church in Scotland. His first session was spent in Glasgow, and the subsequent ones in Edinburgh. His course was completed in 1845, with the exception of one session, and, as there was great want at that time for missionaries to go out to Canada, he offered his services, and was accepted, it being agreed, under the circumstances, to exempt him from attending the last or fifth session on his furnishing testimonials as to fitness for the field and work. These having been produced to the satisfaction of the Committee on Foreign Missions, of which Dr. John McKerrow was convener, the Presbytery of Kinross was instructed to take him on trials for license, with a view to his proceeding to Canada. According to appointment, these trials were delivered in the church at Inverkeithing, a village in Fifeshire, about four miles south from Dunfermline. Having passed the Presbytery and been licensed, he preached two Sabbath days in Scotland, one for Rev. Dr. MacKelvie, in Balgedie, in whose family he had been tutor for three seasons; and the other for Rev. Mr. Puller, in Glenluce, where he had spent his boyhood. He then at once left for Liverpool, taking his parents with him, and from that port sailed, in a few days, for New York, which was reached safely after a voyage of four weeks. Without delay, he proceeded to Toronto, and there occupied the pulpit of Rev. Mr. Jennings for a few Sabbaths, Mr. Jennings being at the time in Scotland recruiting his health. Mr. Torrance spent one year as a probationer, travelling through the western section of Canada, from Toronto to Goderich and Detroit, as he had determined not to settle down in a charge till he had gone over a good part of the mission field, and given as much supply as in his power. Travelling in those days was far from possessing the conveniences and comforts now enjoyed. There were no railways; in several of the districts there were no stage coaches. The probationer was thus under the necessity of purchasing a horse, and making his journeys on horseback. In winter he was exposed at times to intense cold, and in summer to prostrating heat. He had to clothe himself for such changes of temperature. Roads were sometimes obstructed with snow, and he had to wait till parties turned out and made them passable, or opened up a way through adjoining fields; in spring and fall there was deep mud and often the horse had difficulty in getting through, and some of the stations were difficult of access from other causes, such as their recent formation. Accommodation when he reached his destination, was not always such as he had been accustomed to in the fatherland. But the people were uniformly kind and courteous; they gave the best they had ungrudgingly, often wishing it were better; and extended a cordial welcome. Many an event then befell him which interested him at the time and still lingers in his recollection. After receiving and declining calls from three or four congregations, he accepted a call from a congregation in Guelph, and was ordained and inducted on the 11th of November, 1846. He remained in this charge till January, 1882, when his resignation was placed in the hands of the Presbytery, and its acceptance pressed. Towards the close of the same month the pastoral relationship to his congregation was dissolved, the General Assembly giving permission to retain his name on the Roll of Presbytery. Since that time he has not had a stated charge, but has been frequently employed as moderator of sessions of vacant congregations in the bounds, and doing other work of a ministerial character. Shortly after his settlement in Guelph, he was appointed a trustee on the High School Board, and filled that position for a number of years. He succeeded for a time to the superintendence of the Common (now called Public) schools, in the south riding of the county, having the oversight of the townships of Erin, Eramosa, Guelph and Puslinch. Finding the labours too onerous in connection with his pastoral work, he resigned the position after two years occupancy to the hands of the County council. Previous to this, however, in 1855, he had been chosen by the Guelph Board of Trustees superintendent of the schools in the town, then only three or four in number. This situation he has since filled without interruption, and has seen the progress made up to this date, the number of schools having increased to twenty-six, and a class of buildings provided unsurpassed by any in Ontario. Shortly after the Rev. Mr. Torrance’s settlement in Guelph, a new presbytery was formed, called the Presbytery of Wellington, and of this he was chosen clerk, and this office he filled till the union of the churches, which took place in 1861, when Mr., now Rev. Dr. Middlemiss, who had been clerk of the Free Church Presbytery, was chosen clerk of the united one. In 1870, Mr. Middlemiss resigned, and was succeeded by Mr. Torrance, who still occupies the office. The church with which he was connected was known in his early days as the “United Secession,” a name afterwards changed to “United Presbyterian,” when the union between the Relief and Secession churches was effected. For some years he filled the position of convener of their committee on statistics, and also of their committee on the supply of vacancies and distribution of probationers. In 1874, his name appears for the first time as convener of the committee of the united church on statistics, and he was continued in the office at the farther union, which took place in 1875, and still occupies it. For some time the supply of vacancies and allocation of probationers were under the charge of the Home Mission committee, but they chose a sub-committee for the purpose, and for a few years the burden of the work fell to him with the other members. Ultimately a distinct committee was appointed by the General Assembly, to whom this service was assigned, and he was chosen convener. In 1880 he was chosen moderator of the Synod of Toronto and Kingston, which met in St. James’ Square Church, Toronto, and occupied the office for the usual period of one year. In 1883, he tendered his resignation, when Rev. Mr. Laidlaw of St. Paul’s Church, Hamilton, was chosen to succeed him. The scheme fell out of use, and it was considered unnecessary to continue the committee after 1884, till 1886, when the want of it having made itself felt, a new committee was appointed under a revised scheme, of which Rev. Mr. Laidlaw was appointed convener by the Assembly, and Mr. Torrance clerk by the committee, Mr. Laidlaw feeling that he could not carry on the work of the committee in connection with the weight and responsibility of his labours as the minister of an important city charge. In 1884, Mr. Torrance was chosen a life member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at its meeting in Montreal. In 1885, he was installed as a member of the Canadian Postal College of the natural sciences, and in September of the same year, he was constituted a life member of the Canadian Short-Hand Society. For several years he has been a member, by the appointment of the General Assembly of the Board of Examiners of Knox College, Toronto, and the senate of that institute conferred upon him, in 1885, the honorary degree of D.D. In 1851, he revisited Scotland, for the restoration of his health, which had become impaired through the labours that had been undergone; and again in 1881 he visited the old country, accompanied by his wife. On this occasion he travelled over the greater part of Scotland, visited Ireland and its chief cities, with the lakes of Killarney, and crossed over to Paris, where a week was spent amid the scenes of that gay and enchanting city. Rev. Mr. Torrance’s religious views are Presbyterian; these he says he acquired from his parents and is satisfied with their scriptural character, and has not changed his mind since boyhood. Rev. Mr. Torrance may now be considered as having retired from very active duties. In 1857, he purchased ten acres of fine land in the neighbourhood of Guelph, and having built thereon for himself a comfortable house, he resides there and devotes his spare time to gardening and the cultivation of flowers, having gone to the expense of importing from Scotland, and even China, some very rare flower seeds. In August, 1854, he was married to Bessie Dryden, of Eramosa, whose father and mother had come from the neighbourhood of Jedburgh, in Scotland, and took up land in that township soon after it was thrown open to settlers. Four children, two sons and two daughters, were born, all of them now grown up; two of them married, one of the latter, a daughter, having gone with her husband to China, under an engagement for four years at the close of which they have returned.

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=Moore, Paul Robinson=, M.D., Sackville, New Brunswick, was born on the 30th of March, 1835, in Hopewell, Westmoreland county, New Brunswick. (Since the county was divided, Hopewell is in Albert county). His father, Thomas Benjamin Moore was a lawyer in Albert and Westmoreland counties, and died in Moncton, Westmoreland county, April, 1875, aged sixty-eight years. His mother’s maiden name was Apphia Robinson, daughter of Deacon Paul C. Robinson, of Hopewell. She bore thirteen children, six sons and seven daughters, of whom three sons and four daughters still survive, the subject of this sketch being the third child. His paternal grand-father was John W. Moore, sergeant of the 1st battalion of Royal Artillery, and died a pensioner in Ballymena, Ireland, at eighty-five years of age. His paternal ancestors resided in the north of Ireland, and it is a family tradition that at the siege of Londonderry there were seven brothers Moore, engaged in the fighting, five of whom were slain in one attack. The remaining two survived the perils of the siege, and their descendants are still for the most part settled in the north of Ireland. His father was five years old when he came to this country in 1813, when the regiment to which his grand-father belonged was ordered out to defend Fort Cumberland. Paul Robinson Moore received a mathematical and classical education at the Mount Allison Institution, in Sackville, New Brunswick, up to the age of fifteen, when on account of ill health his studies were abandoned. Three years later, having regained his health, he commenced the study of medicine with Dr. Wm. T. Taylor, of Philadelphia, U.S., but had to give it up at the end of the first year, on account of another serious attack of illness which threatened to end in phthisis. He then returned to New Brunswick, and after recruiting his health, took a clerkship at the Albert mines in Hillsborough, New Brunswick, for eighteen months, and afterwards he was employed as bookkeeper and pay-master of the Boudreau stone quarries in Westmoreland county for a year. His health being then perfectly restored, he went to New York, and resumed his medical studies at the university of the city of New York, receiving private instruction at the same time from Dr. Gaillard Thomas. He graduated in March, 1859, and was appointed house physician and surgeon of Brooklyn City Hospital the following May, which position he held till May, 1860, when he returned to Albert county, New Brunswick, and commenced the practice of his profession. In January, 1875, he removed to Sackville, and entered into a professional co-partnership with Dr. Alexander Fleming, which continued till April, 1881, when Dr. Fleming removed to Brandon, North-West Territory, since which time Dr. Moore has been attending closely to his professional duties in Sackville. He was appointed coroner for Albert county in 1866, and magistrate for the same county in 1873. The doctor has taken an interest in various companies, and is at present a stockholder in the Moncton Cotton Company, the Sackville Music Hall Company, and the Baptist Publishing Company. He joined the Howard lodge of Free Masons in 1867, and Sackville division of the Sons of Temperance in 1875; became honorary member of the Glasgow Southern Medical Society in 1880, and president of the New Brunswick Medical Society in 1885. He is also a member of the Medical Council. He has never taken an active part in politics, but supports a Liberal government, and is an uncompromising Prohibitionist. He has travelled in England, Ireland, France, Scotland, and the United States. He has been a member of the Baptist church since 1865. On the 12th of December, 1866, he was married to Rebecca, eldest daughter of John Weldon, of Dorchester, Westmoreland county, by whom he has had nine children, four boys and five girls, of whom one boy and five girls survive.

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=Archambault, Urgel-Eugène=, Principal of the Catholic Commercial Academy, Montreal, was born at L’Assomption, on the 27th of May, 1834. His parents were Louis Archambault, farmer, and Marie-Angélique Prud’homme, belonging to a very old family of the province of Quebec. The Archambault family came from France and settled on the Isle of Montreal about the year 1650, thence off-shoots established themselves in different parts of the province of Quebec, especially at L’Assomption, from which place three or four members of this family were, at various times, elected to the Canadian parliament. Urgel-Eugène having attended school at Saint-Jacques de l’Achigan and at L’Assomption, became a teacher at the age of seventeen years (1851), taught during six years at Saint-Ambroise de Kildare, L’Assomption, Chateauguay, and finally completed his own studies at the Jacques-Cartier Normal School, from which institution he received an academic diploma. In 1858, he taught at Saint-Constant, and the following year he became head-master of the Catholic Commercial Academy of Montreal, the principal work of his life, and which he still directs. This school, established in Coté street, was transferred to the Plateau in 1871; it has become one of the principal educational institutions of the city, and even of the province of Quebec. In 1873, Mr. Archambault was named local superintendent of all the schools controlled by the Catholic Board of School Commissioners. The interior plans of the Plateau, Belmont and Olier schools are the work of his hands. This same year, 1873, he laboured successfully to bring about the foundation of an institution destined to form civil, mining, and industrial engineers. This was the Polytechnic School of Montreal, founded by the Catholic school commissioners and the Honorable Gedéon Ouimet, superintendent of education for the province of Quebec. Intended principally for Catholics, it was annexed to the Laval University in January, 1887. The university, which retains Mr. Archambault as principal of the Polytechnic School, has named him titular professor of the arts faculty. Much of the success attending the Jacques-Cartier Normal School conventions has been due to the active interest which he has taken in them. He is the author of the Teachers’ Pension Fund Bill, which became law in 1880, and was amended in 1886. In 1870, Mr. Archambault visited Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond (Virginia), and became acquainted with the best educators in the United States. Since then he has kept himself informed of their methods of teaching and management. With the same object in view, he visited the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia, in 1876. In 1878, Mr. Archambault was sent to the Paris Exhibition, to represent the Educational department of the province of Quebec; and while in France he was named member of the International Educational Jury, and was the first Canadian ever decorated with the _Palmes Académiques_, and honored with the title of _Officier d’Académie_. On this occasion he was commissioned, by the Minister of Public Instruction in France, to deliver the _Palmes Académiques_ to Dr. J. B. Meilleur, and to the Honourable P. J. O. Chauveau and G. Ouimet, who, each in turn, had directed the Educational department of the province. To allow him to fulfil his mission at the Paris Exhibition, he was granted a seven months’ leave of absence, during which time he gathered an ample store of pedagogic ideas, which he has since utilized for the benefit of his country. In 1883-4, he made a second trip to Europe and to Northern Africa, during a six months’ leave of absence granted to him on account of his health. These voyages brought him into communication with several eminent persons, and with different societies. Already a member of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste and of the Historical Society of Montreal, he became a member of the Geographical Society of Paris; in 1882, he received the title of Knight of the Sacred and Military Order of the Holy Sepulchre, and in 1886 he was named honorary member of the first degree of the Universal Humane Society of Knight-Saviors. In 1860, Mr. Archambault married Marie-Phélonise Azilda, daughter of Dr. Robitaille, of Saint-Roch de l’Achigan. Of the eleven children born to them, six, a son and five daughters, are still living (1887).

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=Stewart, Rev. Wm. James=, Minister of the Baptist Church, Portland city, St. John county, New Brunswick, was born at Second Falls, St. George, Charlotte county, New Brunswick, on the 22nd of April, 1850. His parents, David and Agnes Stewart, were born in Newtownards, county Down, Ireland. They came to America with their parents, and were married in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, soon after their arrival. Shortly after this event they removed to Second Falls, where they lived happily together and raised a family of eleven children, William being the youngest. In February, 1857, his mother was removed from her family by death, and laid to rest by loving hands in the village church-yard. His father married again, his second wife being a Mrs. Manzer, a widow lady, who still survives him. He had no issue by this wife. In July, 1876, his father was called to his reward, and buried beside his first wife. Both were consistent members of the Baptist church. William James Stewart, the subject of this sketch, was not a very rugged boy, and was therefore kept constantly at school from his earliest boyhood. At the age of sixteen he finished the studies in the primary schools, and as there was no high school near his home, he was allowed to drop his studies for a few years. In the meantime he went on a visit to his brother and sister, both of whom were married and lived in the State of Minnesota, and after a year and a half he returned home a young man of twenty years, with no very definite idea of life or what he should do in the future. Not long after this, however, there came a change into his life which decided the future for him. The sermons of Rev. Edward Hickson, then pastor of the Baptist church in his native place, made a very deep impression on his mind. His father was a deacon of that church, and a very godly man, his life and influence being in perfect accord with the truth preached from the pulpit; and so after a good deal of anxiety of mind and earnest prayer to God, William was led to give his heart to the Saviour, and experience in his life that “peace which passeth all understanding.” On the 16th of June, 1872, he was immersed in the name of the Trinity by the Rev. E. Hickson, and received into the fellowship of the Second Falls Baptist church. He at once felt a desire in his heart to do something for Him who had done so much for the world, and his first work was to organize a Sunday school in connection with the church of which he was then a member. He also resolved to take up his long neglected studies and prepare himself for a life of usefulness, in the world. In October, 1872, he entered the Baptist Collegiate School in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. He did not at that time have the ministry in view, but not long afterward it was pressed upon him with such weight that he could not rest day or night until he yielded to the voice of God in his soul, and began to shape his course with this in view. On 21st May, 1874, he received a license from the church of which he was a member, signed by George Allen, clerk, to preach the gospel according to the faith and practice of the Baptist church. He spent the vacations of each year of his student life in preaching the word as opportunity offered. The vacation of 1876 he spent at Musquash, near St. John, New Brunswick, and God poured out His Holy Spirit wonderfully upon the people and many precious souls were saved. There was no minister near to baptize, and he consented to be ordained, although he was but a student. His ordination took place on the 23rd day of May, 1876, in the Carleton Baptist church. In May, 1877, he finished his studies at Acadia College, and received a unanimous call to the churches at St. George and Second Falls, the latter of which he was a member. He at once entered upon his work, and was greatly blessed in his labours among his own people. On 1st July, 1878, he was married to Lillie S. Hanson, daughter of Vernon and Helen Hanson, in the city of Boston, by the Rev. Dr. Lorimer. After a pastorate of about four years in his native place, he received and accepted a call to the Baptist church in Parrsborough, Nova Scotia. He spent one year with this church, and then received and accepted a call to the Baptist church in Portland city, St. John county, N.B., and on 1st June, 1882, he entered upon his duties in the church of which he is at present (1887) the pastor. About two hundred souls have been added to this church since he took up the work, and God is now very graciously blessing it. The church edifice has been improved at a cost of about fifteen hundred dollars, and a fine parsonage purchased since he began his ministry in it. The outlook for the future is very hopeful. To God be all the praise. Rev. Mr. Stewart has had two children, a boy and a girl. The eldest is now a bright boy of seven years. The little girl, too sweet and pure for earth, was taken at the age of four by Him who said, “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

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