On August 17, we honour the life and labours of John Stuart, Anglican missionary among the Mohawks and the first resident priest in Upper Canada, who died in 1811.
Stuart was born in Pennsylvania and raised a Presbyterian, but entered the Church of England while at college and was ordained to the Anglican priesthood in 1770. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel assigned him to its mission in northern New York, where he quickly won the trust and affection of the Mohawk people. Six years later he and his native flock were overtaken by the American Revolution, and Stuart had a large part in keeping the Mohawks loyal to the British Crown. As a result he suffered many indignities at the hands of the rebels and in 1781 he fled to Canada with his family. Four years later he settled at Kingston, because he was chaplain to the regiment stationed there and it was near a band of loyalist Mohawks. In due course he also became rector of the Anglican parish in Kingston, though for many years, as the only priest in Upper Canada, his pastoral responsibilities extended as far west as Niagara. Even after other Anglican priests came into the province, Stuart still rode a circuit of two hundred miles several times a year, ministering the gospel among the Mohawks and in the scattered Loyalist settlements round about.
His preaching was plain and, as the saying goes, straight from the heart; and he was ready to celebrate in the roughest conditions when he saw that the people truly desired the Word of God and the sacraments of the Church. He once wrote that all he wanted was “to lead a good life, preach sound doctrine, and to be industrious and zealous in the discharge of the functions of an honest and upright clergyman.” He more than surpassed this modest ambition, so that today we may join his contemporaries in hailing John Stuart as “the father of the Episcopal Church in Upper Canada.”
IMAGE - Wikipedia