A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography: Being Chiefly Men of the Time: A Collection of Persons Distinguished in Professional and Political Life, Leaders in the Commerce and Industry of Canada, and Successful Pioneers
History
A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography: Being Chiefly Men of the Time: A Collection of Persons Distinguished in Professional and Political Life, Leaders in the Commerce and Industry of Canada, and Successful Pioneers
=Campbell, Rev. Robert=, M.A., D.D., Pastor of St. Gabriel Presbyterian
Church, Montreal, was born on a farm near the town of Perth, Lanark
county, Ontario, on the 21st June, 1835. Peter Campbell, father of the
subject of this sketch, was born at Rein-a-Chullaig, Loch Tayside,
Breadalbane, Perthshire, Scotland, and belonged to the Lochnell branch
of the Campbell clan. One of his ancestors having taken part in the
Jacobite rising in 1715, and thus having incurred the displeasure of
Argyll, who was at the head of the Hanoverian forces, did not return to
his native district, but placed himself under the protection of his
other great kinsman, Breadalbane, who was neutral in that contest, and
who assigned him the property called Rein-a-Chullaig. Peter Campbell was
a man of high character and intelligence. He had for a time been a
teacher in Scotland, and this gave him much influence with his Highland
countrymen who accompanied him to Canada in 1817, and settled in the
Bathurst district. He brought some money with him to Canada, and owned
the first yoke of oxen in the settlement; although during the first
season he had to carry a bag of flour on his back through the woods from
Brockville, a distance of about fifty miles, having no road to follow
but guided only by the blazes on the trees. He was chosen an elder of
the first Presbyterian church, which was under the ministry of Rev.
William Bell, shortly after his arrival in the country. But as he was
born and bred in the Church of Scotland, he united with that branch of
the Presbyterian communion as soon as it was established in Perth under
the ministry of the late Rev. T. C. Wilson, of Dunkeld, Scotland, and
was installed an elder in it too, which office he retained till his
death in 1848. Margaret Campbell, Rev. Dr. Campbell’s mother, was of the
Gleno and Inverliver branch of the clan Campbell. She was born in
Glenlyon, Scotland, her mother being a MacDiarmid, one of the oldest
families in Scotland. Mrs. Campbell ably seconded her husband in all his
aims and efforts; and one of the results of their joint influence and
instruction was that three of their sons became ministers of the
Presbyterian Church of Canada in connection with the Church of Scotland,
and a fourth studied for the ministry of the Baptist church, but his
health broke down before he was able to complete his course of
preparation. Robert was the seventh son, and eleventh child of the
family, his youngest brother being Rev. Alexander Campbell, B.A., of
Prince Albert, North-West Territory. He was educated at the common
school, near his birth place; but as it happened that the school was
taught by a succession of able masters, one of them being an admirable
scholar in both classics and mathematics, he enjoyed considerable
advantages, and he, with his youngest brother, made very rapid progress
in study. He himself became a common school teacher at the age of
sixteen; and the desire he had to perfect himself in the subjects which
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