Reprinted from The Canadian Baptist of August 9, 1934.

SPENDING his vacation each summer at Dwight Ont., near Huntsville, is the Rev. Dr. J. W. A. Stewart, distinguished preacher and educationist. Each year this veteran ministers very happily to the summer colony there. He is the son of the pioneer parsonage, for his father, the late Rev. Alexander Stewart, was a giant in his day. The Rev. Hugh Stewart of Stratford and Mrs. G. R. Welch are children of the Rev. J. W. A. Stewart.

In 1886 Dr. Stewart wrote for "The Canadian Baptist" the story of his pioneer father's career. He was then an old man although he lived until 1904, when he passed away at the age of 91 years - enjoyed life to the very last.

Dr. Stewart's life of his indefatigable father, as written in 1886, was as follows:

My father was born in the year 1813, in the parish of Mortlach, Banffshire, Scotland. He was the youngest son of William Stewart, a small farmer in lowly circumstances. At eight years of age he went to work as a herder of cattle; and it was several years later, when he had saved a little from his earnings, that he returned home and went to school in Dufftown, for sixteen weeks. This was the beginning and end of his education as far as schools are concerned, but it served to initiate him into the mysteries of reading, writing and cyphering.

In March of the memorable year 1832, he embarked at Aberdeen on the brig Annandale, bound for Quebec. He paid three pounds for his passage and boarded himself. The voyage was rough and lasted seven weeks. At the end of it he stepped ashore, a sturdy Scotch youth of eighteen, with a total capital of three pence in his pocket.

He obtained employment at once in a wholesale grocery in Quebec, and after three months there and eight months in a wholesale drygoods store in Montréal he came on to this province. In 1836, shortly before the Rebellion, he settled in the County of Norfolk, where for several years he worked in a sawmill, being at one time entrusted with the oversight of two large mills.

In 1842 he was married near Simcoe to Esther Stratton Wilson. It is not easy for me to write my mother's name and not pay her a passing tribute. Nor would any account of my father's work he complete which made no reference to her. If I say that that work never would or never could have been done without her, my father will be the first to endorse the statement. If ever a woman was a true helper and companion to her husband, an unfailing source of strength, courage and inspiration, that woman was my mother. With her for an ally it was impossible to be utterly discouraged or to give up. While her children live the memory of her quiet dignity and womanly grace, and deep Christian devotion cannot fade.

Over the steps of my father's conversion I need not go; nor need I speak of the severe struggle through which he passed in leaving his staunch Presbyterianism and in becoming a Baptist. In the summer of 1845, just forty years ago, he was baptized at Fredericksburg (now Delhi) by the Rev. D. W. Rowland. He had already begun to try to preach and to do any Christian work which came in his way. He was about to go to Montréal Baptist College when he was persuaded by what was then the Baptist Union to labor as a colporteur. In this work he toiled hard for a year, going as far north as Durham, Owen Sound and Cape Rich. That year left him completely bankrupt, owing to the simple reason that somehow the promised $200 salary was never paid him. If I am not mistaken, there is somewhere in the accounts of this moral universe, a pretty large item to my father's credit, entitled unpaid salaries.

In a certain room in a cloth factory connected with Watson's Mills, in the village of Waterloo, near Berlin, now Kitchener, my father was ordained on January 29th, 1851, to the work of the Christian ministry. Soon after his ordination he went to Durham, County Grey, took up a lot there, cut down trees, built a single room of a house, and began his missionary work. The family was removed to Durham in January, 1853.

My father had his home in Durham till 1867; he then removed to Teeswater, where he remained nearly three years; then spent one year in Goderich Township, Huron, whence he went to the Indians on the Grand River. Amongst the Indians he made his home and toiled for eight years. The last few years his home has again been in Durham, but a large part of his time has been spent with the Indians; and what has not been so spent has been fully occupied in Christian work on his old fields in Grey and Bruce.

He travelled and labored as a missionary all through Grey and Bruce, through parts of Simcoe, Wellington, Waterloo, Huron, Norfolk, and on the Indian Reservation. He did the pioneer work and organized the churches in Durham, South Arthur, North Arthur, Mount Forest, Priceville, Hanover, Greenock, Holland, Sullivan, Elderslie (now Chesley). He preached and baptized in Tiverton, and the church there was organized by Rev. Wm. Fraser. He helped in revival work and in the organization of the church amongst the Germans in Carrick. He frequently visited Stayner. He organized the church in Goderich Township. The church in Durham was organized with twelve members in 1853 in that room which he reared in the forest.

One year he baptized forty-nine, another year eighty-five, another one hundred and seven, another seventy-five. He almost never held special meetings but persistently, in all seasons and all kinds of weather, maintained his weekly, fortnightly, and monthly appointments, whether in Sunday or week-day. I have seen some heavy storms away north, but I fail to recall the storm that terrified my father and kept him at home when he had an appointment to fill. While the early settlers were hewing out their homes in parts of Grey and Bruce, few of them could have been unacquainted with him. To visit people in their own homes, to hold a prayer meeting in this house and in that, to give tracts and New Testaments, to talk of the Saviour to men, women and children, to gather the settlers in a little log school house and preach to them -- this is what he was always at. His power with individuals was remarkable. When some poor fellow was drunk and making a commotion in the village street, my father could sometimes go and lay his hands on him, and lead him off home as if he were a lamb. I would to God I had his tact, and power, and patience in dealing with individuals about spiritual things. To the little child seated on his knee, to the most poverty-stricken, or the most reckless inhabitant, to the most hoary-headed sinner, he always thought it worth his while to speak about Jesus. And so he toiled year after year.

When he went to Durham he had a horse and wagon, but he sold the horse to pay for his little lot of ground and the wagon to pay for the carpenter work on his little house. For eight years he journeyed on foot. To get up on Sunday morning and walk to Mount Forest (sixteen miles) for the eleven o'clock service was nothing. To start on Saturday evening after his children were in bed and walk to Chesley (twenty-two miles) or to South Arthur (twenty-five miles), or to Greenock (twenty-five miles), was a regular thing. If he had occasion to go to Owen Sound (twenty-eight miles), or to Fergus (forty miles), or to Tiverton (forty-five miles), he set off on foot as unconcernedly as one now takes the train. One walk of his I am disposed to boast of. He had an appointment to preach, and to baptize for the first time in Durham at eleven o'clock one Sunday morning. Friday afternoon at four o'clock found him near Simcoe, County Norfolk, one hundred and twenty miles from Durham! At that hour on Friday he started. Somebody let him ride on horseback the last twenty miles. The rest of it he walked every foot. He preached and baptized in Durham according to appointment on Sunday morning, "had a good time," and only felt a little tired and footsore on Monday. Well do I remember when at last he brought home a horse and a bridle, later on a saddle, still later a wagon, and a set of harness. And now my own utility appeared, for I could go with him "to raise the tunes," at his little farmhouse meetings.

How did he and his family live those early years? Two summers my father went to older parts of the province and worked in the harvest fields. One year his entire income from Convention and field was one hundred and thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents. He chopped and drew his own wood. He got all out of his little bit of ground that it could be made to yield. While he labored on, my mother opened the home to boarders, sold milk, vegetables, and I know not what. The edge of actual want was reached more than once. The family could not possibly have been clothed had it not been for the kindness of Christian friends in Toronto and elsewhere whose kindness my father can never forget. I see distinctly before me now the first coat that was actually bought for me out of a store! Perhaps I might have had that coat sooner were it not that in 1858-9 when the little chapel in Durham was built, my father besides his manual help, paid on that chapel out of his own pocket and out of his poverty ninety six dollars and twenty cents. How he did this I cannot tell, but I found the bill of it lately in rummaging his papers.

The following interesting items must close this sketch. He held religious services in twenty-eight places where there was no church. At one time he baptized four entire households: at another time three households; twice he baptized three generations at the same time and place; the oldest person he baptized was eighty-five. He never left a chapel in debt, the building of which he had encouraged. Once he had a dirk pointed at his heart; another time a pistol was levelled at him, twice be was stoned; once threatened with a club, because he preached the truth. And so I might go on. How many amusing stories might be told, how many not amusing.

May God spare to us that honest, heroic Christian soul yet a while; and when be departs may he leave his mantle behind him.

The foregoing sketch was written in 1886. My father lived to the age of ninety-one, and passed away in February, 1904, having had his home in Durham during all his later years.

For several summers in the eighties he visited Dwight, on the Lake of Bays, and as a labor of love, did missionary work in that region of Muskoka in the same old way, preaching, conversing, winning converts, baptizing. An attractive church was built, with the erection of which he had much to do. He gave an historical discourse in the Presbyterian Church in Durham when he was ninety years old.

He loved life. To a friend. who called on him when he was near the end and who said. "You are an old man, Father Stewart, you will be glad to pass on," he replied, "Not at all. I have enjoyed life very much. I would like to stay on." He must have had a rugged physical constitution, built upon his youthful years on the hills of Scotland. He also had a strong will.