(1826-28 May 1917), clergyman. Born in Scotland. After emigration to Canada, his family settled at Pointe-Fortune, near GC. He was married in 1857 to Jeannette (Janet) MacEwan (1838-1914) of St. Andrew’s, Que. (her obituary, Cornwall Standard 30 April 1914) In 1875, succeeding the Rev. William Peacock, Daniel MacCallum became the Congregationalist minister at St. Elmo, preaching in the log church which still survives as a celebrated historic building across the road from the Gordon Church. Over a period of several years around 1880, during Daniel MacCallum’s pastorate, the Congregationalists constructed another church building in the newly-founded and fast-developing village of Maxville. Daniel MacCallum remained clergyman of the two-point charge constituted by these two churches till his retirement in 1898, after which he lived in Kingston. In 1907 he and his wife celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. (Cornwall Standard 22 Nov. 1907, reporting from the Kingston papers) The Rev. Daniel MacCallum died at the age of 91 in Kingston, three years after his wife, in the home of their son Dr E. C. D. MacCallum (1872-1934), a medical doctor. Daniel MacCallum and his wife are buried in the Maxville Cemetery, where the name on their gravestone (now badly eroded) is spelled (presumably in error) Macallum. His wife, who is remembered to have been known affectionately as Mother MacCallum, is said (Munro) to have been the founder and first president of the Women’s Missionary Society of the Congregationalist Churches of Canada. T. W. (Tom) Munro wrote a fine character sketch of Daniel MacCallum, which may serve also as a tribute to the whole race of hardworking, undemanding, often ill-paid country clergyman of MacCallum’s time.
All of the nine children of Daniel MacCallum and his wife are said to have been university educated. Three of them were missionaries: Rev. F. W. MacCallum, Emily MacCallum, and Mrs Thomas B. Scott, who was a medical doctor and a missionary in Ceylon. Their son Dr Arthur MacCallum was apparently a dentist in Halifax in 1914, but later sources report him as following a business career. Their daughter Harriet (1862-1952), the only one of the children to settle in the GC area, was married to Archibald McDermid of Martintown, whose first wife had been a daughter of the Rev. John Matheson, and who was the brother of Donald A. McDermid the publisher and Finlay McDermid the rancher. Another daughter and son died as university students and are buried at Maxville. The son Dr E. C. D. MacCallum, the Kingston physician, graduated in medicine from McGill in 1897 and was an associate professor of medicine at Queen’s University.
Cornwall Freeholder 31 May 1917, Glengarry News 1 June 1917 * Munro GN 29 April 1938, repr. in Maxville (1967) 57-58 (see also 29) * MacMillan, Kirk: index (portrait) * Maxville (1991) 204 * Campbell & McDermid, Kennedies, 288, 293 * Dr E. C. D. MacCallum: obituaries Standard Freeholder 7 & 9 Feb. 1934, Montreal Gazette 10 Feb. 1934; Queen's University Archives; McGill University Archives