(Jan. 1803-14 May 1884), clergyman. (known locally as “Minister MacPherson”) Born in Redcastle, Parish of Killearnan, Rossshire, Scotland. He graduated in Arts and Divinity at King’s College, Aberdeen, and was a tutor in private families in Highlands and Islands in Scotland. About 1835 he came to Canada. In 1836 he was ordained and inducted to the Presbyterian Church at Beech Ridge, Que., across the St. Lawrence from GC. Earlier, in Scotland or Canada, he did supply preaching. In Sept. 1843 he was inducted as minister of St. Andrew’s Church in the village now known as South Lancaster. He remained minister there till his death more than 40 years later, though in his very last years with the help of an assistant and in effective retirement. It was during his period as minister that the present stone church of that congregation was built. While minister of that congregation, and preaching to them at South Lancaster every Sunday, he also preached every second Sunday to the Presbyterian congregation in the Second Concession of Lancaster Township. He declined to join the Free Church at the Disruption, and when the Canadian Presbyterians united in 1875 to form the Presbyterian Church in Canada, he likewise refused to join the new denomination. He died at his home “at the village of Lancaster.” His wife Eliza Marquis Taylor, a native of Glasgow, Scotland, had predeceased him on 17 Jan. 1882, aged about 62 (stated ages vary). They are buried in the cemetery of their church, at South Lancaster.
An obituary states, “He seldom wrote or read his sermons, he rather trusted to the sources of a fertile mind than to commit to memory what he had occasion to address to his people in public ministrations. He was an extempore rather than a memoriter preacher, he conducted his public services with equal facility in the English and Gaelic languages. Those who heard his written addresses delivered as they usually were, elewhere than in his own congregation, would not fail to see that they were the productions of a superior mind.”
When the cornerstone of John A. (“Cariboo”) Cameron’s Fairfield House was laid in July 1865, in the presence of a large assembly of Cariboo’s friends (the event was followed by a banquet), “The stone was laid by Mr. Cameron assisted by the Rev. Thomas McPherson,” and both men made “neat and appropriate speeches.” (Cornwall Advertiser, 12 July 1865) With the Rev. Gavin Lang of Montreal, he performed the ceremony in 1880 at the first marriage of Donald (later Sir Donald) MacMaster. (Witness 16 Sept. 1880: two items) The Glengarry Times of 6 May 1882 printed a long letter from him to his kinsman, Senator D. L. Macpherson (1818-1896), on the temporalities question. During the earlier portion of his years as a minister at South Lancaster, he also practised medicine informally, and without pay. It was probably this medical connection rather than his clerical position that led him to give a newspaper testimonial for a patent medicine a certain T. H. McLean (presumably Thomas H. McLean the oilman) was selling. (Cornwall Freeholder 15 Feb. 1867)
He was the father of Dr Joseph T. Macpherson. He was the father also of Dr Drummond MacPherson, who died in Montreal in 1885, and of a daughter who married George McBean (See A. G. McBean).
Cornwall News 16 July 1884 (repr. from issue in May 1884 ), repr. again Ross, Lancaster, 198-200 (QF) * Fraser, Gravestones, II, 49, 50 (full page portrait), 63, 197 * MacMillan, Kirk: index (portrait) * Sellar (1963) 268 * Whyte, i, 319 * An Historical Sketch of St. Andrews Presbyterian Congregation Lancaster Ontario (1957?) * Ella May Smith, The Story of the Old Stone Church [St. Andrew’s, South Lancaster] (1980?) * Centennial of the ‘Present’ St. Andrew’s Church Bainsville Ontario (1986?) * Lovell 1857 391 * wife dies: Glengarry Times, 21 Jan. 1882; MacMillan diary; gravestone * Dr Drummond MacPherson dies: Cornwall Freeholder 16 Jan. 1885, cited DTL Standard Freeholder 13 Jan. 1945 * obituary of Rev. Thomas’ daughter Mrs Duncan MacRae, Glengarry News 25 Aug. 1939, repr. Fraser Obits. 277-278 * contractor wanted to build stone church in village of Lancaster; applicants to contact Rev. Thomas MacPherson, Cornwall Observer 30 Oct. 1845 * Archives of Ontario, Bacon (Charles) Collection: John McLean, 1867, at Lancaster, complains that “Minister McPherson” has been libelling wife of his son Dr McPherson * presented with purse and address by his congregation, CF 20 March 1868