(17 Nov. 1880-24 Jan. 1955), storekeeper. (J. A. McCrimmon, John A. McCrimmon, John Archy McCrimmon, Johnny Archy McCrimmon, Johnny Archy Penny) (spelling McCrimmon and MacCrimmon both found in this family, but he used the former) Born on his parents’ farm, which was on Lot 2, Concession 8 of Caledonia Township. Parents: John Angus MacCrimmon (a nephew of Donald Ogg McCRIMMON, and first cousin of Angus McCrimmon) and his wife Penelope MacLeod (the sister of William D. MacLeod of “Bonnie Brier” and aunt of Donald John MacLeod). Through her husband’s early death in 1889, Penelope MacLeod was left a widow with a large, young family. She was known as the Widow Penny, and the Penny name remained attached in local usage to the names of her children throughout their lives. A granddaughter of the Widow Penny remembered that she and Penny had regularly spoken Gaelic right up to Penny’s death in 1929. John Archie McCrimmon’s first language was Gaelic. He was educated at the local primary school. Later in life, he privately improved his knowledge through application to subjects including law and high school mathematics. At age 18, he was working as a railway timekeeper near Winnipeg; in his early years, he worked also in the mines at Estevan, Sask., and in the lumber shanties at Massey, Blind River and Spanish River, in Northern Ontario. In Winnipeg, an opportunity opened up to attend the University of Manitoba with a view to becoming a lawyer, but had to be abandoned because his mother was found at this time to need the savings he had accumulated.

     In 1905 and 1906, he bought two stores (one of them from his uncle, a brother of the Widow Penny) at the little village of McCrimmon (named thus by 1879; also called McCrimmons Corners) on the northern border of GC, where he had been working as a store employee. He combined these and operated them under the firm name of J. A. McCrimmon. Thereafter, he was the storekeeper of McCrimmon for almost half a century. In his general store, he sold the very wide variety of merchandise (including clothing and foodstuffs) expected from general merchants of this time; and especially in the earlier decades took farm merchandise in trade: meat till the end of WWI, butter into the 1940s, hides till 1950 and eggs till 1952. The store also was a social centre, where the local farmers met and exchanged their news. He was the postmaster of McCrimmon till 1919, when the post office there was closed as superfluous after the coming in of rural mail delivery. John Archy is remembered as having said that when he began his store, 50 percent of its business was done in Gaelic (this figure seems rather high–one wonders whether this was completely and without qualifications what he said). The store had no electricity till the hydro reached McCrimmon village in 1947.

     On 12 June 1907, he married Jessie Benton (1880-1956). (seven children, five surviving him) He was active in Lochiel Township politics in the 1920s and 1930s, serving on occasion as councillor and reeve, but was defeated at least twice in the struggle for the reeveship by the formidable Gilbert Seguin. In 1935 John Archie McCrimmon was one of four claimants for the position of being the GC candidate for the Stevens Reconstruction Party, but the nomination went instead to John A. Macdonell. (Standard Freeholder 23 Aug. 1935, Glengarry News 30 Aug. 1935) In 1936, with other family members, he made a motor trip to Western Canada as far west as Banff, visiting along the way his brother Neilly Penny who was farming near Vermilion, Alberta. (GN 4 Sept. 1936) During WWII, when two of his sons were away in the service, the McCrimmon store reduced its open evenings from six a week to three–for the local people, a shocking break with immemorial custom. In 1949 he made his sons Benton and Donald partners in the store, which then became J. A. McCrimmon & Sons. For the last two years of his life he was paralyzed and bedridden. He died at his home at McCrimmon.

     He was a Presbyterian, and a church manager at St. Columba, Kirk Hill, but was not an elder. Also, he was a Mason, and a member of the Orange Order. He was long associated with the Glengarry Telephone Co., of which he was one of the founders, and he served as its president from 1943 to 1953. He was a supporter of the Glengarry Clan MacLeod society, and served as its president from 1950 to 1952. He was a member also of the high school board. Too well disciplined ever to seem tired or to reveal impatience, and at all times a most absorbing conversationalist, he was the ideal type of the old-style country merchant: affable, courteous, and unoffending in his dealings with all (with the youngest as well as with the old). Besides operating his store, Johnny Archy McCrimmon acted as the local lawyer, making wills and giving legal advice. The reputation that Johnny Archy McCrimmon had in his time among all who knew him was immense, and of a kind that can hardly be put on paper now without the appearance of idle flattery. For long a Liberal, in his later years he voted for the candidate or issues rather than a party, not without attracting some disapproval as a man who had “changed his vote”–seen in that traditional society as a bad thing, and especially for a man of status.

     After his death his sons Benton and Donald continued the store, though on a more limited scale than in their father’s days. Benton died on 14 June 1971, and Donald sold the store in April 1974. (“Old Store at McCrimmon Sold,” GN 15 April 1976) Thereafter, Donald lived in retirement at Maxville, McCrimmon and Alexandria. He died in Alexandria 24 Oct. 2000. For approximately a half century after Johnny Archy’s death and approximately a century after Johnny Archy set up in business, a small store continued to operate in the familiar old frame building at the McCrimmon crossroads, one of the ever dwindling number of Ontario rural stores. The large frame house where Johnny Archy and his family lived across the road from the store was demolished in 1993 or 1994.

     He was with his daughter Penny and his brother James (Jimmy Penny) one of the three authors of a useful article on the “Early History of McCrimmon” which was written in 1939 and printed in the Glengarry News of 28 Feb. 1947 and in the Glengarry Historical Society’s Annual Volume for 1973. The principal author of the article, Jimmy Penny (24 Aug. 1872-18 Nov. 1957), who was increasingly reclusive in his later years, lived among his books in the old McCrimmon farmhouse where he and Johnny Archy had been born; Jimmy, a remarkable and independent-minded man in his own right, was the local scholar, dedicated to the Gaelic language and the memory of the traditions and customs of the Highlanders.

Glengarry News 27 Jan. 1955 * private information, personal knowledge * Lochinvar to Skye (with portrait), 249-265, 376, 381-390), 580; includes a valuable and admirably detailed history of the McCrimmon village; also, the cover picture shows the store as it appeared in 1900 and was to appear into the 1960s * Royce MacGillivray, The Slopes of the Andes: Four Essays on the Rural Myth in Ontario (1990) 17-21, 52, 36-37 * gravestone, Kirk Hill West Cemetery * death of his son Donald: GN & VKHR both 1 Nov. 2000 * Isabel C. MacLeod, 50 Years of History: Glengarry Clan MacLeod 1936-1986 (n.d., 1986?) 18 * wife and other family members make motor trip to West, GN 22 July 1932 * one of directors of Highland Society of Glengarry; this society holds war benefits concert at McCrimmon: GN 3 & 17 Aug. 1917 * officer, Alexandria Masons, Standard Freeholder 30 June 1933 * auditor, Prescott & GC Orange lodges, GN 17 Feb. 1939 (also SFH 19 Feb. 1940) * “Out with the Old,” picture of “aging house” at McCrimmon being demolished, VKHR 15 Dec. 1993 (probably Johnny Archie’s)