McKelvy, Ralph Hayes

(7 May 1895-6 March 1975), clergyman (R. H. McKelvy, Hayes McKelvy), and his wife Anna Margaret Patton (8 Sept. 1901-7 Jan. 1987) (Anna McKelvy). R. H. McKelvy was born at Coulterville, Ill., and studied at Geneva College, Beaver Falls, Penn., and the Reformed Presbyterian Seminary, Pittsburgh. He was pastor of the tiny Covenanter (Reformed Presbyterian) Church at Brodie, GC, for 40 years from 1928, the year of his ordination, till 1968, when he and his wife left Glengarry to retire in New Mexico. Anna Patton McKelvy was born in New York City. She and her husband were married 14 June 1933. (two children) Mrs McKelvy, who conformed completely to the traditional ideal of the kindly, friendly, gentle, unobtrusive, altogether attractive lady of the manse, conducted temperance work in GC area schools, both public and separate, sometimes setting competitions (with prizes) for the making of posters and the like. Also, she visited schools more widely in Ontario in the 1950s and 1960s as field secretary for the WCTU. She was, presumably, the last Glengarrian to do temperance work on any serious scale. Her obituary in the Glengarry News said that in her retirement in the United States, “She never lost her interest in the people here. She received The Glengarry News and said she ‘read it from cover to cover, even the advertisements’.” She died in the Reformed Presbyterian Home, Pittsburgh, Penn. She was the author of Taught of the Lord, a book on teaching Christian principles.