(1807-22 March 1855), Presbyterian clergyman. (Rev. John Colin McLaurin) Born in the Parish of Balquhidder, Perthshire, Scotland. Parents: Mrs and Mrs Peter M. McLaurin. John McLaurin came to Canada in 1818 with his family, who settled “near Perth,” Ont. He returned to Scotland to study at the University of Glasgow. In Glasgow, he acted as assistant to the Rev. Dr Norman MacLeod at St. Columba’s Church. Sent afterwards to Canada by the Colonial Committee of the Church of Scotland, he was a Presbyterian minister at Martintown from 1840 till his death. His pastorate was troubled by the disturbances of the Disruption. He seems to have been a diligent and faithful clergyman, though Rhodes Grant records a tradition that he was “somewhat intemperate.” He preached in both English and Gaelic. His translation of two documents relating to the Disruption into Gaelic was published at Kingston in 1845 in an 8-page pamphlet with a title beginning Achd tha cuir. There are two copies in the collection of the Glengarry Historical Society, one having his own MS annotations. He died at Martintown, and is buried there. He was married to Anne Macdonell, a first cousin of Alexander Cameron McDonell. (five children; four of these are recorded in the 1851/52 census) It was probably during his pastorate that his Martintown church assumed the name of St. Andrew’s. On the death of the Rev. John McLaurin, “the family moved from Martintown to the homestead,” presumably in the Perth area.

     There is an interesting biographical sketch by Alexander Fraser (probably the archivist of Ontario; see Col. Alexander Fraser) of one of the sons, Eugene Alexander Maclaurin, who was an Ontario civil servant and a president of the United Empire Loyalists’ Association of Ontario. Alexander Fraser states about the father, the Rev. John McLaurin, that “As a Gaelic-preacher he was probably without a peer in the country in his day.”

MacMillan, Kirk: index * Rhodes Grant, i, 58 * Quarterly of Clan McLaren Society U.S.A.,Vol. III No. 12 (Dec. 1971) * Whyte, i, 273 * Rev. Norman MacLeod and his well known son of the same name: their lives in DNB Vol. XII * pamplet: Bibliography of Glengarry 7 & GHS, Newsletter June 1999 * Alexander Fraser, “Eugene A. Maclaurin,” The United Empire Loyalists’ Association of Ontario,” 5: Annual Transactions 1903 and 1904 (Toronto, 1906) 88-92 (with portrait of Eugene A. Maclaurin) (QF)