(26 Nov.1780-1865), clergyman. Born near Dunkeld, Perthshire, Scotland. Parents: Peter Reid and his wife Janet Dick. When a young man, he came under the influence of the Haldane brothers, Robert and James. Reid was sent to Canada in 1803 as a Congregationalist missionary. He was probably a Gaelic speaker, and it may have been intended that he would serve as a Gaelic-speaking minister to the GC settlers. In Martintown, GC, with the aid of Haldane money, he built a log and frame church in 1804. There had been a Presbyterian congregation in Martintown for some years, but this was the first church building in the village. Reid’s church services were, we may assume, Congregationalist, but no doubt they also served the Protestants generally of the area. Reid also conducted a school in the church building, being one of GC’s earliest schoolmasters. When the Haldane brothers became Baptists and Reid refused to follow them in this decision, his financial aid was cut off and he left Martintown, probably in 1811. His church building was sold to the Presbyterians in that year, and Reid sent on to the Haldanes the money he received for it from the Presbyterians who paid by instalments for the building over the period 1811 to 1814.

     Rhodes Grant wrote in 1974 that the “frame vestibule” of the church was “still in existence.” After leaving Martintown Reid taught school in Cornwall. He was ordained as a Church of England clergyman in 1815. He served as a Church of England clergyman for many years in the area of Frelighsburg and Stanbridge East, southeast of Montreal. Volumes of his diary covering the years 1848-1851, 1852-1854 and 1863-1864 are preserved in the Montreal diocesan archives of the Anglican Church. While in Martintown, he was married on 28 June 1810 to Isabella McDermid of a Martintown family. (children) The Rev. John Bethune perfomed the marriage ceremony. In later years Reid remembered the kindness shown to him as a young clergyman in Glengarry by Fr Alexander Macdonell, the future bishop. James Reid’s son, Charles Peter Reid, born in Martintown in 1811, also became a Church of England clergyman and was one of the founding trustees of Bishop’s College.

MacMillan, Kirk: index * Rhodes Grant, i, 57 * H.D. MacDermid, “The Rev. James Reid,” originally published in Vol. 18 (1984) of the Mississquoi Historical Society, repr. in Campbell (1986), 608-614 (portrait, & see 365) * MacGillivray & Ross 237, 263 * W.D. McNaughton, The Scottish Congregational Ministry (Glasgow, 1993) 132