(1 Aug. 1841-29 Nov. 1919), author. Born Glasgow, Scotland. Parents: Alexander Sellar and his wife Isabella Grant. Robert Sellar, who came to Canada in his early teens, worked on the Toronto Globe and Montreal Herald, then founded the The Canadian Gleaner at Huntingdon, Que., in 1863. Except for one short break in its early years, and perhaps again about 1912, Sellar edited this newspaper (abbreviated as Gleaner in the notes to the present dictionary) for the rest of his life. Huntingdon is just across the St. Lawrence River from GC, and is located in an area which historically has had many connections with GC. Sellar included GC material in his newspaper, which is an important source for 19th century GC history, or at least for that of the southern half of the county– like the Cornwall newspaper editors, he had limited interest in the north. He was a noted defender of the rights of the Protestant settlers of Quebec, and an expounder of the free trade idea and many of the most strongly anti-establishment ideas of 19th century Scottish radicalism. This stern and fearless journalist, and eloquent literary stylist, died at Huntingdon. Presbyterian. He was married in 1886 to Mary Watson. Despite his manifest interest in GC, Sellar seems rarely to have been a visitor there, at least so far as surviving evidence records.

     His superb local study, The History of the County of Huntingdon and of the Seigniories of Chateauguay and Beauharnois (1888) includes valuable references to Glengarrians, and describes pioneer scenes similar in many respects to those of GC. It has been reprinted several times, and in 1996 the Glengarry Historical Society was acting as an agent for the sale of copies of the 1995 reprint. Limited GC material appears also in Sellar’s volume of stories, Gleaner Tales (1895). Sellar’s novel Morven (1912) deals with topics which include the life of the Scottish settlers on Sir John Johnson’s lands in the Mohawk Valley, and the migration of those settlers to Canada as U E Loyalists, and the foundation by the Loyalists of GC and of Cornwall, Ont. Sellar’s notes from the interviews he conducted for his Huntingdon history are in the National Archives and have a table of contents.

Life by Robert Andrew Hill, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, XIV, 919-921 * Robert Hill, Voice of the Vanishing Minority: Robert Sellar and the Huntingdon Gleaner (1999) * Morgan (1898) 927; Morgan (1912) 1008-9 & 1214; Sir Charles G. D. Roberts & A. L. Tunnell, A Standard Dictionary of Canadian Biography I, 461-463; MDict 757-758 * Bibliography of Glengarry: index, for further bibliographic detail on his publications * MacGillivray & Ross, xi, 664-665, 669 * GHS Newsletter Nov. 1996 * defends himself against charges that his Huntingdon history is intended as a money-making speculation, reprints some newspaper notices of it, Gleaner, 2 & 9 Feb. 1888