(1869 or 1870-7 April 1923), businessman. (John Wightman, Jack Wightman, J. J. Wightman, commonly known as “J. J.”) Born in the 4th Concession of Lancaster Township, GC. Parents: James Wightman and his wife Mary MacNaughton. He attended the local primary school, Williamstown High School, and a business college in Belleville. In the 1890s he began working for the Moffatt Brothers in their general store at Maxville. He and William J. McCart, who was later the MLA for Stormont County, bought the business and operated it under the name of Wightman and McCart. After McCart sold out and moved to Avonmore, Wightman ran the store on his own. In 1911 he sold the business to G. H. MacDougall (Glengarry News 6 Oct. 1911), who was operating it in the 1930s as the People’s Store, also its name under Wightman. After leaving Maxville, J. J. Wightman lived in Ottawa and worked as a commercial traveller in the clothing business. He died in Ottawa of typhoid fever, which he was believed to have contracted during a business visit to Cochrane a few weeks earlier. Burial was at Maxville. He was married in Oct. 1897 to Jean (name also given as Jane) McGregor (1870-1963). (four children) He was a Presbyterian elder both in Maxville and Ottawa. Wightman, who was deeply religious–people seem to have thought it worth pointing out as a special feature of him that he was religious– appears to have had an especially attractive personality; and he was probably someone whose role in his time owed much to gifts of character. The Gaelic scholar Edward J. Cox wrote “Met a pleasant man in a Mr. Wightman storekeeper. “

Ottawa Journal 9 April 1923 repr. Cornwall Freeholder 12 April 1923 * biog. and character sketch, Munro GN 25 Nov. 1938, repr. Maxville (1967) 67-68 * Maxville (1991) , 310 * gravestone, Maxville Cemetery * returns from honeymoon, Glengarry News 15 Oct. 1897 * obituary, Glengarry News 8 Feb. 1968, of businessman Alexander M. MacIntyre of Anaconda, Mont., born at St. Elmo, who as a youngster worked in Wightman’s store, Maxville