THE FIRE KINDLERS - CHAPTER 7

A FIRE KINDLER IN CANADA

When the Reverend Isaac Purkis sailed from Southampton for Canada, he was under the impression that he was the first of the family to sail for the New World. He was greatly surprised, however, when travelling in what is now the County of York, Ontario, about 13 years after he had landed, to meet a family of the name of Purkis at Thornhill. The head of this family had resided for many years in Canada, and had come originally from the New Forest and claimed descent from the Charcoal Burner associated with William Rufus. Some years later, a son of Rev. Isaac came across a Mr. Purkis keeping the Post Office at Thornhill.

I have not, however, been able to find any trace of that branch of the family in Canada at the present time.

After spending two years in Quebec, Rev. Isaac Purkis proceeded to La Prairie, a village on he St. Lawrence, opposite the Island of Montreal. There was a mixed population of English, Scotch and French. The latter were in the majority. There wa s no religious edifice nearer than Montreal save the Roman Catholic Church. There was then no way of getting to Montreal except by ferry boat, and in the winter no way at all until the river was frozen solid enough to drive across. A few of the English settlers belonged to a sect of strict Baptists called Walkerites and they conducted services in their own homes.

He took up his residence in the Barracks which were then unused, save for a few rooms, rented to retired army officers. He opened a boarding school for boys which brought in an income whilst he proceeded to organize the first Protestant Church in that community. As the majority of his congregation were Scotch, they entered into connection with the Presbytery of New York, and he was commissioned to act as their official missionary in Canada. While in La Prairie he used to go and preach to the Indians at Caughnawaga and several other places in the district. Here his younger children were born. He had lost his oldest child, Mary, in England, and had brought out with him five little girls. Altogether they had a family of twelve, all of whom lived to maturity except Mary and John.

One day, after he had been in La Prairie about ten years, he happened to be standing on the steps of St. James ' Cathedral, out of curiosity witnessing the funeral of the Archbishop of Montreal. As the procession moved past all removed their hats and many fell on their knees. He remained standing erect with his hat upon his head. He was politely told to remove his hat. This he refused to do, whereupon his hat was knocked off his head and he was roughly pushed by the mob and only saved from injury by the police. Immediately after this occurrence a priest from Chicago preached in La Prairie, instigating the people to rid their parish of the Protestant minister, and so, being warned that foul play was imminent, he and his family left hurriedly for New York.

There, he left his family in New York City while he went out on an evangelical tour over the Catskill Mountains. The family found it difficult to adapt themselves to American life and so they returned to Canada, this time settling in Toronto. Lucy, the oldest daughter, remained in New York where she was engaged in teaching Music and French at a select school .

From Toronto he travelled in Upper Canada, his evangelical zeal spurring him on to kindle the fires of religion and piety among the new settlers. He organized the first churches in several pioneer communities and founded a Temperance Society, one of the oldest if not the first one, in Upper Canada. About this time he became very friendly with Bishop Jacob Mountain who used to try very earnestly to persuade him to return to the Anglican Church, in which he had been confirmed as a boy. He gave the matte r considerable thought but decided to remain with the Presbyterian Church, because re-ordination would have been necessary had he become an Anglican clergyman. He had absolute faith in his ordination and thought that if he became ordained again, doubts might arise in the minds of some who had previously received the various sacraments through his ministration so he attached himself to the Presbytery of Toronto.

After a short period his daughter Lucy came back from New York and opened a school in Toronto. But she was not to be there long. In one of her letters she speaks of her father having set out in a boat "with the intention of visiting Oakville for the purpose of preaching on the ensuing Sabbath, but the weather becoming very stormy the boat was prev e nted from stopping at Oakville and they were obliged to proceed to Hamilton . . . I trust it was the hand of Providence led him there . . . he arrived there on Sabbath morning and was requested to preach in the afternoon, they have no minister there now, and I do not think it improbable that papa may settle there this winter. The last time papa wrote he was just setting out to see a place some distance from Hamilton, where they are destitute of a clergyman, it is called Guelph."

And so we find them in the winter of 1834 moving to the "City" of Guelph, which was then a clearing in the midst of acres of stumps where trees had been felled by the Canada Company to mark the dimensions of the city-to-be. Lucy in her letters bewails the utter lack of society. It must have been very dull for her after New York. When they first went to Guelph they stayed at the house of Mr. Miekle, the poet. John, the oldest son, suffered intensely from the severity of the winter there and eventually died.

About 1840 he received a call from the congregation of Osnabrück in the Presbytery of Glengarry, to which he responded. But before taking up residence there he took a trip back to England to see his aged mother. While he was at home he took great interest in the affairs of the family and started a fund for the renovation of the Stone in the New Forest which marks the spot where Rufus fell, with the result that the Stone was encased in iron during the following year and its condition has remained. unchanged up to the present time.

On June 28th, 1840, which was the eve of his departure from England, he preached a special sermon to members of the Purkis family at Totton, neat Southampton, copies of which were printed and distributed after he had returned to Canada. In his sermo n he said,-"My very dear relatives and friends,

Although your names were never obscured by titles of nobility nor sullied with the honours of knighthood, and while none of your family, so far as I know, ever obtained a reputation for learning by means of literary degrees, yet, according to the testimony of the most respectable historians, the family has been both 'ancient and honourable'-certainly more ancient, and probably not less honourable, than those who owe their honours to the power that has either sprung out of, or been grafted on, the tyrannical and barbarous incursion of the Norman Conqueror.

Unable to cope with the sons of violence and blood, your ancestors retired to the depths of the forest, that, along with its native deer, they may still retain the possession of that freedom of which it was the object of their oppressors to despoil them; and whoever was the slayer, I rejoice in the information, that it was one of your ancestors and bearing your name, who bore the second of that miscreant race to the grave. To be willing to barter this honour for any of the Norman decorations of more modern times, am sure any of you would deem the deepest disgrace.

To have struggled for liberty to the last and then to have buried themselves in the depths of the forest, that they may still enjoy it-and to have ridded the earth's surface of the loathsome carcass of a dead tyrant is, in my estimation, and I think in yours, much more honourable than to have accepted the insignia of nobility from foreign potentates, though seated on the throne in your native land . . .

Perhaps no family ever exemplified more of the sentiment expressed by the Shunamite, 'I dwell among mine own people', than yours. After travelling thousands of miles in North America, I have not found one in the United States, and but two in the Canadas bearing the name and but three or four in other parts of England, nearly all of whom can be traced to the New Forest.

That a family so numerous should have been so attached as to confine themselves a lmost exclusively to one locality for more than 700 years is certainly remarkable. That the deep interest which the different members and the various branches of this family are said to have always cherished and evinced in each other's welfare is not mer e romance, my own heart testifies, while I am so powerfully conscious of the most fervent desire and prayer to God for you that you may be saved, as well as the kindness and affection which you have shown me. For nearly thirty years my family can testify t hat I have not forgotten you before the mercy-seat. Before the family altar they have been twice in the day reminded that they have dear relatives whom they never saw, dwelling in a land which, though some of them never beheld, they are daily taught to love. Although I am transferred from my native forest anomalously styled 'New', where your name has been familiar nearly 800 years, perhaps more, to the forests of America, yet the similarity often of surrounding scenery and objects, with not a few still m ore delightful, in a land where despotism shall never be able to plant its foot, and where military or aristocratic tyranny shall never successfully wield its club, will never permit me to forget those who ever have been, and ever will remain, dear to me and mine. I trust that this trait in our family's character shall never be permitted to fade, that many waters will not quench it, nor the floods either of the Atlantic or of the American Lakes drown it."

Further on in the same sermon he made the following interesting statement:

"If you would learn how complete is the happiness which religion can confer under the worst outward circumstances, procure and read the tract entitled 'The Warning Voice', there you will find a brief notice of one of our own name, and perhaps of our own family, Elizabeth Purkis, who, in the greatest depth of poverty and affliction, experienced such a fullness of joy from the presence of God, that she said that she would not change her situation if she might, for any earthly consid eration whatsoever. It is to such that I am anxious to be found related."

He spent the last twelve years of his life at Osnabrück, where his parishioners consisted of Scotch Presbyterians and German Lutherans who united with them to form a church. He use d instrumental music, which was then unusual in a Presbyterian Church, and they sang the Psalms of David and the hymns of Dr. Isaac Watts. It was at Osnabrück that one of his parishioners who had been reading his treatise "On the Lord's Day" chided him be cause he shaved on Sundays, thinking that to be inconsistent with the strict observance of the Sabbath which he zealously advocated. He died at Osnabrück on the 16th of October, 1852, in the sixty-eighth year of his age.

The deep impression that his personality made upon all who came in contact with him is evidenced by the following extract from an obituary in "The Presbyterian":

"In the various relations of life, as a Christian gentleman, a friend, a husband, a father, and a Pastor, he was fully tried, and in each found lovely. Nor shall we soon forget the urbanity that adorned his social intercourse, the warm and disinterested friendship which never wearied in benefiting his friends, the firm and sustaining, yet kind, affectionate and faithful guidance which blessed his family, nor the untiring labour and unflagging zeal whereby he strove to edify the Church.

"His ministry was eminently evangelical; the grand cardinal doctrines of the Gospel were his unceasing themes. His Christian charity, unrestrained by the narrow bounds of sect or party, embraced all the true disciples of his Lord and Master. All those who loved the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity were, wherever they were found, the objects of his love. He has entered into the joy of his Lord; his sun has gone down in a mild effulgence, and the moral horizon still glows with the lingering beauties of such a departure."