Thomas McCulloch
Thomas McCulloch was a Scottish-born, Presbyterian minister, author, educator, and education reformer. He was the founder and principal of Pictou Academy and the first principal of Dalhousie College from 1838–1843. He is the author of The Stepsure Letters '', considered to be the first major work of English Canada humour.
Early life
Thomas McCulloch was born in Ferenese in the parish of Neilston in Renfrewshire, Scotland, the fourth child and second son of Elizabeth Neilson and Michael McCulloch and baptised on September 10, 1775. Michael McCulloch, a master block printer, died at age forty-six, leaving six children, five sons and one daughter, Andrew, John, Thomas, Mary Elizabeth, William, and George.Elizabeth Neilson emigrated along with her family in 1803 to Nova Scotia. John died while sailing from Halifax to Pictou, Nova Scotia, William taught in the school at Pictou, and George, the youngest son, a cabinet maker, also lived in Pictou.
Elizabeth appears to have been a well-loved figure in the family, as Thomas McCulloch's wife, Isabella Walker, writes on Elizabeth's death,
Well was it for me that I was blessed with the example and motherly affection of our good old grandmother, in many unthought of trials in the land of strangers, and I fondly hope that the many, many, precious petitions presented at her Father's throne on our behalf will not remain without a special, a powerful return of saving mercy to our souls as a family, and as individuals. We were all near her heart, especially our eternal interests.
Thomas' son, William, writes of his grandmother,
Our annual gatherings at her house were a great treat, and nothing remains of our early recollections to dim the brightness of her character.
Little else is known of Thomas McCulloch's life prior to attending university.
Education and early ministry
Thomas McCulloch was educated at the University of Glasgow, graduating in 1792. He studied medicine but "for reasons unknown" did not complete his studies, and entered into theology instead at the General Associate Synod in Whitburn. He studied divinity at Secession Divinity Hall at Whitburn, where he provided classes in Hebrew. At the completion of his studies, he was licensed by the Presbytery of Kilmarnock as a minister in 1799 and was ordained to the Secession Church at Stewarton.McCulloch was interested in a variety of subjects and had a natural talent as a teacher. His son, William, describes him,
In stature Mr. McCulloch was about medium height, slightly built, light and active, and capable of enduring long continued physical strain. He was a clear and deep thinker, the result of combining the study of books with the study of men, and the spirit of the times. In preaching he possessed the faculty of readily grasping the main point of a subject, and connecting it with its varied lines of collateral thought and illustration, and in a style clear, terse, almost proverbial, conveying to the hearer just what he intended to say, nothing more nor less. The least intelligent could easily grasp his meaning, couched as it was in vigorous Saxon, and free from technical or high sounding words and phrases. Even when a lad, as he made some pointed statement of duty, and illustrated it, as was his wont, with a reference to the scenes of common life, the thought came, "Why did I not think of that?" But I did not think of it.
As a preacher,
He was quiet in the pulpit, using no gesture to emphasize his message. While such was the character of his ordinary ministrations it was especially at the Lord's table that his power manifested itself, when he seemed to forget everything, but the presence of his Master. His impassioned appeals, his glowing yet chastened eloquence, made the hearer almost feel as though "a door was opened in heaven."
During his studies and early ministry, McCulloch was supported by Rev. David Walker of the "Auld Light" Burgher congregation near Glasgow. It was during this time McCulloch met Walker's daughter, Isabella, and they were married on July 27, 1799 in Eastwood, Renfrewshire. The couple had nine children, three, Michael, Helen, and Elizabeth, were born in Scotland and emigrated with their parents. The other children include David, Isabella, Thomas, William, James, and Robert who died in infancy.
He and Elizabeth Walker settled in Stewarton, Scotland on June 13, 1799.
Life in Pictou
McCulloch stayed at Stewarton until 1803. At 28 years of age, due to "inadequate support" from the congregation and a call for ministers in the British colonies in North America, McCulloch left the congregation and was given an appointment by the Presbyterian church at Prince Edward Island. In August 1803, he and his wife and three children sailed from Clyde, Scotland for the colony. They didn't arrive until November 3 after a "long and stormy" voyage. Ships sailing to the Maritimes from Scotland often first landed in Pictou, Nova Scotia, a location where earlier Scottish settlers established a community.Because of the weather, having arrived in winter, McCulloch and Walker decided to wait until spring before cross over to PEI. Seeing both a need for a local minister as well as a need for teacher, and as a result of personal petitions from the town, McCulloch and his family remained in Pictou. Several townspeople, "on seeing a pair of terrestrial and celestial globes," courted him to stay. McCulloch was inducted as "the minister of the 'Harbour' congregation of the Prince Street Church, Pictou" June 6, 1804. In Pictou, McCulloch also served justice of the peace as well as the town's physician at this time as Pictou was without a practising doctor.
Life in the town was primitive, as was the first dwelling for McCulloch and Walker,
On landing in Pictou the family occupied what would in these days be called a shanty or hut, on the street leading down to Deacon Patterson's wharf, but so miserable was the accommodation that it was almost a choice between the house and the snow covered street.
After considerable difficulty a change, if not improvement, was made by removing to what was known afterward as "McIntyre's house." It stood on Water St., two doors east of Robert Dawson's stone store. Though more pretentious, it was like the first, a mere shell. The house was designed for two families, but the partitions were mere unplaned boards with cracks so wide that the doings of one family were the common property of the other.
The town, so called, consisted of some fourteen houses, while the rest of the congregation were scattered through the surrounding country.
Even though a Presbytery had been established in Pictou in since 1797, McCulloch's stipend was not paid. As a result, with little food or money, McCulloch spent a great deal of time during this first winter gathering firewood. He also spent time acting as a physician, travelling to outlying areas to provide medical assistance, often by foot and without payment. The family moved to a shared house, and then building a new house, completed in 1806. This house remains as a historic house. In 1807, McCulloch visited Halifax and made a positive impression to the point he was asked to remain as a minister in local church, which he declined. McCulloch remained at Pictou for 35 years.
McCulloch contemporaries, both friend and foe, understood his rhetorical abilities, persuasion, and charm. Halifax's Morning Post in 1839, described McCulloch as "a man of vast mental attainments, and a profound investigator into the mysteries of nature", and "as one of the prominent leading minds that have given Nova Scotia some claim to literary distinction." The Novascotian, at the time edited by Richard Nugent, who was critical of McCulloch, described him as having
possessed an original and powerful intellect, which had been strengthened by attainments of a high order, he might, under more auspicious circumstances, have left something that would imperishably have connected his name with literature and science."
In 1824, McCulloch resigned as minister at Pictou to focus more fully on the academy as well as on education in the colony more directly.
Pictou Academy
According to McCulloch's son, William, the idea for a seminary in Nova Scotia first came in 1804, "suggested itself like an inspiration." This inspiration arose for from:- the obvious lack of trained ministers in the area;
- what McCulloch saw as a lack of basic understanding of Christian tenants;
- the fact that the only degree-granting school, King's College at Windsor, was an Anglican school and seminary;
- what McCulloch perceived as "the gross injustice of the Government toward Dissenters."
Through much controversy, in 1808, McCulloch established a grammar school at Pictou in his home. The school quickly outgrew the home, as it became popular with families outside of Pictou, attracting students from neighbouring PEI and Cape Breton Island, as well as from British colonies in the Caribbean Islands. This led to its expansion, and a separate log building was constructed as the school's first separate building.
The school was granted government funding only in 1811; prior to this, its operation relied on subscriptions from local residents. Through the Act to establish Grammar Schools in several Counties and Districts of this Province, Pictou Academy, as part of the "district of Pictou" was provided "the sum of one hundred and fifty pounds, annually, be included in the estimate of the ordinary expenses of the province...for the payment of the masters, tutors, and ushers thereof respectively." Students "shall be taught English grammar, the Latin and Greek languages, orthography, the use of the globes, and the practical branches of the mathematicks, or such other useful learning as may be judged necessary." This edict seemed to not have sat well with McCulloch, as he writes of his views on the purpose of education, specifically the teaching and use of language,
...instead of enabling to display their pedantry by interlarding Latin and Greek phrases with the chit chat of life, it would be more profitable to give them an accurate acquaintance with the operation of their own minds, to teach them to classify their knowledge and communicate their sentiments, and to furnish them with those duties, and that knowledge of mathematical and physical science, which would be every day useful to the community and honourable to themselves.
In others words, think critically and reason for themselves.
In 1814, with a student body of 30-40 students, the log building was destroyed by fire. McCulloch then turned to the lieutenant governor in Halifax, who provided £100 to rebuild.
In 1815, McCulloch, with the support of James Mortimer, a leading Pictou merchant, formally established the Pictou Academy, which "on 25 March 1816 the House passed an 'Act for founding, establishing and maintaining an Academy at Pictou'" in Nova Scotia, receiving royal assent. What was significant in this Act was the condition on which it was founded: it "placed no denominational restrictions on students," though "required an oath of adherence from trustees and teachers to the established churches of England or Scotland." While McCulloch was not pleased with this restriction, he saw it as a temporary necessity. When Lord Dalhousie, then colonial governor, visited the Academy after its opening, where he remarked, that
it began to look and act like a college, its students were soon wearing the red gowns and caps familiar to McCulloch from the University of Glasgow.
While continuing to seek an agreement for a nondenominational board and permanent funding, McCulloch also sought degree-granting status for the Academy. This was chiefly stymied due to Lord Dalhousie's desire to create a third school in Halifax, and from opposition from King's College. As a result, in 1825, "the first three graduates of his divinity program" were sent to Scotland for examination at the University of Glasgow, "where they passed the qualifying examinations for the University of Glasgow with praise."
In 1831, Pictou Academy became the second degree-granting institution in the British colonies.
McCulloch was also shrewd, conciliatory, and aggressive in relationship with religious and political friends and adversaries, alike.