Memorable Manitobans: John Black (1818-1882)

Cleric.

Born at Dumfries, Scotland on 8 January 1818, eldest son of William Black and Margaret Halliday. He taught school for a short time in Cumberland, England, before emigrating with his parents in 1841 to Bovina Township, New York, where he taught school. He also continued his education in Delhi, New York, with the intention of entering the ministry.

In 1844 he was one of the students in the first class of the new Knox College, Toronto. He graduated in 1848 and spent the next three years as a missionary in various places in eastern Canada. He was ordained on 31 July 1851, after which he came to Red River to take up what was to become his life’s work. He opened a church building at Kildonan in 1853 and soon established a school beside it. That same year he married Henrietta Ross (1830-1873), the daughter of Alexander Ross. They had seven children, including William Ross Black, Sarah Black (wife of Frederick Henhurst Francis), and Henrietta Ross Black (wife of Thomas Laidlaw). His second wife was Laurenda G. Bannatyne, sister of A. G. B. Bannatyne.

In 1868 he built a church in the village of Winnipeg, and he helped found Manitoba College in 1871. During the Red River Rebellion of 1869-70 he preached for the preservation of law and order but against open resistance to Louis Riel and the provisional government. He resigned from the Board of Education of Manitoba in 1876 in opposition to the efforts of some of his Protestant colleagues to dissolve the province’s denominational school system. Black received an honorary DD from Queen’s College in 1876. He served on the Board of Education (Manitoba) from its inception until a few years before his death. He was one of the founders of Manitoba College. Queen’s College, Kingston honoured him with a Doctorate of Divinity. John Black Memorial Church was named in his honour.

Black died at Kildonan, Manitoba on 11 February 1882. He is commemorated by John Black Avenue in Winnipeg. There are papers in the United Church Archives at Toronto, and the Archives of Manitoba.

See also:

John Black of Old Kildonan by Olive Knox
The Ryerson Press, Toronto, 1958.

“John Black,” by James D. Marnoch, pages 65-84 in Prairie Spirit: Perspectives on the Heritage of the United Church of Canada in the West, edited by Dennis Butcher et al. (1985).

John Black, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online

Source:

Pioneers and Early Citizens of Manitoba, Winnipeg: Manitoba Library Association, 1971.

Dictionary of Manitoba Biography by J. M. Bumsted, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999.

This profile was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.

Profile revised: 20 March 2011

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