1 Rev. John Stuart

Born in Pennsylvania, John Stuart (1740-1811) was an Anglican missionary at Cataraqui (Kingston). In 1770, Stuart was ordained and sent to Fort Hunter, New York, as missionary to the Mohawk residents of the Fort. After refusing to sign the oath of allegiance to the Continental Congress during the American Revolution (1775-83), Stuart escaped to Canada with his family in 1781. They eventually settled at Cataraqui in 1785, and Stuart became the first resident Anglican clergyman in Upper Canada (Ontario). He ministered to European settlers and First Nations communities in the Cataraqui area, and visited as far west as Niagara and the Grand River. Stuart was responsible for the building of Cataraqui's earliest church, St. George's Anglican Church, where in 1792 the new lieutenant-governor of the province of Upper Canada – John Graves Simcoe (1752-1806) – took his oath of office. Stuart died in 1811 after his eldest son George succeeded him as rector of Cataraqui.

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