A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography: Being Chiefly Men of the Time. Various
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of bridges in the parish, for which after the organisation of the Highway Board, its existence for its original purposes was not necessary, and the accumulated funds were devoted to the erection and endowment of a superior school. In 1868, he entered the service of the London and North-Western Railway of England as freight clerk, and was subsequently appointed freight agent at Sutton Coldfield, near Birmingham, and station master at Marton, near Rugby. He resigned in June, 1870, to come to Canada, and in December, 1870, entered the service of the New Brunswick and Canada Railway, at St. Andrews, New Brunswick, as clerk to the general manager. Mr. Williams left the service of that railway in August, 1873, to enter upon duties of clerk in accountant’s office of the Intercolonial (Government) Railway, at Moncton, New Brunswick, and was subsequently appointed chief clerk in mechanical department of the same railway. In November, 1875, he was sent to Charlottetown, to organise the system of accounts of the Prince Edward Island Railway, and was appointed accountant and auditor of that railway. And on the 1st of July, 1882, he was appointed chief accountant and treasurer of the Intercolonial Railway at Moncton, which position he at present holds. Mr. Williams was a member of the Church of England until December, 1873, but in consequence of Ritualistic practices having been introduced into the church he was in the habit of attending, he left it, and was among the first to join the then newly organized Reformed Episcopal Church, St. Paul’s, in Moncton. He has held the office of vestryman and warden in this church, almost continuously since. On the 12th of January, 1875, he married Analena, daughter of the late John Rourke, merchant, St. John, New Brunswick, and has a family of seven children.
Pickard, Rev. Humphrey, D.D., Methodist Minister, Sackville, New Brunswick, was born at Fredericton, New Brunswick, June 10th, 1813. His parents, Thomas Pickard, was the son of Deacon Humphrey Pickard, and was born at Sheffield in 1783, and Mary Pickard, daughter of David Burpee. Mrs. Pickard was also born at Sheffield in 1783. Both Deacon Pickard and Squire Burpee, came, while yet mere youths, from Massachusetts, New England, with a party of the earliest English settlers on the Saint John river, about the year 1762. The subject of this sketch, after receiving a fair English education in Fredericton, was sent to the Wesleyan Academy, North Wilbenham, Massachusetts, United States, in 1829, where he commenced a classical course of study, and having prepared for matriculation, he entered the Freshman class in the University at Middletown, Conn., in 1831. He, having completed the Freshman course of study, retired from the university in 1832, and spent the following three years in mercantile pursuits. In 1835, he entered the Methodist ministry, as an assistant to the Rev. A. Des Brisay, in the Sheffield circuit. In 1836, he was received on trial as a Wesleyan missionary, by the British Methodist Conference, and laboured for a year as such on the Miramichi mission and Fredericton circuit. In 1837, he resumed his course of university study at Middletown; in 1839, he graduated, receiving the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and re-entered the work of the Methodist ministry, being stationed at Richibucto, until 1841, when he was appointed to St. John. In 1842, he was ordained and received into full connection with the English Conference as a Methodist minister, and appointed editor of the British North American Methodist Magazine, which was published at St. John. In November of the same year, he was elected principal of the Mount Allison Academy, and removed with his family to Sackville at the close of the year. The academy was opened on the 19th of January, 1843, with a very few students, but under his skilful management, it rapidly rose into importance in public estimation, and attracting students from all parts of the Maritime provinces, soon took position in the very front rank of the educational institutions of Eastern British America. The catalogue for the term from January to June, 1855, contains 250 names of students in actual attendance, viz.: of 134 in the male branch, and 116 in the female. In 1862, the Mount Allison College was organized at Sackville, by the authority of an Act of the Legislature of New Brunswick, and Mr. Pickard was appointed its president, and he continued to act as president of the college and principal of the academy until 1869. At the annual meeting of the Board of Governors of the united institutions, held May 26, 1869, the following resolution was unanimously adopted: “That the board, having received intimation from Rev. Dr. Pickard, that in consequence of the action of the conference in assigning to him another portion of connexional service, his resignation of the office of president of the institution is deemed necessary, though reluctantly accepting that resignation, would express in strongest terms its regret at the removal of Dr. Pickard from the field of usefulness for which he has special qualifications, and at which for upwards of a quarter of a century, he has with fidelity and honour served the church and his generation. The board is also assured that the great work of education in connection with the Wesleyan Conference of Eastern British America is greatly indebted to the retiring president of the institution, and that its success is largely to be attributed to the indomitable application and perseverance—the high business ability, and the earnest Christian aim by which Dr. Pickard has been animated during the whole period of his service in the government of the institution.” The Provincial Wesleyan, in a notice of the Mount Allison Academy, June 15, 1870, says: “The college established in 1862, under a charter from the Legislature of New Brunswick, mainly through the exertions of the Rev. Dr. Pickard, is the latest of the foundations at Sackville. * * * The first president of the college was the Rev. H. Pickard, D.D., president also of the Wesleyan Conference. Dr. Pickard’s name is so intimately associated with the Sackville institutions as almost to rival that of its benevolent founder. To them he gave the flower of his life. And although retired from the responsible office of president, and engaged in another sphere of usefulness, the doctor is still one of its ablest friends and supporters. His address at the recent celebration was received with the warmest demonstrations.” Dr. Pickard, having been elected to the office of editor of The Wesleyan and book steward, became resident in Halifax, from 1869 to 1873, but in this latter year he returned with his family to Sackville. From 1873 to 1875, he acted as agent for the college, and was largely instrumental in securing the first endowment fund; and in 1876 he was superintendent of the Sackville district. In 1877, he became a supernumerary, and has since so remained resident at Sackville, except during the years 1879–80, when, at the call of the General Conference of the Methodist Church of Canada, he acted as book steward at Halifax. He was elected secretary of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference of Eastern British America in 1857, 1858, 1859 and 1860, and co-delegate of the same conference in 1861, and president in 1862 and 1870. He was appointed representative of the conference of Eastern British America to the Canada Conference, which met in the city of Kingston, June, 1860; and again to the conference which met in the city of Hamilton, June, 1867. He was appointed representative of his conference to the British Conference, first, in 1857, secondly in 1862, and thirdly in 1873. He was a member of the joint committee on the Federal union of the Wesleyan Methodist church in British America, which met in Montreal, October, 1872; and of the joint committee which met in Toronto in 1882, and formulated the basis of union by which the four separate Methodist bodies in Canada united to form the one Methodist church. Rev. Mr. Pickard was a member of the first and second general conferences of the Methodist Church of Canada, and served in both as chairman of the committee on discipline. He was also a member of the second general conference of the Methodist church, which met in Toronto, in September, 1886, and was appointed a member of the court of appeal and of the book committee for the quadrennium, 1886–1890. Mr. Pickard received the degree of Master of Arts in 1842, from the University at Middletown, and had the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity conferred on him by his alma mater in 1857. At the late session of the annual conference of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island of the Methodist church, the following address, beautifully engrossed and elegantly framed, was presented to Dr. Pickard:—
To the Reverend H. Pickard, D.D.:
Dear Brother—The members of the New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island Conference, assembled in annual session, desire to express to you their hearty congratulations upon the completion of Fifty Years in the honourable work of your ministry. We also express our gratitude to God, that he has so long spared you to see the growth, prosperity, and influence of the church to whose interests you have given such rich qualities of learning, wisdom, and piety.
We rejoice that through all these years your moral and ministerial character has been preserved without a stain. We are profoundly conscious of the far-reaching influence of your life in our Academic and College work. The ministry of this and other churches, as well as the business and professional life of our provinces, have been enriched by the ripe scholarship and godly zeal of those who owe much to you for their culture