Byles, Mather

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Wallace Brown, “BYLES, MATHER,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 5, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/byles_mather_5E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Church of England clergyman and versifier; b. 12 Jan. 1734/35 in Boston, Mass., eldest son of the Reverend Mather Byles and Anna Gale, née Noyes; d. 12 March 1814 in Saint John, N.B.
    • Mather Byles came from a distinguished Puritan background. He was the great-grandson of the clergyman Increase Mather and a grandnephew of the colonial governor Jonathan Belcher; his father was a well-known tory Congregational minister, poet, and wit. A precocious boy, Byles entered Harvard College at the age of 12 and graduated in 1751. He was later to receive the degree of ma from Harvard in 1754 and from Yale College in 1757, and he obtained a dd from Oxford in 1770. Byles was happily married three times. His descendants include a number of outstanding Nova Scotia families.
    • After a stormy tenure with a Whiggish congregation, he resigned and would have taken up a position in Portsmouth, N.H., had the outbreak of hostilities not prevented him. In 1776 he fled with the British troops to Halifax, where he lived precariously as chaplain to the garrison and assistant to the rectors of St Paul’s Church. In May 1784 he went to England to press his claims for compensation as a loyalist. Awarded £120 and an annual pension of £100 in the form of “a perfect Sinecure,” the lifetime chaplaincy of the Halifax garrison, he returned to Halifax in May 1785.
    • In August 1788 Byles visited Saint John, N.B., and received a “Unanimous” call to become rector of Trinity Church. He moved there with his family in May 1789. At first the congregation met in temporary quarters, but on Christmas morning 1791 Byles conducted the first service in the newly built church that became the centre of loyalist, Anglican worship in Saint John. It was also supported by the Presbyterians, who had no minister, and thus was frequently overcrowded. Byles served with distinction until early 1814 when he went blind. He died on 12 March 1814 in the very chair in which his father and grandfather had died.
  • United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=1101
  • Find A Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/163072107/mather-byles