Gray, John William Daring

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: D. Murray Young, “GRAY, BENJAMIN GERRISH,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 8, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–.https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/gray_benjamin_gerrish_8E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Church of England clergyman and editor; b. 23 July 1797 in Preston, N.S., son of the Reverend Benjamin Gerrish Gray; m. Avis Phillips Easson of Jamaica; d. 1 Feb. 1868 in Halifax, N.S.
    • John William Dering Gray’s father had been sent to Preston as a Church of England missionary to a group of Maroons, transferred there after the British conquest of Jamaica. In 1818 Gray earned a ba from King’s College in Windsor, N. S. (he received an ma in 1826 and a bd and dd in 1846 from the same institution). He then spent a year in England where he was ordained in 1820.
    • Upon his return to Nova Scotia a few years later, Gray may have been given the parish of Amherst. In 1826 he was appointed curate in Trinity Church, Saint John, N.B., where his father had become rector. Gray himself became rector in 1840 and served until November 1867 when he retired owing to ill health. He then went to Halifax to live with his father, Benjamin Gerrish Gray, and died there a few months later. He had fulfilled his duties as a minister conscientiously. He was, as his contemporaries testified, an active and inspiring rector.
    • In 1850 Gray decided to publish and edit a newspaper, the Church Witness. An editorial in the first issue indicates how strongly he identified with the ideals of the Reformation period: “We . . . propose to conduct our paper upon what we conscientiously regard as the true principles of the Church . . . as settled by her Reformers of the sixteenth century. . . . New and strange opinions as they may arise from time to time . . . to disturb the faith, we shall watchfully and steadfastly resist. We desire thus simply to speak the truth in love, thus earnestly to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints.” The weekly’s pages were given over to the fight against the danger of “perversion” to Catholicism inherent in the high church movement, and opposition to the “tyranny” of the bishop. In later years, Gray became concerned about the dangers of rationalism presented by the broad church movement.
    • The paper’s uncompromising low church stand earned Gray adherents in the whole Maritime region as well as fierce enmity from the established Anglican circles in Fredericton and Halifax.
    • Gray had the loyalty and respect of many and after his death the Church Witness (quoting the Halifax Morning Chronicle), praised him as “the ripest scholar and most thoroughly finished Theologian of the Church in these Colonies. . . .” But because his views ran counter to the initiatives of Medley and his collaborators and pupils, he has tended to be regarded by some local historians as a troublemaker or, at best, a sincere but misguided leader. His own admiration for the plainness and independence of the 16th century divines is perhaps a more useful indication of the tradition he
  • Son of Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory –https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=3345
  • Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/197921703/john_william_dering-gray