Wiswall, John

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Maud M. Hutcheson, “WISWALL, JOHN,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 5, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/wiswall_john_5E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Church of England clergyman; b. 15 April 1731 in Boston, Mass., son of Peleg Wiswall and Elizabeth Rogers; m. first 17 Dec. 1761 Mercy Minot of Brunswick (Maine), and they had four children; m. secondly March 1784 Margaret Hutchinson of New Jersey; d. 2 Dec. 1812 in Wilmot, N.S.
    • The son of a well-known schoolmaster, John Wiswall graduated from Harvard College in 1749 and taught at various schools in the vicinity of Boston. In 1753 he began studying divinity under Jonathan Mayhew and other Congregational ministers, and for the next couple of years he travelled about Massachusetts as a supply preacher. Eventually, in 1755 or 1756, he was made minister of a Congregational church at Falmouth (Maine)
    • When he was arrested in 1775 he insisted that “not the severest punishment, not the fear of death” would shake his allegiance to the crown. Released on the understanding that he would remain in Falmouth, Wiswall broke his parole and travelled to Boston, arriving there in early June. Made a navy chaplain in late 1775, Wiswall spent most of the next few years in wartime service. In 1781 he accepted a curacy in Suffolk, England, but within a year he was serving in a parish in Kent, and later still he moved to another parish in Essex. Early in 1783, after obtaining a temporary pension of £60 annually in compensation for his losses during the American revolution, he emigrated to Nova Scotia to succeed Jacob Bailey as the Anglican clergyman in Cornwallis. Wiswall had the difficult task of strengthening the Church of England in an area that was overrun with dissenters. Soon after arriving in Cornwallis he wrote that in his mission, which also included the settlements of Horton and Wilmot, Anglicans were greatly outnumbered by “wild enthusiasts” of every denomination.
    • In 1788 a bitter Wiswall wrote: “I regret that ever I came to this Country – I was wretchedly deceived . . . I am banished from my Friends – and doomed to lead a most laborious life, pinched with poverty and oftimes not knowing where to procure the common conveniences not to say necessarys of life.” 
    • That same year Wiswall was seriously injured in a fall from his horse, and for the last decade of his life he was too crippled and frail to minister to his Wilmot flock on a regular basis. He died on 2 Dec. 1812, at the age of 81, and was buried near the Anglican church in Middleton. One of his sons, Peleg, was elected to the House of Assembly and later became a judge of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court.
  • United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=11181
  • Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/168351625/john-wiswall