In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Mary Jane Baker’s Childhood ❧ Seek after self-improvement [for] all that you have yet acquired only places you on the threshold of the temple of reason. (3004) —Rev. Thomas Baker to daughter Mary,18 June 1867 M ary Jane Baker was born on 10 October 1849, in Brantford, Ontario, the only child of the second marriage of Commander the Reverend Thomas Baker (1796-1887) and his second wife Mary-Jane McIlwaine (1809-82). She later shortened her name to Mary Baker and, after marriage , always signed her letters “M. B. McQuesten.” Mary’s father applied for commission in the Royal Navy in 1805 at the age of nine. He then went to sea at the age of eleven as a midshipman aboard the Antelope during the Napoleonic Wars, and continued his education while on board. During the war of 1812 he was a lieutenant on the HMS St. Lawrence on the Great Lakes, which was the largest freshwater sailing vessel at the time. He was granted a lieutenant’s commission and pension and, after retiring from the navy in 1817, at the age of twenty-one, he attended the Theological College in Portsea. He then emigrated from England to Upper Canada in approximately 1835, where he pursued further theological studies and took up a position as the first minister of the first Congregational Church in Upper Canada at Kingston, Ontario in 1835. He continued his ministry at other locations in Ontario. In 1870 he was granted the rank of “Commander in H.M. Fleet” and was awarded a retirement commission of eight shillings and sixpence a day in recognition of his military service (Minnes 1; DHB 3:4; 3038). Thomas Baker and his first wife, Sarah Hampson, had eight children. By the time of her death in 1846, the eight children from this first marriage were grown. He married for the second time in 1847 when he was fifty-one years old and his second wife, Mary-Jane McIlwaine, was thirty-eight. Mary Jane Baker was born two years later and became the precious and only child of this late marriage . Mary’s secure childhood likely provided the stability that sustained her later in life. Thomas Baker’s correspondence at Whitehern provides details of Mary’s upper-middle-class childhood and education, and gives insights into his Notes for Part One start on page 239 3 influence in determining her strong sense of duty, moral fortitude, strict Calvinist views, and critical spirit.1 The McIlwaines originally came from Ireland and were also a naval family . Mary’s uncle, William McIlwaine, served like her father in the Napoleonic wars. The McQuestens have stated that, in the historical painting by Sir William Quiller Orchardson, “Napoleon on Board the Bellerophon,” he is the young midshipman leaning over the rail in the background (Farmer, CMQPW 10). Little is known of Mary’s mother except that she was a minister’s wife, and a leader in organizing the women of the church in collecting for the Bible Society from 1853 to 1857. They were charged with calling on the “poor and unchurched … [and] ascertaining whether any families are destitute of the Holy Scriptures” (4194). Women in the Bible Societies were forerunners of the women’s missionary movement and they brought years of experience to it (Brouwer 64). Mrs. Baker likely provided a model for Mary’s later participation in the women’s missionary movement in the Presbyterian Church. On both sides of Mary’s family, the strongest influences in her early life were both military and religious. They provided a strong code of discipline, morality , and social responsibility. Mary, in turn, inculcated in her children the same strict discipline and moral and religious code. She also imposed her convictions on her community with dedication and vigour. Although she was physically a small woman, she was a formidable presence. Mary’s father was a model of Calvinist rectitude in his pastoral dealings and he demanded a very high moral standard from his congregation. His letters demonstrate his patriarchal expectations regarding his congregation. For instance, in his letter of August 1841 to his congregation in Paris, Ontario, Thomas Baker tendered his resignation because they had not fulfilled their promise to erect “a comfortable and commodious Place of Worship”: That in this aspect you are behind every other Congregation of this denomination in this Province, you are the only people who have allowed a year to pass away without the effort required of you and which I...

Share