June and Alexander McPhail, Pictonian Quakers

United States # 76, 1863 5c Jefferson brown, on Feb 1864 double-franked cover from La Porte, IN to Pictou, Nova Scotia. Addressed to Mrs. Alex. McPhail, Pictou, Nova Scotia, B.N.A., manuscript notation “via Amherst” on front, Cancelled at La Porte, date illegible. Red oval “U.S. 10 cts PAID” on front. Three backstamps. One completely illegible; Amherst 28 FE -; post office illegible, MA 1 1864. Several numeric notations in ink on back.

Jane Mitchell Smith McPhail, wife of Alexander McPhail, a Quaker merchant on Water Street in Pictou town, was 53 years old when she received this letter from La Porte, IN. It is likely Jane was communicating with fellow Quakers there.

Jane Mitchell Smith married Alexander McPhail July 9th, 1836, in Pictou.

Alexander McPhail taught at the Pictou Academy from its re-opening in 1846 until December 1847 when he resigned his post. Pictonians at Home and Abroad, Rev. J. P. MacPhie M.A. (1914)

There is a letter from Jane M. MacPhail, Pictou, Nova Scotia, to Anne Warren Weston (1812-1890), 20th Nov. 1852 in the Boston Public Library, Rare Books Department's Anti-Slavery Collection.https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/qz20vd00n In it, Jane acknowledges receipt of a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin. She lists some articles of "Indian work" she is sending to be sold to support the anti-slavery cause. The letter's recipient, Anne Warren Weston (July 13, 1812 – 1890) was an American abolitionist. She is largely memorialized by the letters she wrote to the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society.

Hutchinson's Nova Scotia Directory, 1864-5, has MCPHAIL, ALEXANDER, merchant, Water [St.]

McAlpine’s Nova Scotia Directory, 1868-1869, has McPhail, Alexander, merchant, Water [St.]

In the 1871 census Pictou, Pictou, Nova Scotia, District 200, is Alexr Mcphail, married, age 68, birthplace Scotland, Religion - Progression Friends, Occupation Trader, his wife, Jane Mcphail, 60, also born in Scotland, son Edmund Mcphail, 28, born in Nova Scotia, Wesleyan, clerk, and daughter Anna Mcphail, 26, born in Nova Scotia, Wesleyan.

Per her cemetery inscription, Jane Mitchell Smith McPhail died June 25th, 1877.

Bradstreet's Reports of the Dominion of Canada, The Bradstreet Company, New York, 1878. has Alexander McPhail living in Pictou.

In the 1881 census, Alexander McPhail, 78, widower, born in Scotland, religion: Ass. Society of Friends, employment: Agent N.S.B, is living with his son, Edmund, 38, postmaster, and his daughter-in-law, Agnes, 36, and their 3-month-old daughter, Maggie.

Aexander McPhail died July 1st, 1885, aged 82. He and Jane are buried in Haliburton Cemetery, Pictou. The grave is marked with a marble obelisk.

Quakers in La Porte, Indiana

Early in 1830 Aaron Stanton and a son, Benajah with two friends, erected a cabin in La Porte on the farm later occupied by Moses Stanton. Quakers of the "Hicksite" branch, in the winter of 1830-1831, held their first meeting at the home of Aaron Stanton. The Stanton's, according to history, were among the Quakers who settled at an early date north of LaPorte and who erected a meeting house and log school. The Quaker Cemetery site in La Porte is both humble and quite strikingly simple. There are supposedly around 400 burials in this cemetery but field stones mark the graves of 54 known graves in neat rows. 

By the early 19th Century there were two divergent tendencies among North American Quakers. One, identified with the followers of Elias Hicks (1717-1830), was associated with ideas of political democracy and stressed the Inward Light as the basis of salvation rather than the atonement made by Christ on the cross. When Hicksites referred to Christ as their savior, they meant the Christ within rather than the Christ of history. The other was a renewed interest in Evangelical Christianity. In 1827 a separation had taken place at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Similar separations followed in other American Meetings, though all groups continued to claim the title Religious Society of Friends. A History of Canadian Yearly Meeting at quaker.ca