Rev. William Black

William Black was born November 10, 1760 in Huddersfield, England, the second oldest of five children of William Black and Elizabeth Stocks.  In 1775, his family joined the stream of emigrants from Yorkshire who settled in the Chignecto Isthmus of Nova Scotia. William Black Sr. acquired a farm near Amherst; the young William's formative years were spent helping his parents in their arduous tasks.

Many of the Yorkshire families who came to Nova Scotia were Methodists or had been influenced by John Wesley's teaching. Since they had no minister, they, as did Methodists elsewhere, held informal religious services in their homes, which Black attended. In 1779, William Black experienced a revolutionary change in his life at such a meeting.  Three years after his conversion, on June 11, 1782, William Black preached his first sermon. He is sometimes described as the first ordained Methodist clergyman in Canada, but that is misleading. Although he performed the work of a minister in spreading the Gospel, he remained a layman until 1789. In 1784, United States Methodists gathered in Baltimore. William was the only Methodist representing Canada. He pleaded with the assembled Methodists to send workers to Nova Scotia, and two ordained ministers went back with him: Freeborn Garrettson and James Cromwell.

To overcome his lack of training, he studied hard on his own. To build the church, he traveled constantly throughout Nova Scotia and neighbouring provinces, preaching wherever he could get a hearing. He corresponded with John Wesley and other Methodist leaders. A man of tact and administrative ability, he kept good friendship with other evangelicals; for example, if there was no local Methodist group, he even sent his converts to the Baptists who held a doctrine quite different from his own. All he asked of a church was that it demonstrate the life of Christ in it. In 1789, the conference ordained William as a deacon and elder. At that point, he became the first Canadian citizen ordained in the Methodist church.

As the presiding elder of Eastern Canada, William Black was the most influential Canadian Methodist of his period. His many years of hard work resulted in a solid Methodist organization in Nova Scotia. It was considered the most conservative wing of the Canadian Methodists.

He died, probably of heart disease, in Halifax on 8 Sept. 1834