Mary Baker McQuesten (October 10, 1849 – December 7, 1934) was a Victorian-era Canadian letter writer and activist. She was the mother of politician
Thomas McQuesten
Thomas Baker McQuesten (June 30, 1882 – January 13, 1948) was a politician in Ontario, Canada. He was a Liberal member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1934 to 1943 who represented the riding of Hamilton—Wentworth. He served as a ...
.
Biography
McQuesten was born Mary Jane Baker on October 10, 1849 in
Brantford
Brantford (Canada 2021 Census, 2021 population: 104,688) is a city in Ontario, Canada, founded on the Grand River (Ontario), Grand River in Southwestern Ontario. It is surrounded by County of Brant, Brant County, but is politically separate with ...
in what was then
Upper Canada
The Province of Upper Canada (french: link=no, province du Haut-Canada) was a part of British Canada established in 1791 by the Kingdom of Great Britain, to govern the central third of the lands in British North America, formerly part of the ...
to parents Reverend Thomas Baker and Mary Jane McIlwaine.
She attended Newmarket County Grammar School and later Mrs. Burns' Ladies Collegiate Institute in
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
. McQuesten never received a formal university education.
Mary met Isaac Baldwin McQuesten in 1869. The two married on June 18, 1873, though Mary broke off the engagement at least once. Their eldest child, Mary Baldwin McQuesten, was born in 1874. The couple had six more children between 1876 and 1885: Calvin, Hilda-Belle, Ruby Baker, Muriel Fletcher,
Thomas Baker, and Margaret Edna. Muriel Fletcher only lived to 21 months, dying in 1882.
Following the death of his father in 1885, Isaac McQuesten inherited Willowbank House and the McQuesten family moved in. Mary McQuesten changed the name of the house to
Whitehern
Whitehern Historic House and Garden in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, built shortly before 1850, is a Late Classical house that is now a historic house museum.
At one time, Whitehern was the home of the McQuesten family, including Mary Baker McQu ...
.
In 1882, McQuesten was elected to the board of the Women's Foreign Missionary Society. She was elected president of the society in 1893. In 1898, McQuesten helped to form the Woman's Home Missionary Society which helped to minister to people, especially those involved in the gold rush, in the Canadian north and northwest.
Despite McQuesten's opposition, the Women's Foreign Missionary Society and the Woman's Home Missionary Society merged in 1914 to become the Women's Missionary Society.
Isaac McQuesten died in 1888 leaving Mary McQuesten a single mother of six children between the ages of 2 and 14.
Isaac was an alcoholic and his death was rumoured to have been a suicide. His death left the McQuesten family in severe debt.
In 1889, McQuesten proposed the founding of a chapter of the
YWCA
The Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) is a nonprofit organization with a focus on empowerment, leadership, and rights of women, young women, and girls in more than 100 countries.
The World office is currently based in Geneva, Swi ...
in Hamilton. The Hamilton YWCA Building opened on May 1, 1889. McQuesten was a member of several other religious women's institutions including the
National Council of Women and the
Victorian Order of Nurses
The Victorian Order of Nurses (VON) has been leading home and community care in Canada for over a century. Today, VON provides home and community support services to over 10,000 people every day across Ontario and Nova Scotia. It is registered as a ...
. Despite these
feminist
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
leanings, McQuesten was never publicly associated with the
women's suffrage movement
Women's suffrage is the women's rights, right of women to Suffrage, vote in elections. Beginning in the start of the 18th century, some people sought to change voting laws to allow women to vote. Liberal political parties would go on to gran ...
.
McQuesten was a devout
Presbyterian
Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their nam ...
her entire life. In 1923, she spoke out against
church union
Church union is the name given to a merger of two or more Christian denominations. Such unions may take on many forms, including a united church and a federation.
United churches
{{main, United and uniting churches
A united church is the resu ...
. Her Presbyterian church, Hamilton Presbytery, similarly resisted joining the
United Church
A united church, also called a uniting church, is a church formed from the merger or other form of church union of two or more different Protestant Christian denominations.
Historically, unions of Protestant churches were enforced by the state ...
.
On December 7, 1934, McQuesten died of a
cerebral hemorrhage
Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), also known as cerebral bleed, intraparenchymal bleed, and hemorrhagic stroke, or haemorrhagic stroke, is a sudden bleeding into the tissues of the brain, into its ventricles, or into both. It is one kind of bleed ...
.
Legacy
McQuesten's letters have been influential in Canadian humanities and social studies. The letters demonstrate the ways in which letter writing could keep distant family members aware of each other's lives in the Victorian era. The letters also provide insight into the life of a single Victorian mother and into post-colonial Victorian attitudes. McQuesten's collected writings, including missionary texts and letters, have been compiled with a biography by Mary J. Anderson called ''The Life Writings of Mary Baker McQuesten: Victorian Matriarch''.
McQuesten's former home is now preserved as a museum, the
Whitehern Historic House and Garden, in Hamilton.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:McQuesten, Mary Baker
1849 births
1934 deaths
Canadian Presbyterian missionaries
Female Christian missionaries
Writers from Brantford
Proponents of Christian feminism