Norman McLeod

Norman McLeod (17 September 1780 – 14 March 1866), a Presbyterian minister from Scotland, led significant settlements of Highlanders in Nova Scotia and ultimately in Waipu in New Zealand. Scotland Born in Clachtoll to Donald and Margaret McLeod of Stoer, Norman spent his childhood days amongst the hills, lochans and peat bogs of remote Assynt.He worked fishing and farming and had a spiritual awakening as a result of being inspired by the preaching of "The Men", who were unordained dissenters from the established Church of Scotland. At the age of twenty-seven, he went to the University of Aberdeen to study for a Master of Arts degree. On graduating in 1812, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Moral Philosophy. To enable him to enter the ministry and be guaranteed a presbytery, he had to go to Edinburgh to complete a theology course. Before going to Edinburgh, he married Mary McLeod, who had long been his sweetheart and who would accompany him on his travels. Norman left Edinburgh in disgust at the worldly ways of his professors, and did not finish his course. Norman and Mary moved to Ullapool, where he had been appointed as teacher at the SPCK school. Teachers with the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge also doubled as lay preachers, and he soon came into conflict with the established minister Dr Ross. Norman refused to attend services taken by Dr Ross. When the McLeods wished their son John Luther baptised, they took him to Lochcarron, 40 miles to the south but Ross was there and his son remained unbaptised. Norman's stipend was stopped and in 1815 he went to Wick where he spent two seasons in the local fishing industry. Having burned all of his bridges in Scotland, he decided to emigrate to Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia July 1817 Norman went alone to board the barque 'Frances Ann' and set sail for the town of Pictou on the north coast of Nova Scotia. There was already a thriving Highland community there, mostly emigrants from Sutherland and Rosshire. His family and close relatives came the next year.