Author: Scadding, Henry
Biography:
SCADDING, Henry (1813-1901: DCB)
He was born in Devon, the son of a farmer, John Scadding, and his wife Melicent Triggs. His father had been in Upper Canada with the Governor, John Graves Simcoe, in 1792-6, and had been granted land there. He brought his family from England in 1821. Henry first attended a school run by John Strachan, an early patron who later became an influential Anglican bishop. He was the first student to enrol at Upper Canada College in York (Toronto) in 1830. Upon graduation in 1832, he read the prize poem for his class (eight pages only) and went on to St. John's College, Cambridge (BA 1837, MA 1840, DD 1852). The attribution of Niagara, published anonymously in the same year, is based on his signature in one copy. After returning to Canada, he was made a classics master at the College and ordained as minister of St. James's Church; from 1840 he was also Strachan's domestic chaplain. He married Harriet Eugenia Baldwin in 1841 but she died in 1843, leaving him a widower with one daughter. Scadding was the first minister of Holy Trinity Church in 1847; he was given an assistant in 1853 because ill health made it difficult for him to preach. He resigned from teaching in 1862 and from Holy Trinity in 1875. He published extensively on theological, archaeological, and literary matters, but his contributions to the history of Toronto, as a founding member of the Canadian Institute and the York Pioneer and Historical Society, and author of Toronto of Old--serialized 1869-73, published in book form (1873, rev. 1879)--are his main legacy. He died in Toronto and is buried in St. James Cemetery. (DCB 2 Sept. 2020; Appleton; WorldCat; findagrave.com 2 Sept. 2020) HJ