What's in the Archives?
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Additional resources held at the Diocese of Huron Archives include photograph collections, episcopal papers and personal manuscripts, artifacts and other historical data pertaining to the diocese. Click on images to enlarge |
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Collection
of Bibles |
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Jug
(from a jug and basin set) from Hellmuth Boys College |
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Printing plates and Braille hymnal |
The Gospel Journey of Captain John Norton
In the middle of February, 1804, a handsome, young man of Cherokee and Scottish parents walked alone and on foot from Niagara to New York, with only an occasional rest on a passing sleigh. From New York he set sail for England. His mission, taken on behalf of his adoptive father, celebrated Indian chief Colonel Joseph Brant was to take the Grand River land river negotiations all the way to the Privy Council. His name was Captain John Norton.
Norton was unsuccessful in his original mission but, while in England, he met with the Clapham Sect, an evangelical movement of parliamentarians and mission supporters, of which William Wilberforce was the most famous. Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect were the driving force in abolishing the slave trade.
Members of the Clapham sect had founded the British and Foreign Bible Society the same year, 1804. The fledgling society was so impressed with Norton it chose Mohawk for its first foregin language publication and Norton as its first translator. Norton got up every morning before sunrise and worked tirelessly until midnight, completing the translation of The Gospel of John in just two months. The society ordered the printing of 2,000 copies.
The
Mohawk Gospel of John
Click to enlarge
As one historian puts it, Norton "had come to England with confidence in political action, but he left with the knowledge that certificates of land ownership would not meet the Indians' deepest needs."
In 1805 Norton returned to Canada with 500 copies but his ship was blasted by such gale force winds it spent eleven weeks crossing the Atlantic. When he eventually arrived in Quebec City, exhausted, it was too late in the year to navigate ships up the St. Lawrence River.
So, in the cold of late November and with his leather trunk on his back Norton walked the hundreds of miles from Quebec City to his home on the Grand River where he was joyfully embraced by his neighbours and their children.
Today, one of the very few remaining copies of Norton's 1804 translation of the Gospel of John is in the Diocese of Huron archives.
Source: Anglican Diocese of Huron Church News (October 2005, page 5)
© Anglican Diocese of Huron Archives, 2005.