John Norman Maclean (minister)

Rev. John Norman Maclean (1862-1941) was a well-known Canadian-American Presbyterian minister who was the father of the author, Norman Maclean. Norman Maclean wrote about his father in fictionalized and non-fictional accounts, including the bestseller, A River Runs Through It (1976), which also became an award-winning film, where Maclean was portrayed by Tom Skerritt..

Early life, eduation, and marriage[]

John Norman Maclean was born to Norman Maclean and Mary MacDonald Maclean on their family farm in the Canadian Gaelic-speaking community of Marshy Hope, Nova Scotia on July 28, 1862.^[1]

Showing signs of academic promise, John Norman Maclean trained for the ministry first at Pictou Academy, where academic records refer to him as "J.N. Mclean of ". He completed his education at Dalhousie College in Halifax and at Manitoba College in Winnipeg. While riding circuit in the summers among small Presbyterian congregations in the pioneer farming communities of the Pembina Valley Region of south-central Manitoba, MacLean met his future wife, an English-Canadian schoolmarm named Clara Davidson.^[2]

Clara's father, John Davidson, was a Presbyterian immigrant from Northern England, and had settled first near Argenteuil, Laurentides, Quebec, where his daughter Clara had been born. Finding the farm land there to be poor, however, John Davidson and his family had moved west by oxcart and settled on a homestead at , near Manitou, Manitoba.^[3]

During their courtship, Clara often accompanied John while he was riding circuit. In 1893, John Norman Maclean completed advanced studies at San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo, California and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister. John and Clara Maclean were married in Pembina, Manitoba on August 1, 1893.^[4]

Children and Career[]

The Macleans had two sons. Their eldest son Norman was born in 1902 became a professor and author, and their younger son, Paul, was a journalist who was murdered in 1937. Both sons graduated from Dartmouth College. With his father's encouragement, Norman wrote a bestselling slightly fictionalized account of his childhood with his father in A River Runs Through It (novel) which was published in 1976 and later made into a film.

In 1908 the John Norman Maclean moved to Missoula, Montana and became pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Missoula in 1909.^[5]

Death and legacy[]

Maclean died in 1941. In 2009 First Presbyterian Church in Missoula dedicated a monument to honor Rev. Maclean.^[6]

References[]