Researching William Black

He was born in Dundas County, Ontario, the son of William Black. After leaving the family farm, Black worked as a trackman for the Canadian Pacific Railway. In 1892, he married Georgia R. Griffith. Black moved to Parham in 1894, where he operated a general store and worked as a contractor. He was also involved in lumbering and contracting in the Temagami region. Black served on the municipal council for Parham and was a justice of the peace and an issuer of marriage licenses. He also served as secretary-treasurer of the Agricultural Society.

He retired from politics in 1943 due to health problems. Black died in Ottawa the following year at the age of 76.

Black's daughter married the merchant and politician John Alexander Barry, who was the son of Robert Barry, a prominent businessman and Methodist. His son, Martin Gay Black, became a prominent businessman and also furthered the Methodist cause in Nova Scotia.

File:Rev. William Black, Camphill Cemetery, Nova Scotia.jpg|Rev. William Black, Camp Hill CemeteryFile:PointDeButeLychGate.jpg|Cemetery in Point de Bute, New Brunswick, near where the first Methodist church stood and where Black would have preached.

He was born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, the son of Samuel Gay Black and Sophia Wright. In 1875, with Robert Pickford, Black founded Pickford and Black, a company that supplied ship's provisions. The company expanded into shipping passengers and freight as well as trading in the West Indies. He represented Halifax County in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly from 1894 to 1897. In 1922, he was a co-founder of the Maritime Life Assurance Company. Black was first elected to the House of Commons of Canada for the riding of Halifax in a 1923 by-election. A Conservative, he was re-elected in 1925, 1926, and 1930. In 1926, he was the Minister of Marine and Fisheries (Acting) and Minister of Railways and Canals in the short lived cabinet of Arthur Meighen.

Black also served as president of Eastern Canada Savings and Loan and was a director for the Royal Bank. He married Annie Bell and had five children. In 1924, he established a chair of commerce at Dalhousie University.

Black "was one of several Irishmen instrumental in the formation of the dam and irrigation systems in Utah. He assisted in locating dams and canals at Abraham, Oasis, Hinckley, and Deseret and was also president of the Deseret Irrigation Company in southern Utah."

William's brother, Joseph Smith Black, was only the second white man to explore Zion National Park, and the first white person to settle in the Park in 1861.

The son of a Glasgow solicitor, he was educated at Glasgow University, of which he was honorary LL.D. He contested South Aberdeen in 1906, and the Elgin Burghs and Islington West in 1910 as a Liberal Unionist. He was formerly a member of the Committee of Management of the Philip Stott College (Unionist Association), and was chairman of the Glasgow Good Government League. He travelled widely in India and the Far East. He was a trustee and a member of the executive of the Navy League and chairman of the Glasgow and West of Scotland branch. His First World War work, for which he was made CBE, was especially concerned with V.A.D. committees, disabled officers, and the post-War training of officers.

Mr. Black presented to the city of Glasgow in 1930 the re-erected Mercat Cross; he had written works on Scottish mercat crosses. He wrote other works on folk-medicine, Glasgow archaeology, and a description of Heligoland and the islands of the North Sea. His law books included works on Lands Agents Act, local government in Scotland, the parochial ecclesiastical law of Scotland, a digest of decisions in Scottish shipping cases, and the history of teinds. He was F.S.A. (London and Scotland), a former president of the Glasgow Archaeological Society. In Glasgow he was vice-chairman of St Mungo's College and chairman of the Ophthalmic Institution, and was active in other educational and charitable institutions. His wife, who was a daughter of Robert Blackie, the publisher, died in 1920. His wife's young nephews and nieces found him a tedious adult visitor to their home and they invented this irreverent ditty which could be sung to the tune of "The Ash Grove". "Rejected by Heaven, From Hell given the sack, He came back to Earth, As William George Black"

;Attribution*Obituary. The Times, Friday, Dec 23, 1932; Issue 46324; pg. 12; col D — Mr. W. G. Black

Category:Scottish antiquariansCategory:1857 birthsCategory:1932 deathsCategory:Commanders of the Order of the British EmpireCategory:Liberal Unionist Party parliamentary candidates