Garner, Eleazer William (1825-1898)

Family

Eleazer was born on 12 December 1825 at Stanhope, Co. Durham, to parents John Garner, a PM minister, and Mary Kemp. He was baptised on 27 December 1825 at Stanhope. There is also a record of a further baptism on 13 April 1828 at Redruth, Cornwall.

He married Mary Horseley, nee Nicholson (abt1791-1878) on 10 August 1848 at Hull, Yorkshire.

The 1851 census records Eleazer as a chemist and druggist at Selby, Yorkshire. The 1841 census return had identified him as a druggist’s apprentice in Manchester.

He married Ruth Mitchell (1838-1901) on 25 February 1878 at York, Ontario, Canada. His brother, John Kemp Garner carried out the ceremony. Census returns identify six children.

Aubrey deVere (1863-1943) – a bank cashier (1900)
Mary (abt1865-1913) – a school teacher (1910)
Agnes (b abt1866)
Anne (1866-1948) – married Frederick Barker, a cannery superintendent (1900)
John W. Garner (1872-1947) – a bank cashier (1910)
Ruth Elizabeth (b1875)

Eleazer and Ruth clearly lived together as man and wife before their official marriage. They emigrated in 1862 shortly after the birth of their first child, who does not appear on census returns.

Eleazer became a Presbyterian minister in Canada and the USA. On arrival in Ontario, he reinvented himself as a born-in-Scotland, Oxford-educated Presbyterian minister. He eventually relocated to the US, serving several Presbyterian congregations and founding one (Ishpeming, MI). He finally settled in Astoria, Clatsop County, OR where he was a beloved Presbyterian minister and a good friend to prominent people in the community. His obituary reports all of his reinvented history.

Eleazer died in 1898 in Clatsop County, Oregon, USA.