Dr Donald McNaughton Stuart

The Reverend Donald McNaughton Stuart was a beloved figure in early Dunedin. Appointed minister of Knox Church in 1860, Stuart was Dunedin’s second minister after Thomas Burns. He led the congregation for 33 years. During that time he played a leading part in public affairs, particularly education.

A Gaelic-speaking Highlander, Donald Stuart was born in Perthshire in 1819. He taught for a time in local schools before going to St Andrews University to train for the ministry. He was expelled in 1843 for his involvement in the Disruption and did not gain a degree. After teaching in England he was ordained there in 1849. This background in the English Presbyterian Church was important because it gave Stuart a much broader view of church affairs than most of his fellow Scots ministers in Otago.

Stuart was a tall figure who habitually wore a plaid across his shoulders as he walked about Dunedin visiting the poor and needy. His church became immensely popular and Stuart married thousands of couples there, many of them not Presbyterians. The church registers would suggest that he married more people than any other celebrant in 19th-century New Zealand. His openness and charity marked him out as an exceptional minister in the Presbyterianism of his day. He was also devoted to the poor and downtrodden, someone who withheld judgement on people’s failings and extended a helping hand. Stories of his personal charity were legion, making him a beloved figure in the city.

The positioning of Dr Stuart’s portrait on Wall 4 symbolises the increasing diversity of the city’s population during the gold rushes of the 1860s and their associated population increase. This was just as important within the ranks of the settlement’s Scots Presbyterians. The early Scottish dominance of Otago endured but in a different and more multi-faceted way than had been envisaged among the first settlers and by Burns, Cargill and McGlashan when they dreamt of an exclusively Scottish and Presbyterian community.

Dr Stuart was involved with all sorts of causes and organisations in Dunedin, particularly with educational matters. This made him a very public figure in the city and required a huge time commitment. His personal life suffered, however. He lost his wife a couple of years after arriving in Dunedin and his three sons all grew up with financial, marital and drinking problems. Two predeceased him. Stuart remained enduringly positive, ’sunny and breezy like a summer’s day in his native hills.’When he died in 1894 all the shops in Dunedin were closed and 6,000 people walked in his funeral procession while thousands more watched it pass.