Thomas Crosby (21 June 1840 – 13 January 1914) was an English

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a Protestant Christianity, Christian Christian tradition, tradition whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother ...

missionary known for his work among the First Nations people of coastal

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

, Canada. Thomas Crosby was born in 1840 in Pickering,

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, to (Wesleyan) Methodist parents. His father was a farmer. When he was sixteen, he emigrated with his parents to the vicinity of

Woodstock, Ontario Woodstock is a city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. The city has a population of 46,705 according to the Canada 2021 Census, 2021 Canadian census. Woodstock is the seat of Oxford County, Ontario, Oxford County, at the head of the Thames River, On ...

. Economic circumstances forced him to go to work at a tannery. In 1861 he answered a call in a Methodist newspaper for missionaries to go to British Columbia. Soon after arriving in B.C. in 1863, he was sent to teach at the Native school in Nanaimo, B.C. In 1866 he became an itinerant preacher, accompanying the Rev. Edward White on a preaching circuit covering

Vancouver Island Vancouver Island is an island in the northeastern Pacific Ocean and part of the Canadian province of British Columbia. The island is in length, in width at its widest point, and in total area, while are of land. The island is the largest ...

, the

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, and the area around

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

. In 1869 Crosby was appointed a stable position preaching and teaching in

Chilliwack Chilliwack ( ) is a city of about 100,000 people and in the Canadian province of British Columbia. It is located about east of the City of Vancouver in the Fraser Valley. The enumerated population is 93,203 in the city and 113,767 in the gr ...

, B.C. He was ordained in 1871 and began intensively missionizing throughout the province. In 1873, at a revival meeting in

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Queen Victoria (1819–1901), Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India * Victoria (state), a state of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, a provincial capital * Victoria, Seychelles, the capi ...

, he converted Elizabeth Diex, a

Tsimshian The Tsimshian (; ) are an Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their communities are mostly in coastal British Columbia in Terrace, British Columbia, Terrace and ...

matriarch from

Lax Kw'alaams A lax is a salmon. LAX as an acronym most commonly refers to Los Angeles International Airport in Southern California, United States. LAX or Lax may also refer to: Places Within Los Angeles * Union Station (Los Angeles), Los Angeles' main tr ...

(a.k.a. Port Simpson) on the northern coast of B.C., and later also converted her son Chief

Alfred Dudoward Alfred Dudoward (''c.'' 1850 – November 15, 1914) was a Canadian hereditary chief from the Tsimshian nation, who was instrumental in establishing a Methodist mission in his community of Port Simpson (a.k.a. Fort Simpson, a.k.a. Lax Kw'alaams), B.C ...

and daughter-in-law Kate Dudoward. At that time, Lax Kw'alaams was without a minister and oriented around a

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fort with its attendant social problems. The

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had abandoned the community in 1862 when the local Anglican lay missionary, William Duncan (coincidentally, like Crosby, a former tanner from Yorkshire), had taken a portion of his Tsimshian flock to found the nearby utopian Christian community of Metlakatla, B.C. Alfred and Kate Dudoward pressed the Methodist church to commit a missionary to their village, and in 1874 Crosby was sent there. Initially, his arrival caused Duncan to intensify his efforts to convert Lax Kw'alaams people from his new home base at Metlakatla. The Dudowards eventually drifted away from the strict Methodist opposition to Native traditions like

potlatch A potlatch is a gift-giving feast practiced by Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of Canada and the United States,Harkin, Michael E., 2001, Potlatch in Anthropology, International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Scienc ...

ing. Though he learned to speak the

Tsimshian language The Tsimshianic languages are a family of languages spoken in northwestern British Columbia and in Southeast Alaska on Annette Island and Ketchikan. All Tsimshianic languages are endangered, some with only around 400 speakers. Only around 2,170 ...

, Crosby insisted on the abandonment of most Native traditions. One of the keystones of Crosby's relationship with the Lax Kw'alaams Tsimshian was a convert named Victoria Young or "Queen Victoria", a chieftainess of the

Giluts'aaw The Giluts'aaẅ (properly spelled with an Umlaut (diacritic), umlaut over the ''w''), also spelled Gilutsau, are one of the 14 tribes of the Tsimshian nation in British Columbia, Canada, and one of the nine of those tribes making up the "Nine Tri ...

tribe. Crosby's wife, Emma Crosby, founded the Crosby Girls' Home in the community in the 1880s. It became part of B.C.'s residential school system in 1893 and was closed in 1948. Under Crosby's direction, the Methodist missionary presence in northern B.C. expanded from Lax Kw'alaams to include ten missions, and, using Lax Kw'alaams as a base, he supervised mission work among the

Nisga'a The Nisga’a (; ), formerly spelled Nishga or Niska, are an Indigenous people in British Columbia, Canada. They reside in the Nass River valley of northwestern British Columbia. The origin of the term ''Niska'' is uncertain. The spelling ' ...

Haida Haida may refer to: Haida people Many uses of the word derive from the name of an indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. * Haida people, an Indigenous ethnic group of North America (Canada) ** Council of the Haida Nati ...

Gitxsan Gitxsan (also spelled Gitksan and Kitksan) are an Indigenous people in Canada whose home territory comprises most of the area known as the Skeena Country in English (: means "people of" and : means "the River of Mist"). Gitksan territory enco ...

, and other groups in addition to the Tsimshian. In 1892 Crosby developed asthma and began to tire of mission work. In 1897 he was made chairman of the British Columbia Conference of the Methodist Church of Canada and left Lax Kw'alaams to take charge of the newly subdivided mission district covering Lowe Inlet, Bella Bella, and parts of Vancouver Island. Lax Kw'alaams is still a strongly Methodist community, now under the rubric of the

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, which incorporates the Methodist church. A mission boat named the ''Thomas Crosby'' operated up and down B.C.'s

Inside Passage The Inside Passage () is a coastal route for ships and boats along a network of passages which weave through the islands on the Pacific Northwest coast of the North American Fjordland. The route extends from southeastern Alaska in the United St ...

for much of the twentieth century. Crosby published three volumes of memoirs about his work among B.C.'s First Nations, including ''David Sallosalton'', named for an early protégé of Crosby's, a catechist from the

Coast Salish people The Coast Salish peoples are a group of ethnically and linguistically related Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, living in the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon. They speak one o ...

. ''Up and down the North Pacific Coast by Canoe and Mission Ship'' describes his Lax Kw'alaams years.

Bibliography

* Bolt, Clarence (1992) ''Thomas Crosby and the Tsimshian: Small Shoes for Feet Too Large.'' Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. * Crosby, Thomas (1906) ''David Sallosalton.'' Toronto: Department of Missionary Literature of the Methodist Church. * Crosby, Thomas (1907) ''Among the An-ko-me-nums or Flathead Tribes of Indians of the Pacific Coast.'' Toronto: William Briggs. * Crosby, Thomas (1914) ''Up and down the North Pacific Coast by Canoe and Mission Ship.'' Toronto: Missionary Society of the Methodist Church. *Hare, Jan, and Jean Barman (2006) ''Good Intentions Gone Awry: Emma Crosby and the Methodist Mission on the Northwest Coast.'' Afterword by Caroline Dudoward. Vancouver: UBC Press. * Neylan, Susan (2003) ''The Heavens Are Changing: Nineteenth-Century Protestant Missions and Tsimshian Christianity.'' Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press

External links

Biography at ''the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online''

Emma Crosby’s letters
– Personal correspondence pertaining to missionary work and family life - UBC Library Digital Collections * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Crosby, Thomas 1840 births 1914 deaths Methodist missionaries in Canada Haida Tsimshian Nisga'a Gitxsan English Methodist missionaries English emigrants to Canada