MURDOCH, BEAMISH, writer, lawyer, and politician; b. to Andrew
Murdoch and Elizabeth Beamish at Halifax, N.S., 1 Aug. 1800; d.
in Lunenburg, N.S., 9 Feb. 1876. Beamish Murdoch was raised and
educated by a maiden aunt, Harriet Jane Ott Beamish, after his
father, a merchant, became involved in an expensive lawsuit and
was jailed as a debtor for seven years. In 1822 Murdoch was
admitted to the bar of Nova Scotia and began a legal practice.
He also began to contribute articles to the Acadian Recorder,
which was owned by Philip J. Holland (d. 1839), and to the
Acadian Magazine or Literary Mirror, which began publication in
Halifax in 1826. Although his grandfather, the Reverend James
Murdoch, had been a missionary in the Antiburgher wing of the
Church of Scotland, Beamish Murdoch was raised in the Church of
England and belonged to St Paul’s Church. In the disruption of
that church in 1824 he joined the faction which included Thomas
Chandler Haliburton*, and moved to St George’s Church in Halifax
[see J. W. Johnsto