====== McDermid, Peter Hugh ====== (Nov. 1842-11 or 12 Jan. 1926), farmer, writer of memoirs. (Peter McDermid) Born in Cornwall Township, on the Island Road, Martintown. Parents: Hugh F. McDermid and his wife Margaret Sinclair. He recalled in his memoirs that in the household of his childhood, “Gaelic was the language spoken as my Grandmother could speak no other.” Once the grandmother was dead, however, and the children were going to school, “we turned to the English.” Peter McDermid was for many years a farmer in Cornwall Township, on the Island Road west of Martintown. In 1915, he and his wife moved to the village of Martintown, GC, where they spent their years of retirement. He was married to Anne Elizabeth Ross. (ten children) Their children included the Saskatoon lawyers Frederick Finlay and John Edgar McDermid. (Another son, Hugh Ross McDermid, also lived in Saskatoon.) Peter McDermid served as deputy reeve of Cornwall Township, and took his part in the affairs of the local school board and cheese factory. In his earlier years he was active in the work of the Congregationalist Church, and after the Congregationalists of the area ceased to meet, he was active in the work of the Presbyterian Church. Peter Hugh McDermid is buried in the North Branch Cemetery, GC. In the last months of his life, he worked on the manuscript of a history of his family and of the pioneer life of the Martintown area. Extracts from this manuscript have been published on pp. 101-108 of Grace L. Hartley’s //Scott: an Account of the Families Descended from Alexander Scott// (1961) and in //The Manor Chatter// Sept. 1994-March 1995. A surviving typescript fills 39 pp., but includes genealogical material added after the author’s death. He was the brother of the ill-fated Angus McDermid who accompanied Finlay McDermid to the Nevada gold fields in the 1860s. ---- //Glengarry News// 15 Jan. 1926 * Campbell & McDermid, //Kennedys//, 268, 307ff. (with portrait), 331, 293 * photocopy in present author’s files of 39 pp. typescript (this is the one from which the //Manor Chatter// extracts were published); includes an obituary (undated clipping) of Peter McDermid * //Bibliography of Glengarry// 85 [<6>]