(died 9 Sept. 1878, aged 40), subject of poem by “Nora” (pen name of Margaret Dixon MacDougall). (date of death 9 Sept. 1879 also found, but 1878 is almost certainly correct) Norman Dewar was a native of GC, probably of Lochiel Township. Norman Dewar (Norman DeWar) appears in the Memphis (Tennessee) city directory 1874 and 1876 as a cigar manufacturer and in 1877 as the superintendent for a cigar manufacturer. He was not listed 1873. He died after a three-day illness in a yellow fever epidemic at Memphis, while working to help the epidemic sufferers with Capt. McCabe (Capt. J. C. Maccabe) and the Memphis Citizens’ Relief Committee. He was buried in the Elmwood Park Cemetery at Memphis, but he evidently does not have a gravestone. The eloquent poem shows the high technical proficiency characteristic of Mrs MacDougall in her best writing. It begins with the words “Far away from stricken Memphis” and contains the lines

     Shall not loyal, old Glengarry,
     Through her tears feel proud of you!

     The poem was published in the Montreal Witness, probably very shortly after Norman Dewar’s death. Photocopies of a printed text of the poem which are in circulation include the editorial note, “We have been requested to republish the following from the Montreal Witness.” We may guess that the republication was in one of the Cornwall newspapers of the time. Issues of the Cornwall newspapers have survived only poorly from that period. The poem is printed also in Mrs MacDougall’s Verses and Rhymes by the Way (Pembroke, Ont., 1880).The late Edna MacMillan (d. 12 Sept. 1989, aged 83), of Alexandria, a close follower of GC history, published a copy of the poem in the Glengarry News of 8 Sept. 1982, with additional information supplied to her by a researcher for the City of Memphis government. The poem also appears in Elsie MacMillan, Mary MacMillan Beaton and Hazel MacMillan Huckvale, Butternuts and Maple Sugar (1982) p. 364 and the Manor Chatter of June 1994. There have probably been other unrecorded reprintings over the years. Sadly, Norman Dewar’s story and fame have not survived at Memphis, though his name and date of death appear in a list in one of the printed histories of the epidemic.

Information kindly supplied by Tennessee State Library and Archives * J. M. Keating, A History of the Yellow Fever: The Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878, in Memphis, Tenn. (1879) 215 * Standard History of Memphis,Tennessee, ed. J. P. Young (1912) * Edna MacMillan: obituary Glengarry News 8 Nov. 1989; personal knowledge