Four new churches were dedicated in early 1864

The period from roughly 1860 to 1875 marked a flurry of church construction in Well­ington, from one end of the county to the other.

All those new houses of wor­ship indicated that the vari­ous communities had achieved stable and generally prosperous population. Following the vola­tile years of the 1850s, farmers enjoyed solid prices for agri­cul­tural commodities, and stor­es, mills, and factories provid­ed  relatively stable economies in the towns and villages.

The era of church building ended in the mid-1870s, when the economy took a significant downturn. Some of the church­es built in the 1860s and 1870s are still in service, updated to modern standards. Others have been converted to new uses, and quite a few have long van­ished from the landscape.

A peak for new church openings occurred in February 1864, when new edifices were dedicated at the rate of one per week.

First of dedications was the Wesleyan Methodist Church, at Parker. The initial services were on Sunday, Jan. 31 of 1864, with three ministers pres­ent, and a crowd so large that a sup­ple­mentary service was quick­ly orga­nized in the ad­join­ing school house.

The following day, Feb. 1, a special tea meeting continued the dedication rituals. It was a miserable day, with driving rain in the morning that turned to ice pellets and freezing rain in the afternoon. Nevertheless, more than 250 people came out for a noon meal served in the school house, prepared by the women of the congregation.

Their appetites sated, the crowd adjourned to the church next door for the ceremonies. John Grose acted as chairman for the afternoon. He intro­duced the various speakers, who spoke and preached for almost three hours. Between the prayers and speeches, Prof. Stafford, of Elora’s Methodist Church, and a hand-picked choir of singers from Elora of­fer­ed hymns and religious songs.

About 5pm, the crowd rose and returned to the school for a second lunch. When all the stomachs were filled to the brim there was still food left over. The elders auctioned the items off, with proceeds to the building fund.

Including collections and dona­tions, the church raised $120 that day, a good portion of the $1,600 that the new church cost to build. At the end of the day, the church’s debt had shrunk to $150.

A week later, on Feb. 7, the original St. James Church in Rothsay opened its doors for worship, with services at 11am and 3pm. For the morning service, Archdeacon Palmer, of St. George’s Anglican Church in Guelph, officiated. In the afternoon, Rev. C.E. Thomp­son, of St. John’s Church in Elora, took charge of the ser­vic­es. The collections at both services went toward paying the deficiency in the building fund.

It appears that there was no special tea service or banquet to mark the occasion, but Holy Trinity Church in Alma can­celled services that Sunday so its members might take in the Rothsay ceremonies.

This first St. James Church in Roth­say was at the north end of the hamlet, along with the Anglican cemetery. The build­ing was a modest frame one, and remained in service only 21 years. The replacement, made of local white brick, open­ed in 1885. It closed as an Anglican Church in 1950 when the congregation had dwindled to almost nothing.

Two years later, Rothsay United moved in and abandon­ed its original building. The Anglican denomination was always a minority one in Well­ing­ton, and over the years the proportion of Anglicans in the population dwindled.

A week later the excitement moved to Elora, for the dedica­tion of the new Baptist Church. Elora’s Baptists had organized in 1853, but they were not numerous, and all were of mod­est means. For a decade they held their services in borrowed quarters, led by lay members of the congregation.

In 1863, the congregation felt sufficiently established to construct their own church. They secured a lot on Hender­son Street, which was then on the northern fringe of the built-up area of the village.

The Baptists constructed a small building, 30 by 36 feet, with walls 14 feet high. It was built of locally-made red brick, with detailing at the corners and windows in white brick, brought in from Peel Township.

The cost of the building was only $700, about the same as the cost of a modest house at that time. The building was worth much more because the bulk of the labour was donated by members of the congrega­tion who worked in the build­ing trades. For several months the women of the church ran a bazaar in an empty Mill Street store, selling homemade and second-hand items in aid of the building fund.

Elora’s Baptists planned to be in their new quarters in time for the 1863 Christmas servic­es, but construction fell several weeks behind schedule. The opening services were held on Feb. 14, 1864. By modern stand­ards that dedication ser­vice was an ordeal, with leng­thy sermons by each of three visiting ministers stretching the event to more than three hours.

After the service, the con­gregation and their guests ad­journed to the basement of the much larger Methodist Church for a tea meeting. Well-wishers from other denominations out­numbered the Baptists that day, and the other Elora ministers rose with messages of con­grat­u­lations and goodwill during the tea meeting.

Elora’s Baptists gained new members for a decade, but in 1875 a rift split the congre­gation, and it never recovered. Some of the members attemp­ted unsuccessfully to form a Christian Brethren church, and others drifted to other deno­mi­nations. Only five Baptist fam­ilies are listed in the 1881 census, with another handful in the adjoining townships.

The church eventually clos­ed. In 1909, St. John’s bought the building for use as a community hall. The building re­mains in use. Extended by frame additions and portable school buildings, it is the office of the Elora Festival. The at­tractive brick work can still be admired on the sides of the complex.

The following Sunday, Feb. 21, a new Primitive Methodist Church opened on the 8th Line of Peel, at what was then known as Thackeray’s Settle­ment. There were several branches of Methodism active in Ontario in the mid 19th century. The Wesleyans were the most common. Primitive Methodism was a fringe group, dating to 1810 in England. Its adherents had a revivalist ap­proach to religion, and favour­ed camp meetings to build en­thusiasm. They preferred plain speaking and dark, dull clot­hing. Most were poor, either small-scale farmers or unskill­ed labourers.

It seems that no details of that first service have survived, but the day after, on Feb. 22, there was a well-attended tea meet­ing in aid of the building fund. It attracted many people from other denominations.

There are some common threads to these four church openings, and they apply to other churches built in the 1860s.

The congregations had a major portion of the funding in place before they started con­struc­tion. The opening services were set up as major fund raising occasions.

And in all cases there was an ecumenical spirit in evi­dence: though there were no doubt exceptions, most church-going people welcomed the new church buildings put up by other denominations as a sign of the progress of Christianity and civilization generally, and as a sign that diverse religious opinions could co-exist ami­cab­ly in the community.