Beginning in the 1820s, the population at the Head-of-the-Lake began to swell dramatically as a result of large-scale immigration from Great Britain. During the next 30 years, this population, of first the Scots, then the English and finally the Irish, provided some competition to the domination that the Methodist Church had achieved in Hamilton’s religious landscape.
The Presbyterian Church, although not enjoying the advantages given to the Church of England, did have the respect of the British administration. Beginning in 1788, early Presbyterians selected land on the escarpment, with immigrant families from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, such as Rymal, Hess, Kern, Huffman and Neff, settling on ‘Mountain’ lots.
Like the Methodists, they had no ministers to serve their spiritual needs. Daniel Eastman, an American Presbyterian pastor, was the first to arrive at the Head-of-the-Lake in 1801. Eastman’s sermons failed to enlist large numbers of converts and it was not until the arrival of the Rev. William King in Nelson Township and the Rev. George Sheed, a minister of the Church of Scotland, in 1826, along with a considerable number of Scottish immigrants, that the denomination began to attract worshippers.
Sheed settled in Ancaster, where he was welcomed “as the representative of an established church” by members of the Church of England. The two Ancaster denominations erected a place of worship and established a joint burial ground. After a few years, the ownership of both the building and cemetery reverted to the Church of England, as the Presbyterians erected their own building, St. Andrew’s, across the road from the Anglicans’ St. John’s Church.
In West Flamborough Township, the arrival of Rev. Thomas Christie from the Orkney Islands in 1832 saw the almost instant organization of a congregation to serve the Presbyterians of the surrounding area, with a plea for him to accept their call to become their minister:
Christie became renowned for his missionary work, preaching throughout the area and establishing congregations in Dundas and Beverly Township. Before his death in 1870 at the age of 87, he saw the erection of the fine stone Presbyterian Church at Christie’s Corners.
As a man, he was described as “slight of build and frail looking,” but Christie typified the missionary zeal and determination which brought Presbyterianism to the eastern side of the Head-of-the-Lake.
Sylvia Wray is the former archivist with the Flamborough Archives. She can be reached through the Archives at archives@flamboroughhistory.com.
This article was originally published in the Flamborough Review, 14 April 2016.
