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Despite being Ontario’s fastest-growing town, Milton was once a rural backwater, a milling town with a notable agricultural background. This made it the ideal spot for many of the Methodist tradition to find themselves. St. Paul’s reminds me of that connection to the past and a church I have my connection to, attending the Milton Community Nursery School before elementary school. The first Methodist circuit riders came into Milton in 1827, Rev Anson Greene holding services at the farm of Elizabeth Harrison. The Harrisons were among the earliest settlers of Milton, arriving even before Jasper Martin. The Milton congregation remained at the Harrison farm andRead More →

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Sitting high above the downtown of Milton sits a squat, grey stone structure that would look better as a small country church in England than here in Ontario. You may also think that this was the oldest church in town, and while it is among the early congregations downtown, it is not the oldest. Saddlebag preachers were not only a Methodist means of holding services; the Anglican Church also employed missionary or itinerant ministers who travelled through rural areas to have services outside the major urban areas. These ministers began to hold services in Milton in 1844. As the town grew, attending these home-based servicesRead More →

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Sitting outside of downtown, St. George’s Anglican Church looks as if it has been transplanted from the English countryside. With a small churchyard and a scattering of graves, this historic parish is among the earliest churches within the community of Georgetown. Anglican priests had been calling in Georgetown since the 1840s. These saddlebag preachers rode a circuit, often holding services in family homes or schoolhouses. These services suited the areas of Ontario that were far from the urban centres. As the community grew, a section of land was purchased on Norval Road (Guelph Street) to build a meeting house and a burial ground. A simpleRead More →

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Some still exist when it comes to the former villages that occupied the stretch of Dundas on the former northern edge of Oakville. The village of Sixteen Hollow (alternatively Proudfoot Hollow) has vanished save for an oddly named Presbyterian Church, Knox Sixteen. George Chalmer’s established the small community in the late 1820s, a mill and tavern forming the community’s core. Being made up mainly of those who traced their heritage to Scotland, they brought with them the Presbyterian Church. These early settlers would worship at home with a saddlebag preacher, or when the Presbyterians established a congregation in Oakville would travel south when they wereRead More →

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A small white frame church is easy to miss; easier still is dismissing the building as a new build designed to match an older structure. But the small white church sitting on the western side of Bronte Road is original and an active church. When William Peacock first settled in the village of Palermo in 1832, at this point, a Methodist congregation was already well established. Peacock, an Anglican, would need to travel further afield to worship at a familiar church. But as the population grew, William convinced the rector at St. Luke’s in Wellington Centre to come to Palermo to celebrate mass, the firstRead More →

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Located on the historic Norval Road (Guelph Street), St. John’s United Church can trace its history to the Methodist revival of the 1840s and is the only Church to come from the Episcopal Methodist tradition project. The earliest Methodist saddlebag preachers to arrive in the area held services not in Georgetown but in the nearby settlement of Glen Williams, forming a congregation there in 1839. These Wesylian Methodists built a small wooden frame chapel in Glen Williams and served the area. Noted firebrand preacher Rev Edgerton Ryerson visited the site in 1841, preaching both in Glen Williams and in the new settlement of Georgetown; MethodistsRead More →

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Sitting quietly on Guelph Line, this small stone church is easily missed or thought that it is no longer an active church. But this historic church is one of the many churches along the main stretch of the former Nassagaweya Township. The first Anglican ministers began holding services through the township in 1842; these were often held in the homes of the congregant ministers or a local schoolhouse. In 1844, the congregation had grown enough to warrant the purchase of a lot from George Curry to serve the communities of Moffet, Haltonville and Campbellville communities. The lot, located at 10th Sideroad, would serve as aRead More →

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In an area filled with Gothic Revival churches, Nassagaweya Presbyterian bucks the local trend by sticking to its rural roots with its loyalist-style building. But this small rural church has a big heart. Starting in 1836, Presbyterian ministers from the Esquining Presbyterian Church (Boston) began to host worship services in S.S. No. 3 or Knowles Schoolhouse. Despite the area’s poor reputation, the congregation flourished, and in 1838 Daniel McNair donated a section of his property to establish a church and burial ground. Volunteers constructed a simple Loyalist-style frame meeting house which hosted its first service in 1839. In May 1839, the session’s first meeting wasRead More →

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The tall square bell tower of St. Jude’s Anglican Church is a landmark of Downtown Oakville; while not as prominent as Knox’s spire, the square tower reminds people that this is an Anglican church. Despite a strong leaning towards the colonial government in Oakville, the lack of an Anglican parish in the early history of Oakville is surprising, but the Chisholms were strong Presbyterians. The first recorded Anglican service in Oakville occurred in 1839 when Rev Thomas Greene rode from Wellington Centre (Burlington) and St. Luke’s Parish to conduct a service in a local home. The strong response saw regular services being conducted in aRead More →

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This beautiful stone church stands right around a corner and is slightly out of a driver’s visual range. But this stone church occupies the historic village of Lowville, which is technically part of Burlington, but where the modern borders lay, the church is in Milton. Anglican ministers started visiting the area in 1836, hosting non-denominational Sabbath Schools in a schoolhouse in Lowville. While these schools are not technically connected to a modern parish, they certainly helped support the area’s Anglican population. It wasn’t until 1856 that a Parish was officially established in Lowville. A plot of land was donated to the church by George AgnewRead More →