Mothers of Christ Church Who were the Mothers of Christ Church?
The parish of Christ Church, at the intersection of Hill and Wellington Streets, London, was established in 1863 and has always believed itself to be a child of the cathedral. However, the vestry minutes and the cash books of St. Paul’s for 1862-3 contain no mention of the building of Christ Church. Why? The Cathedral’s cashbooks are detailed. In February of 1863, for example, they record $12 paid to the Middlesex Building Society, $70 to the organ builder, $34.10 to the sexton, $13.35 to the gravedigger and $7.50 to the boy who blew the bellows for the organ. The following month saw payments for wood, wine and postage, payments to the pew opener, to the curate, and to the Trust and Loan Company. There is no reference to Christ Church, although the building was completed in March 1863. The cashbooks do, however, contain regular and substantial contributions to the Mission Fund, the Widows’ and Orphans’ Fund and the Church Society. The Church Society is the clue. Founded as soon as the diocese was formed, it was responsible for the financing of the development and the building of the diocese. The society and the diocese faced familiar problems - growing needs and shaky finances. The population of Ontario had increased rapidly. The minutes of the Church Society note that the census of 1852 showed 267,637 Christians lived in those counties which comprised the Diocese of Huron, 54,481 of them were Anglicans. By 1861 the same area contained 473, 292 people; 100,000 were presumed to be Anglicans. In the area’s 20,000 square miles there were only 72 clergy. Two churches had been built, 13 more had been started but more clergy and more churches were urgently needed. The minutes of the 1861 Synod sound despondent: “We are made to feel that nothing has been, as yet, done in comparison to the work which still remains undone.” But the Victorian churchmen of Huron could - and did - work fast and well. The Synod of 1860 had appointed a committee to report to the Bishop and Synod “on every church to be erected in the Diocese for which assistance is required…” It also decided to procure “plans, specifications and estimates of churches… capable of seating congregations of 200-500 persons.” To obtain assistance in building a church, a parish or mission had to provide statistical information. What size was the congregation to be? Were the people able to build and sustain a church? Had they enough money in hand to match the grant requested from the Church Society? Once established, each parish became a sub-association of the Church Society, and its priest presented his parish’s annual contribution to the Society’s work. This work depended upon a patchwork of charitable funding for, when the Anglican Church ceased to be the established church, it could no longer depend on financial support from the government. So the Church Society paid the missionaries and the interpreters, The Mission to Fugitive Slaves provided £600 p.a. and would shortly raise the amount to £900, The Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) gave £600 for building churches, The Six Nations’ Schools were supported by the New England Company, the missionary to the Ojibwas was paid partly by the Indian Department and partly by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. This last charity contributed largely to the support of the clergy and was willing add a further £400 p.a. provided the increase was matched by local contributions. As emigration from Britain slowed, English charities would contribute less and local contributions were to become increasingly important. “On the Church Society” said one speaker at Synod, “must mainly be our dependence for the extension of our Church.” Another observed that “Local people must be liberal and punctuality in sending collections needs to improve.” As the parishes paid off their loans and provided their annual contributions they supported further expansion. This system, set up by Synod and run by the Church Society, provided 113 new churches during the episcopate of Bishop Cronyn. Such growth was based on local initiatives and the commitment and energy of those who were the founders of new parishes. In the case of Christ Church there were “foundresses.” Richardson (A Jubilee Memorial) says that: “The ladies of the Cathedral having noted the growth of the city southward, and aided by an energetic building committee, resolved to provide increased Church accommodation. It was decided no plans be selected or contracts let until all the money was in hand.” (p. 24)
The ladies must have been collectors unparalleled. The Trust Accounts of 1862 show that $200 was received for the building of Christ Church; the money came from the SPCK fund for building churches. To obtain this loan an equivalent amount must already have been raised. The mission which had created such local support had been led by George Innes, recently retired from the military and currently the theological student at the Cathedral. He preached outdoors at the Hill and Wellington site. A convenient tree stump (once set on fire by local boys) provided his pulpit. There were outdoor meetings, schoolhouse meetings, cottage meetings. The site for the new church was donated (according to the Document of Consecration) by Bishop Cronyn himself. The $200 provided by the SPCK fund must have been promptly repaid for, on March 29, 1863, George Innes , John B. Taylor, D. Lively, L. Lawreson, Mrs. Rose Cooper, Wm. Lawreson, Major K. G. Moffat of the Royal Canadian Rifles, J. Bennet and Messrs Kennedy, Robinson and Dampier petitioned the Bishop: “…we the Minister and others, having erected the Church and provided it with a Pulpit, Reading Desk, Communion Table, and other things necessary for the decent performance of Divine Worship, humbly request your Lordship to consecrate the said Church for the worship of Almighty God under the name of Christchurch (sic).” Consecration took place in that same year.
(Innes name on the list is difficult to reconcile with Richardson’s report that George Innes left St. Paul’s to become an assistant at Holy Trinity in Québec. His time there must have been brief. His name appears not only on the Christ Church petition but also in the Synod minutes of 1863 as a representative of Christ Church.) Once established Christ Church paid its dues to the Church Society, $8.00 p.a. In later years this was reduced to $5.00. (By comparison, the cathedral was assessed at $20.00 p.a.) The Church Society continued to support Christ Church: in 1863, the parish received $2.00 for Sunday School books, in 1864 $24.08 for service books and Sunday School books. In 1866 only $1.50 was given, because funds were short. “The growing wants of the Diocese have absorbed all our available funds and the vacant places are not yet supplied.” (Church Society minutes,1866.) After 1866 George Innes and his family no longer headed the contribution lists at Christ Church. (He appears in the synod minutes of 1869 as the curate at St. Paul’s Cathedral.) These lists are recorded annually - among the contributors are familiar names like Carling, Emory and Brock. The names of those who did the collecting are also recorded; most were women. In one year for example, the collectors were Miss Seaton, Mrs. Thompson, Miss Horton, Mrs. MacIntosh and Mr. Drury. James Smythe succeeded George Innes at Christ Church. On January 28, 1869, he and his wife Harriet Amelia, took out a mortgage of $600, guaranteed by Mrs. Smythe’s dowry, and became the owners of “lot number three on the North side of Hill Street.” One month later they sold the lot to the Church Society for $1.00 and “a commodious parsonage house” was built for them on the lot they had provided. Contributors to, and collectors of, the annual parish donations to the Church Society had their names recorded. Sadly “the ladies of the cathedral” and the members of the “energetic building committee” are not known by name. Apparently committees at St. Paul’s arose spontaneously as needs were perceived, and dissolved themselves, often without record, when those needs had been met. There are many documents still uncatalogued and unexamined which may provide further information but, at the moment, those to whom Christ Church owes its being and its building have not yet been identified. Jocelyn Cass. (Thanks to Maisie Allen and to Diana Coates without whom I would have not found any of this information.)
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