Magistrates were not allowed to marry by license, nor could the parties be called in church, for there were no churches in the country.

The law required that the parties should be advertised — that is, that the banns should be written out and placed in some conspicuous place for three Sundays.  The mill door was the popular place, but the young lads would endeavour to avoid publicity by putting the banns on the inside of the door; others would take two or three witnesses and hold it on the door for a few minutes for three successive Sundays, allowing no one but their friends to see it.

In many places marriages used to be solemnized by persons not authorized, and in a manner which made their legality very doubtful; but the Legislature have very wisely passed Acts legalizing all marriages up to a certain date.

The marriages which took place at my father’s used to afford a good deal of amusement.  Some very odd couples came to be united.

The only fee my father asked was a kiss from the bride, which he always insisted on being paid; and if the bride was at all pretty, he used, with a mischievous look at my mother, to enlarge upon the pleasure that this fee gave him, and would go into raptures about the bride’s youth, beauty and freshness, and declare that it was the only public duty he performed that he was properly remunerated for.

Application had several times been made to the Rev. Mr. Addison, the only clergyman in the country, who was living at Niagara, entreating him to come to Long Point and baptize the children.  All who had been born there remained unbaptized.

This summer his promised visit was to take place, and was looked forward to with intense anxiety by both parents and children.  I used to discuss it with my elder brother, and wonder what this wonderful ceremony of christening could mean.

My mother had explained it was well as she could, but the mystical washing away of sin with water, to me was incomprehensible, as was also my being made a member of a Church which was to me unknown.

I wondered what God’s minister could be like, and whether he was like my father, whom I looked up to as the greatest and best of anyone in my little world.  At last Parson Addison arrived, and my curiosity was satisfied on one point, and in my estimation my father stood higher than the clergyman.

The neighbourhood was notified, and all the children, from one month to eight or nine years old, were assembled to receive baptism.  The house was crowded with people anxious to hear the first sermon preached in the Long Point Settlement by an ordained minister.

Upon my own mind I must confess that the surplice and gown made a much more lasting impression than the sermon, and I thought Mr. Addison a vastly more important person in them than out of them; but upon the elder part of the community, how many sad and painful feelings did this first sermon awaken, and recall times long past, friends departed, ties broken, homes deserted, hardships endured!

The cord touched produced many vibrations, as Mr. Addison shook hands with every individual, and made some kind of inquiry about their present or future welfare.

The same God-hopeful smile passed over every face, and the same "Thank you, sir, we find ourselves every year a little better off, and the country is improving.  If we only had a church and a clergyman we should have but little to complain of."

But it was a hope deferred for many long years.

A Baptist minister, the Rev. Mr. Finch, was the first clergyman who came to the little settlement to reside.

His meetings were held in different parts of the settlement each Sunday, so that all might have the opportunity of hearing him if they chose to attend.  He preached in houses and barns without any reward, labouring on his farm for his support.

He, like all the early Dissenting ministers who came to the province, was uneducated, but possessed and sincerely believed a saving knowledge of the gospel, and in his humble sphere laboured to do all the good in his power.

Many of the young people joined his Church.

He was soon followed by the Methodists.

Too much cannot be said in praise of the early ministers of these denominations; they bore every privation and fatigue, praying and preaching in every house where the doors were not closed against them — receiving the smallest pittance for their labour.

A married man received $200 a year and a log-house for his family; an unmarried man had half that sum, the greater portion of which was paid in home-made cloth and produce.

Their sermons and prayers were very loud, forcible and energetic, and if they had been printed verbatim, would have looked a sad jumble of words. They encouraged an open demonstration of feeling amongst their hearers — the louder the more satisfactory.

But notwithstanding the criticisms cast upon these early preachers, were they not the class of men who suited their hearers?

They shared their poverty and entered into all their feelings; and although unlearned, they taught the one true doctrine — to serve God in spirit and in truth — and their lives bore testimony to their sincerity.

In this world they looked forward to neither preferment nor reward; all they expected or could hope for was a miserable subsistence.

Nor was it surprising that in twenty years afterwards, when the path was made smooth, the church built, and the first clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Evans, came, that he found a small congregation.

Every township had one or two Methodist and Baptist chapels.  I do not recollect one Roman Catholic family in the neighbourhood.

Although the Long Point Settlement was in existence thirty years before we had a resident clergyman of the Church of England, yet I cannot recollect one member who had seceded from the Church.  Many had died, and many communed with the Methodists, who did not belong to them.

End of Part One.  Continued... >

Copyright 1994-2014 John Cardiff and Port Ryerse Environmental and Historical Society

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