St. James, Morrisburg — Stormont Deanery

For us in 2025, the snow is just beginning to arrive. But when this photograph of Saint James’s Church, Morrisburg was taken approximately 125 years ago, the last snow of the winter was continuing to melt away.

Morrisburg was already named for the Honourable James Morris when this site was purchased from James and Louisa Hodges in 1856. The cornerstone for the first Saint James’s Church was laid in July 1856 by the Reverend John Travers Lewis of Hawkesbury. The completed house of worship was opened for Divine Service on 6 January 1859. We have no idea as to what the first church looked like, except that it appears to have had no bell tower.

From 1862 to 1866, Morrisburg was a single-point parish. In 1866, it joined with the Parish of Williamsburg, which included the congregation of the mother church, Holy Trinity, Williamsburg, what was known as the German Mission (briefly in 1874 and 1875) and, improbably, churches at Adolphustown and Fredericksburg (also briefly in 1875 and 1876).  What possible connection, it may be asked, could Adolphustown and Fredericksburg on the Bay of Quinte have with Morrisburg? Two, it turned out. First, at a time when there was a severe shortage of clergy, these four points were readily travelled between on the Saint Lawrence River, despite the distance separating them, especially as steamboat lines and railways offered free passes to clergy. Second, all these churches were part of the then Diocese of Ontario.

The want of a bell tower was felt after the passing of a generation, and the lofty tower we see here was added to the 1856 church in 1878. It is reputed to have been designed by Isaac Johnston, a Black architect who designed a number of churches in the region including the United Church at Williamsburg. Placing Saint James’s tower to one side, with its entrance facing away from the church suggests that Johnston hoped to give Saint James’s an Akron style plan. If so, he was doomed to be disappointed. For the time being, parish resources were devoted to building a stone rectory next door in 1883 in anticipation of Morrisburg again becoming a single-point parish in 1887.

In 1893, the parish decided that a much larger church was needed to provide room for a growing congregation. If they were not prepared to demolish the handsome tower built only fourteen years earlier, at the same time they did not see the Akron-style plan of church favoured by Isaac Johnston as being appropriate for Anglican worship. The result was to leave Johnston’s 1878 bell tower standing, to demolish the 1856 church, and to have the Excelsior Lodge of the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons lay the cornerstone for a much more ambitious house of worship in a more correct style suitable to the Anglican liturgy.

Correct? On the outside, maybe. The new Saint James’s Church, Morrisburg was consecrated by Bishop Lewis on 18 April 1894. The new church took its cue from the windows of the upper tower, placing narrow paired windows along the length of the nave, which together with the rose window in the west wall once they were filled with stained glass, plunged the large interior into late Victorian gloom. Some purists were relieved that this hid the pendants hanging from the ceiling.  The remarkable stencilling on the walls was restored in 1983.

The Diocesan Archives collects parish registers, vestry reports, service registers, minutes of groups and committees, financial documents, property records (including cemeteries and architectural plans), insurance policies, letters, pew bulletins, photographs and paintings, scrapbooks, parish newsletters and unusual documents.