Among those drawn to the Opeongo Colonization Road in Renfrew County was John S.J. Watson in 1859. He was a remittance man, banished from his home at Rockingham Castle near Corby in Northamptonshire, England by his aristocratic father for marrying a scullery maid named Mary Martin. The castle was an old royal residence fallen to ruin, acquired from the Crown by Edward Watson in 1544 and kept in the family ever since. John Watson was given $10,000 ($250,000 in 2024 dollars) and came to Canada with a group of settlers including tradesmen. They established Rockingham in Brudenell Township, with a store, mills, a post office, setting up various trades, and building Saint Leonard’s Church before the money ran out.

Here we see Saint Leonard’s Church, Rockingham, as photographed on October 8th 2004, 140 years after it was built by John Trant. The congregation began meeting around 1864, and this house of worship likely was constructed at that time for use as an Anglican church, primarily with funds supplied by John Watson. It may possibly have been used as a Union Church in the early years. As late as the mid-1870s, it first appears in the Synod Journal of the Diocese of Ontario when the Rev. Montague Gower Poole of Eganville took services in Rockingham several times a year, leaving the coast clear for clergy of other denominations to visit.

Another document tells us that a church was in the course of being built here by the Rev. Mackay in 1883, but that building seems to have been put up elsewhere in the mission. Whether built in the 1860s or 1880s, this board-and-batten church with pointed windows epitomizes the romantic legend of the settlement. In what sense was Rockingham romantic?  Simply, it may be answered, in that the entire notion of attempting to build an agricultural settlement here was an “extravagant fiction, invention or story, a wild or wanton exaggeration, a picturesque falsehood.”

Not until 1883 was the Mission of Brudenell created, with churches at Combermere and Rockingham. It was renamed Combermere in 1884. In 1904, this mission consisted of Bangor, Bell’s Rapids, Combermere, Craig Mount and Rockingham. The following year Rockingham is listed in the Synod Journal as including an outstation at Jessup’s.

In 1922, the Mission of Combermere listed stations at Bark Lake, Barry’s Bay, Centreview, Combermere and Purdy, but not, tellingly, at Rockingham. Rockingham reappeared briefly in the Synod Journal of 1945, only to disappear from its pages thereafter. Tradition indicates that the last regular service held at Saint Leonard’s was in the summer of 1941.

On 14 May 1967, Bishop Ernest S. Reed of Ottawa performed the Act of secularization of Saint Leonard’s Church, Rockingham. A stay of demolition was made on this building until 30 April 1996, and an agreement was made to sever the property from the cemetery. Title to the property was transferred to the Friends of the Rockingham Church 30 years later.

If you would like to help the Archives preserve the records of the Diocese and its parishes, why not become a Friend of the Archives?  Your $20 membership brings you three issues of the lively, informative Newsletter, and you will receive a tax receipt for further donations above that amount.   

Stay informed and never miss a story – subscribe to the ADO online newspaper Perspective today.
Subscribe here.

The post St. Leonard, Rockingham — Deanery of the Northwest appeared first on Perspective.

Promised Land? 1833-1880

Two years ago, the Rev. Canon Hilary Murray proposed an exhibit to celebrate Black Anglicans in the Diocese of Ottawa each Black History Month at the Diocesan Archives. At that time a series of five exhibits was proposed over five years. The 242 years that Anglicans have resided in this region were divided into five time periods:

1784-1832; 1833-1880; 1881-1928; 1929-1977; 1978-2026.

The fourth time period (1929-1977) was covered in 2022, focusing on the ordination of the Rev. Blair Allison Dixon, the first time period (1784-1832) was detailed in 2023, and this year we cover the years of struggle between 1833 and 1880. 

Between 1783 and 1867, four groups of American Blacks migrated to Canada, mostly fugitive former enslaved persons. They were without wealth or power or social rank. The legacy of slavery in Canada dating back to the earliest days of New France consigned the Black migrants to labour and service roles.

It is difficult to say how many of the 40,000 Blacks in Ontario by 1867 resided in what later became the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa, as the numbers reported in printed census volumes vary wildly. The 1851 census reported 7 “Coloured persons,” the 1861 census enumerated 137, while the 1871 census counted 110 “People of African Origin” in the region that later came to be known as the diocese of Ottawa. This likely reflects the massive bias from south of the border that did not allow people taking the census to enumerate Blacks before 1870, regardless of whether they resided in slave states or free.

The frequency of Black entries in the Trinity, Cornwall parish register from the beginning of settlement indicates the massive under-reporting in the earliest printed census volumes.

Nevertheless, the years 1833  to 1880 appeared to offer promise, beginning with Britain abolishing the enslavement of Blacks in 1833 (40 years after Upper Canada proposed legislating the gradual abolition of slavery, in 1793).

Freedom from enslavement drew former slaves and free Blacks from the United States to Canada, but the numbers arriving by way of the Underground Railroad (1834-1865) increased following the United States Fugitive Slave Act (1850) that emboldened slave owners to capture slaves who fled to free soil states. Relatively few travelling on the Underground Railroad came to eastern Ontario and western Quebec. They ended up instead in southwestern Ontario.

The American Civil War (1861-1865) held out the promise of emancipation. It prompted Blacks from 1862 to sign up with Union forces, although they were enlisted in racially segregated units such as Company E. Fourth Colored Infantry at Fort Lincoln.

In Canada, Blacks were exploited in their desperation, and they accepted wages far below those demanded by white workers. This practice attracted the enmity of white labourers, who tended to blame the former slaves for their own problems. Marginal, segregated, and dependent, the free Black group constituted a distinct caste which ranked beneath the lowest class whites.  

It was their background as former slaves that was the basis for their consequent poor status in a highly status-conscious society. Ontario’s Common School Act of 1850 permitted the establishment of separate schools for Blacks. Even where such schools did not exist, Black children could be forced to attend class at separate times from whites, or to occupy segregated benches.       

The post Archives exhibit for Black History Month 2024 appeared first on Perspective.

Epiphany emerged from the amalgamation of two parishes, the Church of Saint Christopher in Gloucester, and Saint Paul’s Church, Overbrook. These two emerged in the 1960s, either at the same time or just a little after an Ontario conference on church architecture was being held in Toronto in 1961.

At the conference, Edward Frey from the department of church architecture of the United Lutheran Church in America challenged the traditional way in which building committees arranged for the design of churches. “For them it is a settled matter that the interior of the building should be longer than it is wide, filled with the familiar furnishings so arranged as to conform to the stereotyped image of the meeting house or the medieval cathedral,” he asserted.  “The building and the idea of the building are all pervasive and this must not be because the building is not the thing. Worship is the thing.”

Frey noted that an important aspect of the liturgical awakening taking place in contemporary Christian society was the rediscovery of the laity. Worship in church was not a solo activity of the priest or minister, but rather the essential and active participation of the “whole people of God.” To encourage such participation, the architecture and furnishings of new churches should encourage people to participate fully in public worship rather than be forced into the passive role of mere observers.

The same year as this conference, Victor Fiddes published with Ryerson Press at Toronto The Architectural Requirements of Protestant Worship. In his survey history Fiddes, like Frey, urged a return to worship in the round such as the early Christians had practiced in their house churches before the toleration granted to Christians by the emperor Constantine had prompted the church to merge its worship practices with those of established pagan religions. Principally, Frey and Fiddes argued for locating a communion table in the middle of a circle of worshippers.

Back in Gloucester, both St. Christopher’s and Saint Paul’s claimed to be innovative in physically arranging worship. Take Saint Christopher’s for example.  Lacking the funds to build a church, they settled for building a functional parish hall, making use of stacking chairs rather than pews, but laid out for worship facing a free-standing altar at one end. As for Saint Paul’s, the new house of worship they built at the end of the decade had the altar in the centre, as Frey and Fiddes recommended. The only problem was no immediate prospect of growth.

With prodding from the Diocese, the two small churches amalgamated as Church of the Epiphany, and their new worship space opened in 2003. Not only was the altar in the centre, but baptisms took place there too in a cruciform immersion tank seen here in the foreground. The only connection with traditional local church architecture was the octagonal shape of the worship space. The only colour in that space was provided by the red chairs grouped in a circle.

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 records. 

The post Church of the Epiphany, Gloucester, East Ottawa Deanery appeared first on Perspective.

Some faithful Anglicans fail to understand that church records still matter long after a parish closes its doors. For instance, architectural plans, building specifications and insurance policies may be sought out by the group taking over a secularized church.

Many years after a church has closed, people (and even their descendants) will still need to obtain certificates of their birth/baptism, confirmation, marriage and burial to prove they existed, or that they can claim Indigenous status, or that their name changed at some point in the past—as, for example, when they married. And there are other reasons these records are sought out.

From when the first Anglican clergy began ministering in the territory we today call the Diocese of Ottawa 236 years ago, a consistent priority has been to create, maintain and preserve parish registers containing all Anglican births, baptisms, confirmations, marriages and burials. That has been done despite families moving in, moving away, and despite small churches opening, proliferating and closing over the centuries.

Parish registers are especially crucial documents in the Deanery of West Quebec, since up until 29 years ago there was no civil registration in the province of Québec: hence parish registers for many in that province are the only proof of birth, marriage, death and name change.

In Ontario, by contrast, there has been civil registration since 1869, which means that all people alive today who were born, married and died in Ontario should be covered in the vast record-keeping system of that province. Proof of baptism can make the difference in whether or not a child is accepted as a student at a Roman Catholic separate school in Ontario. Such proof can only be found in a parish register.

To address the challenge of keeping track of all births, baptisms, marriages and burials recorded in its parish registers, the Diocesan Archives over the past 33 years has been building a database listing baptisms, marriages and burials, to locate names quickly—thereby reducing wear and tear on parish registers, archivists, and on researchers themselves. As the number of parish registers grows (the 1056th was tallied in November 2023), we care that parish registers out in parishes risk being destroyed, even stolen.

At this point I can imagine some readers saying to themselves, “Surely this can’t be!  No one would ever steal a parish register, let alone destroy one!  The Registrar must be exaggerating!”

So you might think. But it is only a few years ago that thieves broke into Saint Mary’s Church, Navan, and removed a portable safe. They probably hoped it contained money when they returned to their lair. Instead, what they found were the current parish registers in use at Navan—ostensibly placed there to protect them in case of fire. Despite the parish giving out notice on the CBC and in the Ottawa Sun in hopes of getting these registers returned to the parish, they never reappeared—thereby inflicting a major gap in the record of baptisms, marriages and burials for that parish.

But the road to destroying parish registers can also be paved with the very best of intentions. Witness the occasion when a priest serving a parish of the Diocese became ill, and their family rallied around to provide support. Their care included a general cleanup of the rectory, including tossing the current parish registers into a dumpster—thereby erasing 10 years of baptisms, confirmations, marriages and burials at one fell swoop—a record available nowhere else and now rotting in some unspecified landfill.

In response to such situations, in an attempt to prevent further such losses, the Diocesan Archives has adopted a policy of going out to parishes every few years to photocopy parish registers still in use in churches. It does so in an effort to prevent vital information being lost.  Once the original parish register finally is deposited in the Diocesan Archives (where a Canon of General Synod stipulates it MUST be deposited once the register is full, or a church closed) they cease to be the responsibility of clergy, and become the responsibility of the Diocesan Registrar.

One last point. It is Archives policy NOT to make these records available to commercial agencies such as ancestry.ca. Why? Recent parish registers contain confidential information, which potentially could lead to a parish (or even the Diocese) being sued should such information be made public. Parish registers are records that belong to the Church and are the responsibility of the Church to maintain. The maintenance of and access to these parish registers is the responsibility of the Church alone. Only the Church determines who has access to them, hence it alone receives payment for issuing certificates to the individuals concerned.  In a word, the Church is responsible for how parish registers are used.

This article was originally part of the Archives full report to Synod 2023.

The post Preservation and order at the Diocesan Archives appeared first on Perspective.

The first Anglican services were held in Clarendon by the Rev. Amos Ansley of Hull from 1827 to 1832. In 1839, the Reverend Samuel Strong of Bytown-Hull visited Clarendon and in 1840 construction began on the first Anglican house of worship. Began is the key word.

In late 1841, the Rev. Daniel Falloon came to reside here, holding services in a school until the first Saint Paul’s Church at Shawville opened for Divine Service in 1842. It was not yet completed. From such reticent acorns do mighty oaks grow. In 1843, the Reverend F.S. Neve of Clarendon opened mission stations in Bristol and Onslow townships, and travelled to Fort Coulonge, Havelock (Bryson), Portage du Fort and Quyon. Neve had reason to travel, as it was not until 1855 that the first Saint Paul’s house of worship was completed. Although consecrated by Bishop Fulford on 26 August 1855, from 1857 until 1859 Clarendon had no resident clergyman. Services were supplied fortnightly by the Rev. John Gribble of Portage du Fort.

In 1861, Clarendon mission, including Shawville, Thorne and Leslie townships, had services at ten places. By 1864, the mission was whittled down to Saint Paul’s, Shawville, James Caldwell’s house in Bristol, Clarke’s Schoolhouse, and the odd service at Bristol Corners. By 1870, services were held in Clarendon, Clarendon Front, Starke’s Corners and Bristol Corners.

On 15 July 1874, the cornerstone of the new stone Saint Paul’s Church was laid across the street from the first house of worship. The following year Clarendon (as it was known) was accorded parish status, with services by 1876 being held at Shawville; the Clarendon Front schoolhouse, the 9th Line schoolhouse; the Starke’s schoolhouse and the 8th Line schoolhouse.

The new church, like its predecessor, was not built in a day.  It was not until 20 January 1878 that the old church was used for the last time, then dismantled, with its site being converted into the handy burial ground we see here in the foreground. On 11 June 1880, the large stone Saint Paul’s Church was consecrated by the Bishop of Montreal. It was not until 1895 that Clarendon, as it was called, became completely self-supporting and was awarded Rectory status.

This photograph, believed taken circa 1910, is historic. In the foreground, we see the burial ground site of the first church, and it in turn would be relocated to a new site. The driveshed behind the church was soon made redundant by the automobile and eventually torn down. The ornate spire came to be regarded as old-fashioned and was removed, with a clock placed in the top of the sheered-off tower. The wooden portal to the vestry at the base of the tower was removed, as was the main porch. The bands of diamond shingles in the roof would eventually go. The ornate iron fence around the church fell victim to a war drive for scrap iron.

The main structure survived unscathed until funding from the Province of Québec restored the spire in 2015. Notable features of the main structure were the dark stone quoins that contrasted with the rubble walls, a triple-arched west window, and a large chancel wing.

If you would like to help the Archives preserve the records of the Diocese and its parishes, why not become a Friend of the Archives?  Your $20 membership brings you three issues of the lively, informative Newsletter, and you will receive a tax receipt for further donations above that amount.

The post Saint Paul, Shawville—West Quebec Deanery appeared first on Perspective.

Wright as a centre of Anglican worship first emerged as an outstation of the Mission of Aylwin. We are told that Anglican services were first held here in 1874 in a settler’s house.  Construction of a church in Wright Township began in 1884, and the house of worship we see here was opened for Divine Service in 1885. Saint James’s Church, Wright was consecrated by Bishop William Bennett Bond of Montreal on 23 August 1885.  

At first glance, Saint James’s Church is an auditory box reminiscent of the earliest churches in the Diocese built before 1850. We do not see the separate chancel wing at the back. Details of this house of worship are congruent with most early churches: the church was placed square with the road passing by its front door, it was located in the middle of a burial ground, and its main entrance was placed symmetrically front and centre beneath a gable wall.

Members of Saint James’s Church, it must be pointed out, were not deliberately attempting to resurrect the design of early churches. They had very practical needs in their house of worship and built accordingly. It was not the stress of agriculture on the Laurentian Hills frontier that produced the only cumbered entrance in the entire Diocese, but rather a local planing mill. The sizeable entryway allowed worshippers to remove winter coats before proceeding into the church proper. The lancet side windows both in the church proper and in the porch together with the steep gables and chancel wing tell us the builders were not adverse to the inroads of the Gothic Revival, but they saw no necessity to slavishly follow its precepts.

It is the tower (or non-tower) atop the front of Saint James’s Church that looks so familiar. Why? We have seen a comparable composition on Holy Trinity Church, Danford Lake, albeit constructed some fifteen years after Saint James’s. Was Holy Trinity copying the design of Saint James’s, or had the clergymen responsible for building both churches in the Deanery of Clarendon influenced the builders of both houses of worship to echo the gables on the earlier Saint Paul’s Church, Shawville that faced the four points of the compass?   

So much for design questions. In 1919, Saint James’s was transferred to the six-point parish of River Desert. In 1966, after being transferred from the Diocese of Montreal to the Diocese of Ottawa, the Parish of Aylwin was reorganized, becoming part of a five-point parish comprising Danford Lake, Joseph Farm, Kazabazua, Maniwaki (River Desert) and Wright. In 2001, Saint James’s, Wright was designated a memorial church, meaning it met less frequently as a worshipping congregation.

Documents the Archives collects for parishes include 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.

The post Wright in the Laurentian Hills appeared first on Perspective.

The old Christ Church, first built at the western limits of Bytown back in 1832, and continuously expanded to seat more people as the city grew, had now become an embarrassment to the young capital. The Hand-Book to the Parliamentary and Departmental Buildings just four years earlier had gone so far as to declare, “Ottawa is somewhat behind in Ecclesiastical Architecture,” and in a deliberate swipe at Christ Church, opined, “from some cause or other there is no English Episcopal Church worthy of the place, nor any present prospect of so desirable an addition to Ottawa’s Ecclesiastical Buildings.”

So Arnoldi must have been alternately pleased with this commission to build a landmark new church, yet at the same time frustrated by the phrasing that it be “in conformity with recent improvements.” He had already proven himself with the design of Saint-Alban-the-Martyr in Sandy Hill. What an architect wants to do is produce a design that will stand out, not one that is in conformity with the work of others. Even if that other was his own mentor, Thomas Fuller.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Despite the best efforts of the parish building committee, most of Arnoldi’s crafty design passed muster. Although they pared down his chancel to one quarter the size he proposed, sixty years later the larger structure was finally built, albeit to a less robust design. Although they managed to cut down the size of the west window to half the size he envisioned, he framed it with a Gothic arch and drip mouldings on the outer wall against the day that a larger aperture might be desired.

Conformity? It could be seen in the same hue of Nepean sandstone used in the parliament buildings. Conformity? It was apparent outside in the sloping sill of the west window, borrowed directly from the tower of the East Block of the parliament buildings. Conformity? It was evident in the buttresses and finials that were appropriated from the design proposed for the parliamentary library whose walls would soon start rising. Conformity? It could not be missed in the daring slender columns inside the new Christ Church that were copied directly from those in the House of Commons designed by Arnoldi’s mentor, Thomas Fuller.

But clever King Arnoldi made sure that Christ Church stood out as a distinctive building. The tall broach spire made sure of that, reaching higher into the skyline of the capital than that on any other church in the city. Perhaps the single feature that caused the large new church to stand out were the step gables on the front and rear gables and above the chancel arch. The latter two would disappear when the 1872 chancel was torn down in 1932, but the front step gable remains a defining feature on the Ottawa landscape, despite recent intrusions on either side.

We can only regret that Arnoldi’s plans on paper did not survive. By the time the Diocesan Archives was created 72 years later, the plans had disappeared. By contrast, plans for the 1958 Cathedral Hall, seen here, are preserved in the Cathedral collection at the Archives.

If you would like to help the Archives preserve the records of the Diocese and its parishes, why not become a Friend of the Archives? Your $20 membership brings you three issues of the lively, informative Newsletter, and you will receive a tax receipt for further donations above that amount.

The post Christ Church Cathedral, Ottawa – Cathedral Deanery appeared first on Perspective.

That said, how do you prepare someone for entering the Church of the Good Shepherd, Wakefield for the first time. If, like a dog, they could only see in black and white, their initial impression is of a proper Anglican house of worship. The chancel is in front, with choir on either side, and the sanctuary defined up a step from the chancel.  The altar is front and centre, with the dark walnut reredos providing a contrast to the brass altar cross.  The font has been moved from its original position inside the main entrance when this church was built at the turn of the twentieth century to where the congregation can better see a baptism being performed.  There is nothing surprising about the arrangement of the furnishings. 

But for people entering Good Shepherd for the first time, they find themselves in a sensory environment most unusual in an Anglican church.  It can only be likened to as if one were viewing the world while swimming in a bowl of liquid Jell-O.  As originally designed, the ceiling was dark panelled wood, the wainscoting was dark paneled wood, with the pews, reredos and other furnishings all made of dark wood.  By painting white the ceiling and walls, the entire church interior has taken its colours from the chancel window featuring an image of Christ the Good Shepherd and the colour accents of the side windows.  The brass chandeliers are most unusual in an Anglican Gothic Revival church and add an almost exotic Québecois vibe in reminding us of Roman Catholic churches dating to the early eighteenth century.

In 1863, John Seaman, a catechist, travelled in Aylwin, Masham and Wakefield townships gathering people together for worship.  By 1864, the Mission of Wakefield & Aylwin was started, in 1866 the Mission of North Wakefield emerged, and by 1872 North Wakefield consisted of Church of the Good Shepherd, Wakefield, an outstation named Pâche and another at Masham. By 1878, the mission had two churches and two outstations where services were held.

We do not know when Church of the Good Shepherd was built.  By 1893, the mission had two churches and one outstation, and by 1913 the Mission of North Wakefield consisted of Holy Trinity Church, Masham; Good Shepherd, Wakefield and a schoolhouse at South Branch by which time this house of worship had long since been built. At the end of the First World War the name of the mission was changed from North Wakefield to Wakefield.

In February 2000 the Holy Trinity, Lascelles and Good Shepherd congregations amalgamated to become one congregation with one vestry and one corporation. This new relationship (not so new, in a sense, as they had been sister congregations since 1863) formalized a reality that had long existed between the two. Good Shepherd, Wakefield operated as the mother church with regular Sunday morning worship, while Holy Trinity Chapel at Lascelles was reserved for special services.  By 2001, extensive restoration and renovations had been made, and the parish name changed that year to Wakefield-Chelsea-Lascelles.   

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

The post Church of the Good Shepherd, Wakefield, West Quebec Deanery appeared first on Perspective.

Kazabazua first emerged in the Mission of Aylwin, with the Rev. William Ross Brown holding services in 1870 in a log school. We are told that by 1870 a church awaited consecration.  Was that Saint Stephen’s? In 1894, a room was fitted up for Divine service in Kazabazua, and by 1895 the Saint Stephen’s congregation near Kazabazua was the third church in the Mission of Aylwin.

We learn, confusingly, that in 1898, Clarendon Deanery approved removing Saint Stephen’s, Kazabazua to a lot opposite the Aylwin parsonage. Whatever it means, we do not know whether or not it was ever acted upon. Certainly, it was not until 1900, the Saint Stephen’s Church we see here, at Kazabazua, was consecrated.

The entrance wing we see here seems not to have been added until the late 20th century.  As built, the worship space consisted of an auditory box, with the only concession to High Victorian Gothic Revival design being the narrow side windows. The pointed arches of those windows contrast with the rounded arches in the octagonal belfry. The eight sides of the belfry and the spire follow Christian tradition in alluding to the eighth (or first) day of the week when our Saviour rose from the dead. By contrast, a hexagonal structure such as a vault in a graveyard or a belfry on a jail alludes to death, as on the sixth day of the week our Saviour was crucified.   

The life of rural parishes can be challenging. In 1919, Aylwin, Alleyne & Cawood and River Desert missions were re-organized into the six-point parish of River Desert, worked by two priests. Area parishes, it would seem, are nothing new.  In 1921, River Desert was divided into two parishes: River Desert and Aylwin. Aylwin consisted of four churches: Saint John’s, Aylwin; Holy Trinity, Alleyne; Saint Peter’s, Cawood; and Saint Stehen’s, Kazabazua.

Saint Stephen’s, it turns out, is the original log school, later covered with asphalt siding, and now vinyl. By 1969, a team ministry was appointed to Aylwin-River Desert with one priest looking after Kazabazua and Danford Lake while the other looked after Maniwaki and Wright.  In 1983, Wakefield and Lascelles were added to Aylwin-River Desert. In 1986, Aylwin-River Desert was reorganized into a four-point parish under the care of a single priest. By 2001, the Parish of Wakefield-Chelsea-Lascelles consisted of churches at Chelsea, Kazabazua, Lascelles and Wakefield.

The Archives collects documents for parishes, including parish registers, vestry reports, service registers, minutes of groups and committees, financial documents, property records (including cemeteries), insurance records, letters, pew bulletins, photographs, scrapbooks and parish newsletters.  

The post Saint Stephen, Kazabazua appeared first on Perspective.