Albion Presbyterian Cemetery
Also known as: Caven Presbyterian
Location:
12992 Coleraine Drive (Bolton), Caledon, Peel Region, Ontario, Canada.
Concession 5, lot 5, Albion Township.
GPS:
Latitude: 43.85841°N
Longitude: -79.73332°W
History:
[Historical Plaque in Cemetery]
“Albion Presbyterian Cemetery and site of the First Presbyterian Church in this area erected AD 1857, dedicated Sept 14, 1975 to the Glory of God and the memory of his faithful servants who rest here.”
Land was given by James Goodfellow, a Scot The date of the deed is 1856. The 1852 census show a meeting house already there. The congregation moved to Bolton and built a brick building in 1875 called Caven Presbyterian. The church was United Presbyterian, a breakaway group, with headquarters located in the United States.
The following excerpt is from the book entitled The Story of Albion by Esther Heyes [1968]:
Of the first Presbyterian congregation in Albion, it has been written, “In order to obey the scriptural injunction to ‘forsake not the assembling of yourselves together’, they met in one another’s homes when the weather did not permit their meeting in some glen or on some hillside beneath the spreading boughs of a maple. There, with the heavens above them, and with trunks of fallen trees for seats, they met for prayer and praise”. Later they gathered in the new schoolhouse built on a site donated by the Caldwells from their farm. Records also show that a new barn on the Goodfellow farm was used when a larger than usual congregation was expected, such as the induction of an early pastor. In 1838 and 1839 the Reverend Doctor James Cairns led the little flock, and it may have been for him that this induction service was held.
Up to the year 1850 the Reverend Doctor David Coutts visited Albion along with other “preaching places”. He was a medical doctor as well as a Presbyterian minister. He and his wife suffered many cruel hardships in the Canadian wilderness which is borne out by this well authenticated recorded story, “While waiting for a manse to be ready for occupancy, Doctor Coutts and his refined wife who came from a home in Scotland where servants waited on her every need, were obliged to find shelter in an unused house which was so far from being comfortable as on one occasion to cause Mrs Coutts’ hands to become frozen.”
In 1856 Albion Presbyterian Church was erected on a site secured from James Goodfellow, the deed bearing the names of Adam Goodfellow, Charles Caldwell, William Rogers, John Watson and John Dalziel in trust for the congregation. Labour and material were freely given by such pioneer families as the Goodfellows, Caldwells, Rogers, Dicks, Mitchells, Foresters, Munsies, Blairs, McDougalls, Allans and Smarts. For one hundred years from that time the Church was never without a Caldwell and a Goodfellow working together in important official positions, until, in December 1955, Charles Caldwell, the last of that direct male line in Albion, died at the old homestead on Lot 5, Concession 5, to which the first John Caldwell had welcomed his Catherine, back,in 1820.
In the light of present day emoluments, minutes kept by early church officials are intriguing. They read, “The minister shall be paid at the rate of one pound per sermon.” Not bad, we say, if ministers were only expected to deliver sermons. “That Thomas Rogers receive the sum of three dollars for lighting the fires for a year.” “That the woman receive four dollars for cleaning the church during the year.”
In 1875 the congregation built a fine brick church in Bolton and named it Caven Presbyterian Church in honour of the Principal of Knox College. The building committee for the new church included James Munsie, William Dick, George Smith, Wyatt Jaffray and James Dalziel. When 50 years later, Caven Presbyterian Church held its Golden Jubilee, a meaningful link with the past was the Bible used in the services. Old, and worn from much reading, with scriptural messages underlined on nearly every well-thumbed page, it was the Bible the Reverend Doctor David Coutts carried with him on his visits to Albion and other “preaching places” back in the days when things were so hard that his wife’s hand became frozen.
When the new church was opened in Bolton, the old Albion Presbyterian Church building was moved across the road from the Goodfellow homestead (now the attractive home of Howard Codlin and his family).
Although no internments have taken place there for years, the burial ground which surrounded the first Church still remains, a quiet resting place for the Caldwells and Goodfellows and others who served the church in that early day.
Approval for the church’s removal from the Goodfellow homestead to Bolton was far from unanimous; indeed a number of long-time members [voiced] strong disapproval by severing their connection. A minute in the church books dated two years after the opening, which read, “That the propriety of introducing an organ to lead the singing of the congregation be hereby deferred ’till some time in the future,” would indicate that the approval of that move was “far from unanimous” and that some of the congregation were well satisfied to continue the practice followed in the old church. There, a presenter such as melodious-voiced James Spence took his hand upon a platform in front of the high pulpit, and, with aid of a tuning fork, “raised the tune”. However, dissenters seem to have had a change of heart, because a year later a minute which would appear to be a masterpiece of diplomacy, reads, “That the Committee of Management borrow an organ and that it be used in the congregation for a short time, and after the matter has been tested, the congregation shall then be asked to vote whether they shall use an organ in leading the psalmody or not.”
The year 1925 was a time of prayerful soul-searching for the congregation of Caven Presbyterian Church. In that year the Methodist, Congregational and part of the Presbyterian Church in Canada came together to form the United Church of Canada. If a Presbyterian congregation voted to remain Presbyterian, that congregation was entitled to do so, and to retain its church property. In Bolton a majority of members of Caven Presbyterian Church elected to continue as they had been. “They look back”, their pastor recorded at the time, “and think the sacrifice and the heroic devotion of their Presbyterian forefathers and turn to the future from the past, and feel they will best honour it by retaining its form of worship and church government as well as its doctrinal standards.”
Esther Heyes
Transcription purchase:
Transcriptions of this cemetery are available for digital download from the OGS website – click here to order via credit card.