Eden United Church Cemetery
Also known as: Switzers
Location:
2830 Derry Road West, Mississauga, Peel Region, Ontario, Canada.
Concession 6 WHS Lot 10, Toronto Township.
GPS::
Latitude: 43.5908°N
Longitude: -79.7677°W
History:
Eden Cemetery and Switzer’s Church were on part of the west half of Lot 10, Concession 6 West in Toronto Township. John Switzer received the 100-acre farm in 1834 from his father, Samuel Switzer, who bought the whole of Lot 10 in 1830. The family of Samuel Switzer had been in the immediate area from 1824, and probably John had been on the farm since his marriage to Jane Orr in 1826.
On the 29th of January 1840, John Switzer sold 42 perches (40 perches equal ¼ acre), for Five Pounds, to five trustees of the Wesleyan Methodist Church for the site of a Chapel and Burying Ground. The trustees were: John Rutledge, James Crawford, Samuel Switzer, yeomen of Toronto Township, and David Mason and Hugh Mason, yeomen of Trafalgar Township. The deed was witnessed by Rawley Heyland and John Embleton. Heyland was a Methodist minister and Embleton a land agent, both of Streetsville.
John Rutledge, Lot 11 E½, Conc. 5W; James Crawford, Lot 11, Conc. 3W; Samuel Switzer, Lot 9 W½, Conc. 5W; David Mason, Lot 9 W½ Conc. 9 and Hugh Mason, Lot 11, Conc. 10.
A frame church was opened on 13th December 1840 by Rev. Egerton Ryerson. It was 60 feet by 20 feet, able to hold 300 people and stood near the back of the property. Prior to that, services were held in Switzer’s Schoolhouse, a frame building of the 1820’s on the corner of Lot 10.
Switzer’s Church was dismantled in 1869 after the opening of the new brick church called Eden on 2nd February 1869, on the opposite side of the road, on Isaac Waite’s farm. It burned on 20th December 1908, was rebuilt on the old foundation and opened on 9th January 1910.
Eden Church was demolished in August 1980.
Mary Manning, June 1987
NEW MEADOWVALE PARISH
EDEN UNITED IS BREAKING NEW GROUND
“Eden United Church just celebrated its 163rd year and is considered to be the oldest congregation in the area. Up until 1979, 35 families attended services in a small older church on the northeast corner of Derry and Copenhagen Roads, but moved to the Meadowvale Church Campus with three other denominations in 1980. Within a year they doubled their size in numbers, and by 1982, they noticed they had to get their own facilities. Today more than 375 families worship in the Meadowvale Secondary School until they can move into the new church next fall”.
From The Mississauga News, Wednesday, May 18, 1987
Note: The new Church is now situated at the corner of Winston Churchill Blvd. and Battleford Road, Meadowvale West, in the City of Mississauga, Ontario.
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