Friday, September 30, 1994
By Cecilia Nasmith
St. George's Anglican Church in Grafton celebrates its 150th anniversary this Sunday.
While an Anglican church has been on the north side of Highway 2 in the village for that length of time, an Anglican congregation has been meeting there even longer, explains anniversary committee chairperson Margaret Ryerson.
"Services were held in a schoolhouse on the south-east corner of this same lot,” she said, possibly as far back as 1820.
In 1844, the congregation constructed a wooden church that was the twin of its sister church - Trinity in Colborne.
The church burned down in 1908 and was replaced the following year with the familiar red-roofed structure that stands today.
Adjoining Canon Nind Hall expanded the space in 1970. This facility is known to almost everyone in the village through the Brownies, Beavers and other groups that meet there.
Current Rector Rev. Lesley Barclay said high points in the church's history have to include a few very special rectors who devoted many years to the church - beginning with the first, John Wilson, who served for 45 years.
Mrs. Ryerson personally remembers Canon Thomas Nind, who was at the church from 1935 to 1952.
At that time, he served Anglican churches in Grafton and Centreton. After finishing the Grafton morning service, he would walk about 10 kilometres to the Centreton church for the afternoon service.
She would see him go by as she sat with her family eating Sunday dinner at home.
Naming the new hall after him was "probably one of the few unanimous decisions ever made (in the church) ...he is really what everybody felt Christianity was all about."
Among the church's distinguished parishioners was businessman Eliakim Barnum, baptized in 1823. A stained-glass window at the back of the church is dedicated to some members of that family.
Among its distinguishing features, besides the dark wooden magnificence of its chapel, is the square bell tower that occasionally becomes engulfed in green sheets of ivy that threaten to muffle the bells, sheets that turn to such multi-hued magnificence in the fall that people passing through town have been known to Stop and take pictures.
Parishioners at Sunday’s service – to which all Trinity members from Colborne and all former parishioners and rectors, including Canon Nind's son Hugh, have been invited - can obtain supplements to the church's official history, updating it from its last chronicling in 1975.
Guest speaker at the 11 a.m. service is the Right Rev. Terence Finlay, bishop of the Toronto diocese. A luncheon in Canon Nind Hall will follow.
