108 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



delivered a speech from the Throne. For nearly five years thereafter 

 Niagara, or Newark, as its chief citizen now named it, continued to 

 be the meeting place of this body and the abode of the government 

 officials. During this period it could boast of a social circle comprising 

 families of distinction, and of levees and balls given by the Governor, 

 besides the assemblies, card parties, and other entertainments that 

 were then in vogue among the gentry of this frontier community.^ 

 In the same year in which Parliament convened the Reverend 

 Robert Addison began his labours in the Peninsula. Before this 

 there had been no settled clergyman at Niagara, although the in- 

 habitants had extended an invitation to the Reverend John Stuart, 

 who visited the place in the summer of 1788, when he preached to a 

 large audience containing many of his old parishioners from the neigh- 

 borhood of Fort Hunter in the Mohawk Valley. As Mr. Stuart 

 was already well established at Cataraqui, where he possessed a good 

 house and farm and the advantages of a satisfactory school for his 

 children, he felt constrained to decline the invitation. However, 

 he visited Niagara again in September, 1790, when he traveled through 

 the settlements for a fortnight, "preaching and baptizing daily." 

 Mr. Addison came under the auspices of the Society for the Propagation 

 of the Gospel as "missionary at Niagara and for visiting the Indians," 

 but he soon extended his ministrations to other communities in the 

 Peninsula and even to several beyond. At the close of August, 

 1795, Mr. Addison reported to the Society in England that he had 

 preached up and down the settlement, besides baptizing 97 persons, 

 burying 12, and marrying 13 couples. He added that a small house 

 had been built for public worship about 10 miles from Niagara and 

 that he expected another to be erected 6 miles farther away. Among 

 the communities visited by him were Twelve, Twenty, and Forty Mile 

 creeks, the Head of the Lake, Ancaster, York, the Falls, Chippawa, 

 Fort Erie, Grantham, St. Catharines, and Long Point. In Niagara 

 Mr. Addison presided over the Parish of St. Mark's, which occupied 

 all of 5 years (1804-1809) in building an edifice. When, however, 

 this edifice was completed, the missionary was able to report that it 

 was "the best in the Province," adding in explanation of the time con- 

 sumed in building that his parishioners had adopted "too large a scale 

 for their means." His service continued during a period of 37 years.^ 



1 Morang, John Graves Simcoe, 81-83; Niagara Hist. Soc, No. 4, 3, 4; Carnochan^ 

 Niaeara One Hundred Years Ago, 9, 13, 14; Upper Canada Gazette, June 4, 1793. 



2 Canniff, Settlement of Upper Canada; Abstract of the Proceedings of the Soc. 

 for the Propagation of the Gospel, 1796, 36, 54, 55; Niagara Hist. Soc, No. 7, 13-15, 

 18, 19; No. 19, 25, 51; Scadding, Church Annals at Niagara, 1792-1892, (pamphlet) 

 4-7; Carnochan, Hist, of Niagara, 56, 57, 64. 



