188!)-90.] TWO FRONTIER CHURCHES. 109 



TWO FRONTIER CHURCHES. 



By Janet Carnochan. 



(Read 2iid July, i8go.) 



It ought to be an interesting and instructive task to trace the history 

 of these two churches of Niagara, St. Mark's and St. Andrew's, dating 

 almost a century back, the one 1792, the other 1794, and see how many 

 hnks in the history of our town and even of our country can be filled in 

 from those records, which give an ever shifting kaleidoscope of different 

 nationalities, of pioneer life, of military occupation, of the red man, 

 Britain's faithful ally, of the poor slave here for the first time by any 

 nation freed by legal enactment, of strenuous efforts for religious liberty 

 by appeals to Governor and Queen, of sweet church bells, of booming 

 cannons and blazing rooftrees. 



The often-repeated sneer that Canada has no history has been so 

 easily refuted in the case of our eastern Provinces with their store of 

 French chivalry and Saxon force, of missionary zeal and Indian barbari- 

 ties, of fortresses taken and retaken, but still the phrase lingers with re- 

 gard to Ontario. Surely, we in this Niagara peninsula lack nothing to 

 disprove a statement which, to their shame, many among us allow to 

 pass as if it were a truth. When we think that within, the last two cen- 

 turies four races have here fought for empire, that within sight of us are 

 traces of the adventurous La Salle who traversed thousands of miles by 

 sea and land to perish so miserably on the banks of the river of his 

 search ; when we think of this spot as an Indian camping ground, of the 

 lilies of France yielding to our own flag even before Wolfe's great victory, 

 of the landing here of loyal men driven from their homes of plenty to 

 hew out in the forests of this new land a shelter under the flag they loved, 

 of invasion, and three years of bitter strife, surely we have a right to say 

 we have a history. 



In my attempt to sketch the story of these two churches I have an 

 ample store of very different materials, a picturesque grey stone church 

 with projecting buttresses and square tower peeping through the branches 

 of magnificent old trees, many tablets inside and out, tombstones hacked 

 and defaced by the rude hand of war, an old register dating back to 

 1792, kept with scrupulous neatness, all these in the one case ; in the 



