Thursday, January 3, 2013

Grimsby Park In Canada



The camp-meeting seems to have been a prominent feature of the early religious life of Canada.  Long before there were town or villages, the scattered settlers were wont to gather occasionally in those primitive meetings.

Grimsby Park (on the banks of Lake Ontario) is one of the few survivals [in 1900], if not the only one, of the old-fashioned camp-meetings remaining in Canada (the Grimsby Camp-Meeting came into existence in 1859).

Source

As early as 1846 a mammoth temperance meeting was held here.  Egerton Ryerson* and William Ryerson graced the platform.

Noah Phelps, who was born in New York, was featured in the biographies. Information about Rev. Dr. John Wakefield and John Beamer Bowslaugh (the original owner of the land) was also in the book.

Grimsby Park, Historical and Biographical Sketches interested me because of an interest in ancestors who lived in Grimsby, Ontario, Canada.  [See more here at the Grimsby Museum]

Rev. Isaac Brock Howard (son of William and Mary Howard, who were also my ancestors), was born in Grimsby and was Egerton Ryerson's assistant* in the early 1840's, -- was he present at the 1846 temperance meeting?   He wasn't mentioned in the book, so I'll never know.




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