Bethesda Sunday School - Possible Origins

These two paragraphs from an article by Ryan Taylor likely explain how Bethesda Sunday School began at a crossroads in Downie Township.


"Because Methodism had evangelism as its base, there was a tradition of Circuit- riding missionaries through out the province. Small churches were established even in remote villages. Tiny country churches sprang up at crossroads without any houses around them. They served the farming community in the vicinity.

The farmers in a given area would be glad to have their own church nearby, however small it was. They might also find themselves in a disagreement with their neighbours or the local preacher on some theological point and begin a new congregation. The result was a proliferation of these little log cabin churches dotted on back concessions."

I don't know if this accounts for the Sunday School being established on a 1/4 acre lot on the SE corner of Lot 6 Concession 12 on land first settled by John Edwards in 1854. At his death in 1862 the lot was subdivided into 8 pieces for his children. A short time later in 1865 the Sunday School was built. Could there be a connection between John's death, the splitting up of the land, and the establishment of the Sunday School?
Methodist Church Records In Ontario
By: Ryan Taylor, Biography and Archived Articles

Bethesda Sunday School - Pt. 2

Bethseda Sunday School played multiple roles in the life of the community. It allowed individuals such as Mae Hearn to express her deep religious beliefs and it offered her an opportunity to impart those beliefs to her children. While the music and the lessons must have been a welcome diversion from the steady work of the week for the younger people, I am certain that the chance to meet and to socialize with other young people was especially welcome. On occasion the young people put on plays and Lois remembers Norman McCully whose family owned a large farm near the four-mile bush, and Percy Switzer whose family farm overlooked a wonderful sweep of land in the Trout Creek valley, acting in those plays. Often, Norman adlibbed his lines, much to the consternation of Percy whose obvious discomfort only added to the delight of the audience. In the 1930's Stella McLeod, who lived with her sister Lulu and her brothers Roy and Fred on land also overlooking the Trout Creek valley, began a girls' club. The club met monthly and it was the members of this club who did the spring cleaning of the Sunday School. I don't know of any pictures taken of the group, but possibly, this picture of the young women who attended Helen Laing's wedding includes members of the club. In this picture in the back row are Anna Dunbar, Mary Shrubsole (whose family lived at the bottom of hill in the Trout Creek Valley), Stella McLeod, Hazel Stewart who married a Kemp and whose grandmother was the midwife who attended the births of many children in the area, and Margaret Dunbar the sister of Anna. In the front row are Lois Hearn, Isobel Snoddy who married Ted Murray, Marie Ballantyne who married Earl Boyes, a man who figures prominently in this story, Annabel Aitcheson, and Mabel Tyler.