GreyBruceBoomers_Summer2020

y Jodi Jerome
HISTORY
and none rejoiced more than she when the Anglican
Church near the river mouth was built and open for
worship. Her gratitude was overflowing and all her family
walked to and fro to the church throughout the years.”
considered abandoning the secluded church in favour
of a more accessible site, the former Methodist Church
on top of the ridge. Their archbishop, David Williams,
convinced them to reconsider.
Rev. J.L. Ball championed the project to provide a Sunday
school for the congregation’s children, a meeting place
for the Young People’s Society of the church and as an
activity hall for the church’s other groups, the Women’s
Missionary Society.
The parish hall opened in 1952, the same year the church
was lighted with electricity and re-carpeted. The Women’s
Missionary Society provided the beautiful stained glass
window, under which the Holy Table stands. Over the
years, renovations and accoutrements of the church were
financed through family donations and fundraising.
On the hill around the church are two cemeteries, in
which most of Lurgan’s and Pine River’s early pioneers
are buried, and where their descendants and area
residents continue to rest. Protected by trees and brush,
the gravestones tell the tale of the small rural community.
The cemetery encompasses those from the St. Luke’s
Anglican Church on the north side, while on the south
side lie those from the Pine River United Church, which
is located just a few kilometres west, where Conc. 4
and Hwy. 21 meet. Simple and ornately-carved marble
gravestones from the 1800s are kept company by newer
granite stones of the 20th and 21st centuries. Some
families have replaced the marble headstones, made
almost unreadable by wind and time, with granite.
Connecting you to
your favourite people
Known in the Huron Anglican Diocese as St. Luke’s
of Pine River, the congregation continues to provide
spiritual support and counsel, and to commemorate
those who came before. In 2017, St. Luke’s celebrated its
160th anniversary — the church is 10 years older than
the nation of Canada itself.
Jodi Jerome is a writer, historian and heritage consultant who enjoys
finding the stories people have forgotten about the places they live,
and making the local landscape come alive for those who live and
visit there today. Contact her at jodijerome@icloud.com.
We’re here
for you.
An early cemetery from the 1850s was also moved to the
church grounds in the 1930s, when it fell into disarray
and the shifting sand exposed the bones of its residents.
The stone of Joshua Lindsay was erected by his wife after
his 1853 death when he was killed by a falling tree. She
sold their 200 acres for $200 and used some of the money
to put up his marble tombstone, which reads:
Remember, friends, as you pass by,
As you are now, so once was I
As I am now, so you will be
Prepare for death and follow me.
St. Luke’s Anglican Church is still active today, as is
the cemetery, although in the 1920s the congregation
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SUMMER 2020 • 19
2020-05-04 10:25 AM