Our Church History

Since 1848 St. John’s Anglican Church at Jefferson has stood in its present location and has been a local landmark.
On retiring from service with the British forces in Upper Canada, Captain Martin Donald MacLeod received a grant of Crown Land. He set aside four acres as a site for an Anglican church. Inspired by his generosity, the people of the district made plans to build a church, and in 1848, a solid wood-frame place of worship began to take shape. Around the turn of the century, red brick veneer was added to the building.

Butternut lumber for the pulpit and reading desk was purchased at a cost of three pounds sterling. The first Sunday in Lent in 1851, the Church Society of Toronto presented an Altar Prayer Book and a Desk Prayer Book – this was probably the first service held at St. John’s.

In 1939 the basement of the Parish Hall was completed and served the parish until 1958 when the upper part was completed.

As the result of a gift of 2 acres of land adjoining the churchyard, the Rectory was built in 1965.

The cemetery has many historic graves; among them that of Henri St. George, son of Colonel Laurent Quetton St. George, one of the French Royalists who arrived in 1798. Henri St. George was born in France in 1820 and died at Glen Lonely in 1896, (Glen Lonely on Lake George in the Lake Wilcox area is now under the Conservation Authority). Also Captain Martin Donald MacLeod, born in Scotland in 1791 and died in 1863 at Drynoch (the farm opposite St. John’s); and the Captain’s wife Jane MacLeod, born in Scotland in 1804, and died at Arnprior in 1874. The descendants of Giles J.D. Kerswell (1790-1853) and his wife Anne Kerswell (1784-1853) are buried in the Kerswell plots.