Campobello: An Historical SketchWells, Kate Gannett
History
Campobello: An Historical Sketch
Wells, Kate Gannett
Campobello Island (N.B.)
English friends sent money to the church, and the Owen family gave
memorial offerings. The reredos, with its silver cross, was a memorial
to Captain John Robinson, the grandson of the Admiral. The block of
stone from which the font was carved was taken from the Church of the
Knights Templar at Malta, and carried to Florence by the Admiral's
son-in-law to be wrought into graceful form, and then was borne across
the ocean to this tiny, much loved church. The chancel carpet, worked on
canvas in cross-stitch; the altar vestments; the stoles; the chalice
veils, green, white, crimson, purple, each bearing the symbol of the
cross in varied stitch and design,--were all wrought by the delicate
fair hands of the Admiral's daughter, and her children, and their
friends, as an offering of self-consecration and of devotion to the
building up of a higher life among the Islanders. These, too, brought
their gifts, and replaced with chandeliers the wax candles which had
been set in holes in the book-rests; and, when the sea called away the
men, an old lady, rich in humility and good works, rang the bell for the
weekly services.
=Bishop Medley.= Interwoven with the personal life of this church was
the affection with which it was regarded by "The Most Eminent John
Medley, D. D., Anglican Bishop of Fredericton, N. B., and Metropolitan
of Canada, who died in 1892, at the advanced age of eighty-eight years.
It was in this church that he married his second wife, who was a friend
of Lady Owen's. He seldom failed to visit the Island every year or two,
and was the trusted confidant of each man, woman, or child, who knew
him, for his simplicity of life accorded with Island habits, and the
people comprehended his singleness of purpose, even if they did not
always go to church. The names of Mr. and Mrs. Medley often occur in the
parish records as visitors of the Parish School, with which they seem to
have been regularly pleased.
=The Deanery.= The Parish of Campobello was and is under the
jurisdiction of the Deanery of St. Andrews. At its meetings, which were
for purposes of social visitation as well as for church discipline, the
Admiral talked to the Deans if not with them. He knew the law better
than many of them, and had an eye to business. Earnest and simple are
the records of these gatherings, as of the one at St. Andrews in 1852,
when some wished that "all articles necessary to ornament and fitting of
places of worship should be admitted free of duty"; yet the movement
failed of approval lest action on behalf of it might "appear like a move
of the church for exclusive privilege."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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