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It is not always an easy task to
summon, by name, from the mysterious shadowy land, the actors of a distant
past, and marshal them instinct with life before succeeding generations;
this felicity has befallen us to-night by the discovery of two authentic
records, one of 1802, the other of 1835, unexpectedly placed in our hands.
The
signatures affixed thereto, enable us to reconstruct
the little Scottish world of Quebec for both these periods; let us raise a
slight corner of the veil!
Several of the bearers of these
names, respected professional men or leading merchants, in 1802, are
tenderly remembered by their grandsons to this day; some have left
foot-prints "on the sands of time."
The first of these documents is a
Memorial to His Majesty George III., signed at Quebec, on the 5th October
1802, by the Rev. Dr. Sparks’
congregation and by himself. You are aware that the first Incumbent of St.
Andrew’s Church—commenced in 1809, and opened for worship on the 30th
November 1810—was the Reverend Doctor Alexander Sparks, who had landed at
Quebec in 1780, became tutor in the family of Colonel Henry Caldwell at
Belmont, St. Foy road, and who
died suddenly, in Quebec, on the 7th March, 1819. Dr. Sparks had succeeded
to the Rev. George Henry, a military chaplain at the time of the conquest;
the first Presbyterian minister, we are told, who officiated in the
Province, and who died on the 6th July, 1795, aged 86 years.
One hundred and forty-eight
signatures are affixed to this dry-as-dust document of 1802, which we now
hold in our hands. It was recently donated to our Society. Strangely
indeed, it reads, in 1880.
A carefully prepared petition—it
seems—to the King, asking for a site
in
Quebec whereon to build a church— and suggesting that the lot occupied by
the Jesuits’ Church, and where until 1878, stood the Upper Town market
shambles, be granted to the petitioners, they being |
