Cherrywood United Church History

CHERRYWOOD UNITED CHURCH HISTORY

A church was built in Cherrywood in 1874, but the village sixty years ago was not the same as we know it to-day. It was a village with a thriving brick yard, a corner blacksmith and carriage shop, a red brick school-house, a photographor's studio and several homes.

There was a store and a hall or, as it was known, a Bible Christian Church or, still earlier, the first public school. In the surrounding country much wooded land appeared between the clearings, low lying fields were frequently flooded with water stopped by beaver dams. The remnants of a corduroy road led east from the village.

At this time the Bible Christian Church in the vicinity was attended by Roaches, Judds, Pallisters and the Michael Burkholder family. The Congregation was organized four years before the Wesleyan Methodist Church was built. Services were held weekly. The first ministers were Mr. and Mrs. Williams, (the first storekeepers Mr.Gordon, Mr. Shervester and W. R. Roach.) Public worship was held in,Erskine Presbyterian Church, and some who attended were Browns, Mc-Creights, Gilchrists, Davidson and Ferguson, while some others went to the Mennonite Church on the town-line.

For a time the Wesleyans drove to Highland Creek church. Some of these were Jabez Collins, James Taylor, Thomas Barnard who owned the present Leornard Gates farm, Robert Stockdale who lived on Todd farm,and John Wilkey, the blacksmith.

Later services were in the homes of Barnard and Stockdale, conducted bya Scarboro minister. The largest rooms in the house were used for this purpose. For seats they placed boards from chair to chair. At times accommodation was not ample. Meetings like these made the Wesleyans ambitious for a building in Cherrywood, although they comprised less than half of the familes in the community with their meagre [?] and with a Bible Christian Church in the village already, it was a difficult problem the Methodists had to face, yet their congregation was enthusiastic.

Newspaper article copied from the MARKHAM ECONOMIST AND SUN,

Thursday, December 6, 1934.