Elizabeth Hall
A Walk Through History
Napanee’s first St. Mary Magdalene’s Church, which was built in 1835 north of the Napanee falls, was taken down in 1873 and the stone that it was built of was then used in the making of the new church on the west side of town.
The main building was completed in 1875, but took over 30 years to finish. The bell tower wasn’t finished until 1890, the bell weighing 1,900 pounds, and the church was not consecrated until debt was paid off on June 1, 1906. As for the inside, everything decorating the church, from the floor tiles to the brass ornaments, made it one of the most attractive in the Diocese of Ontario (diocese: a religious jurisdiction category. In church governance, a diocese or bishopric is the ecclesiastical district (formally organized group of dioceses, under the jurisdiction of a bishop).
It was designed by Hugh MacDougall, a man from Toronto, and the painted polychrome decoration inside the church was started by Frederick Thomas Dibb, who was the dean of the church in 1909. The church was built on a raised basement to create room for the Sunday school underneath the main church, and inside St. Mary Magdalene’s Church there are many memorials dedicated to different historical figures of Napanee, some of whom include John Solomon Cartwright and his brother Reverend Robert Cartwright who were sponsors of the first church, and on the west end of the church are two windows, one in memory of a man named J. B. McGuin, who served many years as a member of synod (an assembly of the clergy in a diocese or other division of a particular Church, usually assembled to resolve questions about discipline or administration) and the other window to a woman named Mrs. Chamberlain.
Random History Fact: A pig was once executed in 14th century France because it hurt a child, which later died from the wounds. The pig was arrested, held in a jail cell, put through trial and found guilty, then executed by hanging.