Hantsport Baptist Church
Title
Hantsport Baptist Church
Church Name
Hantsport Baptist Church
Church Association
Eastern Valley Association
Province
Nova Scotia
County
Hants County
Address
6 Willow St, Hantsport, NS
Status
Active
Date
Built 1830
Historical Information
Almost hidden by trees, the Baptist church is one of the first buildings to greet the traveller entering Hantsport from the east. The location is one of spaciousness and the church is saved from being just another place of worship by the delicate beauty of the steeple. When John Borden and Asa Davison raised the steeple, they vested it with the touch of the true artist. Refinement of scale and almost perfect symmetry characterize this steeple as it rises above the tree tops and the town.
The Baptists have held services in the district since 1811. Their first public worship was in a hall on Holmes Hill. On January 13, 1830, the church was formally organized in the Union Meeting House at Mt. Denson, which was then a part of Falmouth. The record states that eighteen members of the Baptist Church at Windsor obtained letters of dismission from that church for the purposes of forming a separate church to be known as the Particular Church of Falmouth.
The use of the title “Particular” in the name of the Church signifies that theirs was a Calvinistic theology and suggests an issue that is well nigh forgotten today. The other important division of the Baptists took its name from Jacobus Arminius. The Arminian or General Baptists placed their chief emphasis upon a person’s freedom of choice as opposed to the predestination of the Calvinists. The two streams were united in the Maritime Provinces in 1905 when Free and Regular Baptists merged into the Maritime United Baptist Convention. This union was remembered in the official name of the convention as well as in the names of such individual churches as that at Hantsport. However, today (2021) the convention name has been changed to Canadian Baptists of Atlantic Canada and Hantsport Baptist Church remains unchanged.
Rev. Robert Dickie was the first pastor of the newly organized church. He was succeeded by John Cogswell and he, by Ezra Churchill. Mr. Churchill, who later became Senator Churchill, was licensed to preach “within the limits of the Church only”. The membership increased rapidly and churches were built at Brooklyn and Hantsport.
In 1861, when the membership had reached 251, the name of the church was changed to Hantsport Baptist Church. That was the year in which Rev. William Burton began the first of two pastorates here. He was a native of Margaree who, despite educational limitations, was recognized by his contemporaries as “one of our best preachers, clear, forcible, and imaginative.” Graven on his tombstone is the fact that he preached 8,320 sermons.
The church has been blessed with faithful and energetic pastors. Rev. J. C. Bleakney came in 1875 and led in the construction of a vestry. During his ministry, 150 were added to the membership and 102 dismissed to form the Brooklyn Church. Rev. John McLean served the church for three years until his untimely death in 1887. He was a victim of the Black Fish Fever which scourged the village and which he contracted during his faithful visitation of the afflicted.
The choir loft and the steeple are two parts of the church that remain as they were originally constructed. The timbers of the original church were brought by sailing ship from New Hampshire. By the second decade of the twenty-first century a fire exit on the north side of the sanctuary has become an enclosed wheelchair accessible passage between the sanctuary and the church/community hall.
Information provided by Hantsport Baptist Church and M. Allen Gibson, Churches By The Sea, Chronicle Herald, March 8, 1978.
The Baptists have held services in the district since 1811. Their first public worship was in a hall on Holmes Hill. On January 13, 1830, the church was formally organized in the Union Meeting House at Mt. Denson, which was then a part of Falmouth. The record states that eighteen members of the Baptist Church at Windsor obtained letters of dismission from that church for the purposes of forming a separate church to be known as the Particular Church of Falmouth.
The use of the title “Particular” in the name of the Church signifies that theirs was a Calvinistic theology and suggests an issue that is well nigh forgotten today. The other important division of the Baptists took its name from Jacobus Arminius. The Arminian or General Baptists placed their chief emphasis upon a person’s freedom of choice as opposed to the predestination of the Calvinists. The two streams were united in the Maritime Provinces in 1905 when Free and Regular Baptists merged into the Maritime United Baptist Convention. This union was remembered in the official name of the convention as well as in the names of such individual churches as that at Hantsport. However, today (2021) the convention name has been changed to Canadian Baptists of Atlantic Canada and Hantsport Baptist Church remains unchanged.
Rev. Robert Dickie was the first pastor of the newly organized church. He was succeeded by John Cogswell and he, by Ezra Churchill. Mr. Churchill, who later became Senator Churchill, was licensed to preach “within the limits of the Church only”. The membership increased rapidly and churches were built at Brooklyn and Hantsport.
In 1861, when the membership had reached 251, the name of the church was changed to Hantsport Baptist Church. That was the year in which Rev. William Burton began the first of two pastorates here. He was a native of Margaree who, despite educational limitations, was recognized by his contemporaries as “one of our best preachers, clear, forcible, and imaginative.” Graven on his tombstone is the fact that he preached 8,320 sermons.
The church has been blessed with faithful and energetic pastors. Rev. J. C. Bleakney came in 1875 and led in the construction of a vestry. During his ministry, 150 were added to the membership and 102 dismissed to form the Brooklyn Church. Rev. John McLean served the church for three years until his untimely death in 1887. He was a victim of the Black Fish Fever which scourged the village and which he contracted during his faithful visitation of the afflicted.
The choir loft and the steeple are two parts of the church that remain as they were originally constructed. The timbers of the original church were brought by sailing ship from New Hampshire. By the second decade of the twenty-first century a fire exit on the north side of the sanctuary has become an enclosed wheelchair accessible passage between the sanctuary and the church/community hall.
Information provided by Hantsport Baptist Church and M. Allen Gibson, Churches By The Sea, Chronicle Herald, March 8, 1978.
Files
Collection
Citation
“Hantsport Baptist Church,” Atlantic Baptist Built Heritage Project , accessed April 28, 2024, https://atlanticbaptistheritage.omeka.net/items/show/231.