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The First Baptist Church was founded in Kingston, Ontario in 1840 by Reverend John Gilmore with the support of the Baptist Colonial Missionary Society of London. The original site of the church was on Johnson Street, between Bagot and Clergy Streets. Shortly after the church was established, Reverend Gilmore moved to Quebec and founded the Montreal Baptist Church.

In 1842, the Church launched their Sunday school program. Other benevolent and educational programs founded by the Church during the nineteenth century include the Girls’ Mission Circle (1879), the Ladies’ Missionary Society (1879), and the Baptist Young People’s Union (1888). In 1891 a new Sunday school was opened on Union Street, and in 1897 fifty members of the First Baptist Church left to form the United Street Baptist Church; however, the Union Street church closed after twenty years.

In 1905, the First Baptist Church moved to its current location on the northwest corner of Sydenham Street at Johnson. The Church purchased the property in 1901 and the limestone church and the parsonage were built in 1904-05. In 1909, the first Mission band was formed, and in the 1920s, the Church founded the Grace Kenyon Mission Circle and the Canadian Girls in Training group. In 1948, the Explorers, an outreach program for pre-teen girls, was founded. A fire in the Church’s hall in 1966 caused the parsonage to close. Shortly after, the parsonage was reopened as the Helen Tufts Nursery School.

During the second half of the twentieth century, the Church experienced a period of expansion and a change in their membership. Initially, the congregation had chiefly consisted of British settlers and their descendents, but by the 1950s, many Baptists from the Maritimes moved to Kingston and joined the Church. In the 1980s there was an increase in Hispanic members, which was partly a result of the Church’s Refugee Sponsorship project. In 1990s and 2000s, the Church expanded their sponsorship efforts to include Christian refugees living under fundamentalist Islamic regimes.

Notable members of the First Baptist Church have been: Dr. E. Hooper, MD who served as a pastor (1883-1887) and later became the first medical superintendent of the Kingston General Hospital; Alexander Mackenzie who later became Prime Minister of Canada (1873-1878); and the hockey player and politician, Syl Apps.

The First Congregational Church of Kingston on Wellington Street at Johnson was built in 1865. Tradition has it that there had been a "Union" meeting place in Kingston since about 1810. Those who attended were not Church of England members, but people holding evangelical or independent views: Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists. The various groups that had made up the "Union" body eventually built churches of their own and the land at the corner of Wellington and Johnson was deeded to the Congregational church trustees in 1850. This occurred during the Pastorate of Reverend Kenneth M. Fenwick. For a variety of reasons, the membership of First Congregational Church declined and the members united with the members of Chalmers Church in 1922. In 1923 the church building was sold to the Masonic Order.

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Fisher & Son is a photography studio based in London, England.

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Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher OM PC FRS FBA, was an English historian, educator, and Liberal politician. He served as President of the Board of Education in David Lloyd George's 1916 to 1922 coalition government.