Fonds F2525 - First Baptist Church fonds

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.