where an ample repast was provided and partaken on.”

It is evident that both the Bishop and Mr. Cox were putting pressure on the St. Thomas congregation to build a new church in a more central location and to move the parsonage with it. Where the new site was to be is not indicated.

In the 1873 C. & C.C.S. report Mr. Cox alludes to the imminent entry of the Island into Confederation, and he also hints that he desired a change. At that time he was attending the Ponds school- house monthly (a distance of seven miles), the Fermoy schoolhouse, the Harding’s Creek schoolhouse, and a private home at Cavendish.

The 1874 C. & C.C.S. report is equally detailed. The organiza- tion of a Sunday School at Kensington was mentioned, with three teachers, and Mr. R. Howard as superintendent. Each of the three Sunday Schools possessed a library, to which additions of books were made from the Glebe Fund. In addition to his other services, Mr. Cox supplied at St. Elizabeth’s, Springfield, then vacant. He writes: “They take up a collection for me, which usually amounts to about one dollar.” He gives a full description of a great gale, August 24-26, 1873, which led to loss of life:

Friday, 29th. Saw today the body of Captain McL.—who was drowned at the North Cape. His body was found, rec- ognized, and cared for by the Freemasons to which order he belonged, and conveyed a distance of fifty or sixty miles to his father’s house. . . His wife . . . is a member of our Church. I strove to comfort his family as best I could, read from the Psalms and had prayer with them. From this house Mrs. Cox and I proceeded a mile or two further to Yankee Hill where on the beach we beheld another sad sight, the dead bodies of two seamen and of a small boy, lying in a boat in their oil clothes and covered with a sail. They were found drowned in the wreck of the schooner Thesis belonging to La Have, Nova Scotia, and now lying in the harbour. She had been towed in by some of the inhabitants, her crew having all perished. She was a strong schooner, and heavily laden with salted codfish, and was probably homeward bound when overtaken by this terrible and most unexpected gale. . . We remained at the place until the inquest had been held over the bodies and they, were buried in the old burying ground which was close at hand, now unused and neglected. They were put into roughly made coffins, and borne by a few strong hands to their last silent resting place, far away from their friends and home. One large grave received all three coffins. The lateness of the hour prevented me from read- ing our solemn Burial Service, only what I was able to repeat from memory.

In the spring of 1874 the Reverend Joseph Churchill Cox re- signed from the parish of New London and took up work at Mer- ritton, Ontario. A vacancy of nearly a year and a half followed, during which occasional services were conducted by the Reverend J. B. McLean and the Reverend J. W. J ohnstone.

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