town lot on behalf of its owner, Alexander Birnie, of London, England, and Mr. William Johnson offered an adjoining lot. These offers were gratefully accepted and on the two lots the first Kirk was ultimately erected in 1831, and on the same lots the present Kirk was erected in 1877. The deed for this land, written on heavy vellum paper with a quill pen is dated September 30th, 1825, and is stored for safekeeping in the Church’s vault space in the offices of the Eastern Trust Company, Charlottetown.

THOMAS CARLYLE AND THE KIRK OF S. JAMES

This land on which the two church buildings have stood had an interesting history before it became the property of Alexander Birnie of London. The Island’s first Gover- nor, Walter Patterson, who held office from 1769 to 1784, ' had a daughter named Margaret who married a young Scotsman, Dr. Alexander Gordon, then stationed in the city as a surgeon with the militia. Overtaken by financial difficulties, Dr. Gordon, practically penniless, embarked for Scotland in 1803, accom- panied by two of his daughters, one of whom was named Margaret after her mother. On the way across the Atlantic. Doctor Gordon died and was buried at sea. On arrival in Scotland the two girls made their home with an aunt. At the age of nine- teen, Margaret, gifted and beautiful, was much desired by the village schoolmaster and local scribe, but Margaret’s aunt could see no future nor happiness for her adopted daughter in marrying this poor man and discouraged the romance. Eventually Margaret married a wealthy Scots trader by the name of Alexander Bannerman who soon thereafter entered political life, won a seat in the Commons, and was eventually rewarded with appointment as Lieutenant Governor of Prince Edward Island. So it came about that Margaret Gordon who had left Charlottetown some fifty years earlier because of her father’s financial embarrassment returned now as the first lady of the land. Meanwhile the school- master went on to become one of the giants of English literature—— Thomas Carlyle! As most readers of good literature know, “Bluemine” is the heroine of Carlyle’s masterpiece, “Sartor Resartus”. Few know, however, that this character was drawn from life and that the original was a Prince Edward Island girl, Margaret Gordon Bannerman, of Charlottetown. Margaret’s father, Dr. Alexander Gordon, and his family, had lived here in Charlottetown until the opening years of the nineteenth century. The records show that in 1790 Dr. Gordon was granted three plots of land by his father -in-law, the Governor, and that one of these plots was that on whi‘c‘h the Kirk of St. James now stands.

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