A LEGACY OF FAITH Chapter 6 Pastor John Davis In March of 1857, Deacon Thomas DesBrisay passed away. He was 74 years of age and had just served one year of a term on the Executive Committee of the Charlottetown YMCA. It had been 22 years since this devoted, pious man took it unto himself, with a few baptized friends, to lay the foundations of Charlottetown 's first Baptist church. Thomas DesBrisay was the church's first and only deacon for seventeen years. One son, Theophilus, would carry on his father's drugstore and the other, James, would become a legend in the Baptist church that his father founded. At his funeral it was noted: "... Thomas DesBrisay will long be remembered with affectionate regard for his amiable and unassuming manner. "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my end be like His." The relationship that Thomas had with his father is not known. Rev. Theophilus DesBrisay Sr. was the first Rector of Charlotte Parish in Charlotte Town and led its development into St. Paul's Anglican Church. There was not the closest relationship between Anglicans and Baptists in the early 19th century, and even though Rev. Theophilus DesBrisay died in 1823, we have to wonder whether this coolness was evident in the DesBrisay family. A few weeks after his father's death, James DesBrisay , already the church clerk and Sabbath School superintendent, was made a church trustee. While he was in Charlottetown , Pastor C. J. Burnett provided excellent leadership for the Charlottetown Baptist Church. Membership continued to grow (now at 31) and his strong oratorical ability had pews filled every Sunday morning. He did, however, have a desire to return to his native Nova Scotia , and in July of 1857 he accepted a call back to his home province. As has been evident, the currency on Prince Edward Island for the first half of the 19th century was pounds sterling, but things were beginning to change. For the first time in church transactions, we find payments being made in currency - dollars and cents. The complete changeover was still a few months away, but for those who had lived their entire life with pounds/ shillings and pence, the change was very confusing and not at all welcome; not unlike a hundred years hence, when Canadians took a generation to accept the switch to metric measurement. This was the mid-Victorian era and in Charlottetown dress codes were