Driving through scenic Albert County in the picture province of New Brunswick, on highway # 114, one comes upon the quaint village of Hillsborough. Mingled amongst the historic homes, one turns left from Main street onto Mill street. Nestled on a fifth of an acre grove of trees, with the muddy Petticodiac river as a background, is St. Mary's Anglican Church. Described by some as Gothic, St. Mary's stands as an unequalled specimen of Victorian ecclesiastic architecture. The west face of the church presents a chalet-like appearance, but rounding the southwest corner to the jutting vestibule entrance, its side-one character defies categorization. The high pitched wood-shingled wall give way to a gently sloped roof and extended shingle walls on either side. Strolling around the outside of the church, one discovers interesting details of obvious painstaking work. Well worn stone walkways and steps leading to the entrance. The old doors and wrought iron railings, ample red stained trim at the corners and around the windows and doors; the scalloped wood trim atop the roof. The carvings of cherubim barely visible to the eye carved near the roofline. Behind the church and along the river side, are several tombstones, two of which bear the surnames of principle founders ----Osman and Tomkins.
HISTORY:
In 1886, three Hillsborough businessmen tried to raise money to erect an Anglican Church in the heart of Albert County's Baptist belt.
Charles J. Osman of the Albert Manufacturing Company; G.A. Robinson, manager of the Albert and Salisbury Railway; and H. Middleton, manager of the Hillsborough Bank; made a valiant effort, but fell short. Osman's wealthy father-in-law Joseph Tomkins, the original manager of the gypsum mine in Hillsborough got involved. Calvin Tomkins, Joseph's father of New York, had purchased many of the Albert County gypsum sites in 1854 and organized the Albert Manufacturing Company, the forerunner of the Canadian Gypsum Company. The 1889 deed for the one-fifth acre of land presented by Joseph Tomkins to the Anglican Bishop in Fredericton, three years after the church was built, stated the church was built as a memorial to his late wife.
ANECDOTES:
Rank had its privilege at St. Mary's. Joseph Tomkins not only had his own reserved pew in the back row of the church, but also a custom-built fireplace in front of his pew and a heavy curtain to draw and segregate himself from the rest of the congregation. Here, during a winter Sunday's liturgy and sermon, Tomkins could smoke his pipe or fall asleep in front of the blazing logs at will; and no one else in church would be any wiser. ( The wide, open-hearth fireplace and a heavy curtain on its thick round wooden rod are still in place.)
Reportedly, if Tomkins was not in agreement with the sermon text of the day, he could be heard to stomp out.
Our services are normally at 11:30 am every Sunday. All are welcome to come in to worship and visit with us. We are essentially traditional with a hint of contemporary!
