Reverend William Meek - Springbrook, PEI - Citizen Memorials on Waymarking.com

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Reverend William Meek - Springbrook, PEI

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20T E 461101 N 5149604

Built in 1877, St. Thomas' Anglican replaced the original 1829 St. Thomas' Church, remaining in use to this day.

It was the Reverend William Meek who was incumbent during the completion of the first St. Thomas' Anglican, as well as St. Stephen's Church in Irishtown. This granite monument stands at the front of the St. Thomas' Anglican Church Cemetery in Springbrook, between the cemetery's sign and the second St. Thomas' Anglican Church, opened for services on January 28, 1877.

Following is the text of the plaque:

William Meek was born in London in 1801. In 1830 he went to Newfoundland as a teacher under the Newfoundland School Society and was placed at Bonavista. He was ordained deacon in St. Thomas's Church, St. John's, July 25, 1841, by Bishop Spencer, and was stationed at St. George's Bay. At that time he was married and had four children. In 1852 he was transferred to P.E.I, as an agent of the Colonial Church and School Society, and he was settled permanently at New London in that year. In 1854 he was ordained to the priesthood in Halifax by Bishop Binney. After ten years of service at New London he went to Sydney Mines as Rector of Trinity Church, and he remained there until his death in 1870.

Mr. Meek was highly respected by the Newfoundland School Society and the societies with which it merged. His journals and letters printed in the publications of these societies are picturesque and homely in style and depict the life and work of a holy and humble man. A copy of his only printed sermon, preserved in the Nova Scotia Archives, is entitled: — "For a Small parish in Newfoundland; a Plain Sermon to Plain People. By Rev. W. Meeke. Preached by the Author, at St. George's Church in this City, and with his diffident consent, published by one of the congregation. Halifax, N.S., 1845.' The Diocesan Church Society Report for 1871 remarks; — "He may be called the Island Missionary for his long career of usefulness has been wholly spent in the Islands of Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton."

An obituary notice in The Islander, October 2,1870, states: - "During a long, useful, and until recently arduous ministry, the Rev. William Meek fulfilled the sacred trust committed to him as a Priest in the Church of God, with an eye single to the glory of his Redeemer and the salvation of immortal souls." Descendants of William Meek live in New London today.
From Island Lives, Page 144