Friends of St. Alban's Adolphustown
10419 Loyalist Parkway K0H1G0 Bath, ON, Canada

Christopher Robinson 1763-1798 Sixty-four Memorial tiles encircle the walls of St. Alban’s. Sixty three of the tiles are either buff or blue. Buff was the natural color of the clay after firing and the cost of these tiles was $7. An additive of a cobalt metallic oxide to colour the clay blue was expensive and increased the cost of a blue tile to $12 - $14. Visitors to the church often enquire about the lone green tile. Why the deviation? The Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, J...ohn Beverly Robinson, laid the cornerstone for St. Alban’s with great ceremony during the Adolphustown landing Centennial celebrations, on June 16, 1884. The green tile in the centre of the north wall is dedicated to his grandfather Christopher Robinson and this family connection may explain the exceptional color. A metallic oxide using copper pigment would have been used to create the green colour. Christopher Robinson, the Loyalist memorialized on this tile, was born in 1763, into a well established Virginia family. Christopher left school at the age of eighteen, to serve in the Queen’s Rangers, under the command of Col. John Graves Simcoe. Christopher seems to have been a talented and charismatic young man, and after resettling in Canada, after the American Revolutionary War, he had a successful career in law, held the honorable position of Inspector of Crown Woods and fathered six children, all before dying at the young age of thirty-five.

Spring is a time of renewal and at St. Alban’s we have been working away renovating, restoring and cleaning out our beautiful but aging repurposed Church. We are undertaking electrical updates courtesy of funds we received from the L & A Community Foundation, making room for a small outdoor café and most noticeably beginning repairs on the Tower. Our initial repairs were to the roof of the Tower to make it waterproof and required scaffolding to be erected around it. Though we were not allowed to scale the Tower we were fortunate to have our workers photograph the upper Tower and the view from the inner roof. A view few of us are fortunate enough to experience.

ROBERT MACAULAY (1744-1800) Rev. Forneri had less than a year to raise the $8,000 needed to ensure the beautiful church he envisioned as a permanent memorial to the United Empire Loyalists could be built and the cornerstone set in place at the 1884 Centennial celebrations. It is then understandable he reached out beyond the original Adolphustown settlers for financial support, using the promise of beautiful Memorial Tiles to beloved Loyalist ancestors as an incentive to dono...rs. Robert Macaulay had been a prosperous lumber merchant with an estate on Lake Champlain, New York, when the Revolutionary War broke out, but his farm and business had been confiscated early in the struggle because of his Loyalist sentiments. By 1790 he had relocated to the Kingston area, 4 years earlier than most other Loyalist refugees to this area. His entrepreneurial spirit ensured that he was soon well established and his family continued to prosper in their new home, becoming one of the most prominent families in Kingston. We learn from a letter in the scrapbook kept by Rev. Forneri, that he reached out all the way to Berlin, Germany, to the granddaughter of Robert Macaulay seeking support for his grand project. Charlotte responded favorably and we see by her letter she had very specific requests. She would like her grandfather’s tile to be in the chancel area, close to the tile commemorating her grandfather’s good friend, the Hon. Richard Cartwright (a well known figure to Kingston historians). Visit St. Alban’s and you will note Macaulay’s blue tile is indeed prominently situated just behind the altar next to the Cartwright tile. The Macaulay name is also well known to Prince Edward County historians. Robert’s son, William, went on to become somewhat of a founding father of Picton and is credited with donating large portions of land to Hallowell and Picton and selecting the name of Picton for the town. The Macaulay name lives on in museums and conservation areas in the County.

We received a comment on our last Facebook post about a Paschal candle and Holder gifted to St Alban’s. The question was whether they were still in our possession. The answer is yes, but this enquiry brought to our attention the Canadian Composer Gena Branscombe, who was born in Picton in 1888 and died in 1977. At the 1978 UEL Service Bishop Creeggan dedicated a Paschal candle and Plaque in memory of Gena Branscombe, the well known composer and conductor. Gena had always b...een proud of her UEL heritage and her family chose St. Alban’s UEL Church as a fitting place for a local memorial to their mother. Gena lived in Picton until she was 15 when she moved to Chicago to enrol in the Chicago Music College. She later studied in Europe and New York. Gena resided with her husband and children in New York, where she was a prominent figure in the New York City’s music scene, from 1910 until her death. Over the years she made many visits to family in the Picton area and honoured her Canadian roots in her musical compositions Quebec Suite and Arms that Have Sheltered Us written for the Canadian Navy. Her passion for composing music and conducting, as well as her role as a mentor and leader of American female composers made Gena a woman ahead of her time. Although her work fell into obscurity, today there is a revival of interest in the performance of her music with the Gena Branscombe Project offering scholarships to female musicians in her honour.