For one family, 150 years of Merivale history live inside one church

Standing behind Merivale United Church, Kathy Nesbitt Howard can still picture the farm lane that once ran through the property.

Today, the former laneway is part of the church parking lot and field, only steps from the steady rush of traffic along Merivale Road. But one of Howard’s earliest memories takes her back to a quieter time, when she sat atop a wooden wagon loaded with square bales of hay as it travelled toward the narrow country road.

“I must have been like three or four or something,” she recalled in an interview with the Nepean Lookout. “I remember riding a hay wagon down this lane to Merivale Road.”

It is hard to imagine such a scene today. The farms are gone. Condos have replaced cow pastures. For decades, the fields have been home to sprawling 1960s-era suburban development.

Yet in the middle of it all, a small red-brick church at 1876 Merivale Rd. has remained.

This year, Merivale United Church celebrated the 150th anniversary of its current building, welcoming about 80 people for a special service and nearly 100 for lunch on June 14. Despite pouring rain, members toured the sanctuary and surrounding cemeteries, viewed historical displays and reflected on the generations who kept the church standing.

For Howard, the anniversary was not simply about the building's age; it was the latest chapter in a family story intertwined with the church and the former farming community that surrounded it.

Her family settled in the area generations ago and farmed land immediately behind and to the side of the church. The property once stretched from Merivale Road to Woodroffe Avenue and, for a time, beyond it. Part of the land west of Woodroffe was expropriated around 1958, she said, leaving the family to farm the remaining section between the two roads.

Howard grew up farther south at 1014 Merivale Rd., near where businesses, including Olympia Tile and Carpet and the Merivale Bowling Centre, stand today. There were only a handful of houses along the road then.

There was little traffic. Children walked to school and raced bicycles along nearby industrial roads. Pineglen and Grenfell Glen were still being developed, while much of what now surrounds the church remained farmland or open space.

Howard attended both Merivale Public School and Merivale High School. Her mother, who had grown up downtown, used to describe moving to Merivale as living “out in the sticks.”

The church was at the centre of that rural life.

Howard’s ancestors helped care for the property, arriving early on Sunday mornings to light the fires and warm the building before the congregation arrived. Her father remembered digging graves alongside his brother Morley for $7.

“Anybody who ever lived in that farmhouse would come to this church every Sunday morning early to start the fire to get it ready for Sunday services,” Howard said.

Her grandmother, Bertha Stapledon Nesbitt, was deeply involved in church life and carefully preserved much of the family’s history.

“My grandmother was like a powerhouse. I must have missed that gene,” Howard joked. “She just went all day long.” 

The family had boarders to help on the farm, and when they were building the oil tankers across the street, some of the workers would stay with them. Bertha had to get up and feed them, wash their clothes, take care of her family, and do all the other work around the house.

Bertha was also the family historian. Her writings offer glimpses into life when the church was more than a place of Sunday worship. It was where neighbours socialized, young people gathered, and news travelled through the rural community.

Among the documents Howard has preserved is a poem her grandmother wrote as a young woman about a meeting of the Presbyterian Young People’s Society near the end of the First World War. It describes members running to the church on a winter evening, lighting lamps, arranging chairs around the fire and planning a snowshoe trip to a Canadian Northern Railway camp.

The poem also mentions letters from local soldiers overseas who hoped the war would soon be over.

“It gives some real perspective of what life was like,” Howard said.

The congregation’s roots extend even further back than the building that marked its anniversary this year.

The Hopper Settlement, which would later become the town of Merivale, was founded by Arthur Hopper in 1821. In 1849, he donated land for a long meeting house to be built where the present-day church stands. Built of heavy logs with moss between them, there were only a few windows on each side. 

It’s unclear why the building that was shared by the Presbyterians and Anglicans was torn down, but it may have been due to the Great Fire of 1870, which devastated Merivale and nearby City View. The blaze broke out in Almonte, 40 kilometres away, and travelled as far as Burritt’s Rapids in the east and across the river to Aylmer, Ironside and Templeton.

In total, 20 people died, and 3,000 farms were lost. By Aug. 19 of that year, the rebuilding began. Greater Ottawa was saved by the St. Louis Dam at Dow’s Lake, which was breached and sent 900 feet of water flowing down Preston Street to the Ottawa River. 

The current Gothic Revival church was constructed in 1875 and 1876 as Merivale Presbyterian Church. Its original clear-glass windows and most of its wooden pews remain, although stained-glass memorial windows were added later.

The building became part of the United Church of Canada after the denomination was formed in 1925. Its tower was added in the early decades of the 20th century, while the sanctuary's front was reconfigured in the 1930s.

A church hall was constructed as a centennial project in 1967, when Sunday school enrollment had grown so large that some children had to attend classes at the Orange Lodge on Slack Road.

“When I came here in the ’60s and ’70s, the church was full,” Howard said. “We had so many kids.”

Howard eventually moved away and spent about 30 years outside the congregation. When she returned to Ottawa during a difficult period in her life, the church was where she went.

“This was my little oasis,” she said. “I came back and listened for a while.”

She stayed and was soon recruited into the volunteer work that keeps the church operating. For about 15 years, she has managed the Merivale United Church Cemetery.

There is a “definite link” between her family and the building, she said. A stained-glass window in the sanctuary was installed by her parents and siblings in memory of her grandparents.

“I come to church for community,” Howard said. “You know, that link to my family.”

Behind and to the side of the church sit three adjoining cemeteries. The smallest belongs to Merivale United Church. Beside it is St. John the Divine Anglican Cemetery, part of a church that once stood next to the United Building, and the Pinecrest Merivale Cemetery occupies the larger area to the back. 

Walking among the stones is like reading an early directory of Nepean. Familiar local names appear again and again: Slack. Stewart. Boyce. Hill. Nesbitt. Stinson. Craig. Many belonged to farming families whose properties later became roads, subdivisions and commercial districts, but whose names can still be spotted around the community.

The older monuments bring their own challenges. Some are deteriorating, while descendants of the people buried beneath them can be difficult to locate.

Several years ago, a storm brought down part of a tree and knocked the decorative top from one of the cemetery’s oldest monuments. Howard initially wondered how she would find the family responsible for it.

Then she realized it was her own.

The congregation that worships at Merivale United today is much smaller than the one Howard remembers from childhood.

Merivale and Fallowfield United churches share a minister and now alternate services between their buildings. The combined congregation typically draws between 35 and 40 people, although some attend only when worship is held at their home church or join online.

Natalie Rathwell, a member of Merivale United since childhood and an architectural historian by profession, said the church’s small size has helped preserve its sense of intimacy.

“It feels like a country church when you’re in it,” she said. “There’s a small community feel to it that you don’t find at larger suburban churches or larger urban churches.”

Even inside the sanctuary, the modern city can seem far away. The windows do not offer obvious views of parking lots or traffic. Behind the church, gardens and mature trees shelter the grounds from surrounding development.

“You’re in the midst of everything. You can get the bus here, but it’s a nice little pocket,” Rathwell said.

The size of the building has also made it more manageable than many oversized urban churches, left with hundreds of empty seats and extensive maintenance costs. Merivale United holds only about 100 people and has changed relatively little in scale since the 19th century.

The heritage-designated building is now undergoing renovations. Electrical work has been completed, and new kitchens have been installed with financial assistance from Fallowfield United Church, following a donation from the Hope family.

The next significant challenge is accessibility; its raised sanctuary and basement hall are typical of churches built during that period, but stairs separate nearly every level.

Rathwell said the church has survived because generations of members have taken ownership of it — tending gardens, organizing activities, maintaining records and completing the many small jobs required to keep a congregation functioning.

At the anniversary service, the church’s regional council representative compared its history to a relay race, with each generation carrying the baton for a time before passing it to the next.

Howard hopes future generations will preserve more than the bricks, windows and tombstones.

“I hope it keeps that rural flavour and all the history.”