It is a rare occasion that we can commemorate a 200th anniversary here in Mississauga, but Eden United Church in Meadowvale has reached that venerable milestone here in 2024.

The beginnings of Eden United Church are connected to the arrival of Samuel Wesley Switzer Sr. (1767-1855) in historic Mississauga between 1819 and 1824. Stories have passed down through the church congregation that the early Methodist community first met in Samuel’s log cabin. It is likely that Samuel, newly arrived from Tipperary, Ireland, at first rented land from Hugh Carfrae at what is now the southeast corner of Winston Churchill Boulevard and Derry Road West. Likely a hardscrabble life for Samuel, his wife Mary (1771-1853) and their children (John, Eliza, Samuel Jr., Percy William, Mary Anne and Julia), all of whom had been born in Ireland. By 1830, Samuel Sr. was able to buy the 200-acre farm, and then went about ensuring that his sons John, Samuel Jr. and William were established with farms of their own, as well as for his nephew Joseph. The burgeoning crossroads became known as Switzer’s Corners.

Other nearby families, many of whom also came from Ireland, married into growing Switzer family over the years – and many of those early farming family names can be found on the gravestones in the historic Eden Cemetery – more on that in a bit.

In the early 1830s a log meeting house was built on the Samuel’s farm – on what was part of Lot 10, Concession 6, WHS. This property passed to Samuel’s son John Switzer (1797-1877) in 1834. The meeting house functioned both as a schoolhouse and served the early congregation as a church and was part of the York Methodist Episcopal Circuit. John Switzer formally sold ¼ acre of his property to five trustees of the Wesleyan Methodist congregation for a chapel and cemetery on January 29, 1840. The trustees were John Rutledge, James Crawford, Samuel Switzer (either John’s father or brother), along John’s brother-in-law, Hugh Mason, and innkeeper David Mason. The community then organized to erect a new church building. This frame church was opened for service on December 13, 1840 by Reverend Egerton Ryerson. This church stood behind the cemetery that had already been established.

As the congregation flourished and grew, it became apparent that a new church building would be needed. Directly across the road from the cemetery (at what is now the northeast corner of Derry Road and Copenhagen Road) a new church lot was granted by Isaac Waite in 1867. Opening services for the new brick church were held on February 2, 1869, after which the old frame chapel, by then known as Switzer’s Church, was dismantled – the cemetery remains today, marking the location of the original church.

The new, larger brick church was a cornerstone of the early crossroads community, and the Wesleyan Methodist congregation christened their new church with the name Eden. In 1871 the surrounding community of Switzer’s Corners adopted the new name of Lisgar (after the former Governor General). The brick church served the community up until 1908, when it was gutted by fire. Not to be defeated, the congregation rebuilt on the old foundations. A few years later the church was damaged again, this time in the great cyclone of 1923. Eden Wesleyan Methodist Church became part of the new United Church in 1925 and served the community until 1979, even as the historic hamlet of Lisgar gradually disappeared under the suburban development of Meadowvale in the 1960s and emergence of the City of Mississauga in 1974.

The congregation decided to sell the old church and moved into the new Meadowvale West Church Campus, with a dedication service being held on May 4, 1980. The old Eden United Church was demolished in 1980.

With increasing development in the area and the influx of new people, the Eden United Church congregation soon found the need to grow again, and the congregation moved temporarily into Meadowvale Secondary School while awaiting the construction of a new church facility. The new (and current) Eden United Church was opened on August 24, 1989. Located at 3051 Battleford Road, the congregation continues its long tradition of serving its community, only a short distance away from where it all began, 200 years ago, on the Switzer farm.

Eden Congregation gathering at the cemetery

Eden Cemetery remains on our landscape today in the location of the original meeting house and church, at what is now the southeast corner of Derry Road West and Shelter Bay Road. While the cemetery was officially established in 1840, and the earliest surviving record for a burial here was in 1842 with the passing of infant Thomas Hugh Mason, it is likely that the property was used for earlier burials, perhaps as early as 1837.

The cemetery is the final resting place for many early residents and congregation members of Eden United (formerly Wesleyan Methodist) Church over the past 200 years, including those of the Anderson, Bussell, Cantelon, Dolmage, Fullerton, Justin, Kindree, Mason, May, Miller, Orr, Rutledge, Sparling and Waite families, amongst many others. And of course, numerous generations of the Switzer family are also resting there, providing a direct link back to the earliest years of the congregation, church, cemetery and surrounding historic community of Lisgar that came to be long before the city of Mississauga was born.