page_title: Ingersoll, Ontario
section_title: St. Paul's Presbyterian Church
hierarchical_section_title: Ingersoll, Ontario / Historical churches / St. Paul's Presbyterian Church
caption_attribution_description: English: Rev Luke Hitchcock (1813-1898), Methodist Episcopal Church, grandson of Thomas Ingersoll, son of Julius and Myra (Ingersoll) Hitchcock
context_page_description: Ingersoll is a town in Oxford County on the Thames River in southwestern Ontario, Canada. The nearest cities are Woodstock to the east and London to the west.
  Ingersoll is situated north of and along Highway 401. Oxford County Road 119 runs north diagonally through the town. A Canadian National rail line bisects the town east to west through its centre. Passenger service from the Ingersoll train station is provided to other stops in Southwestern Ontario by Via Rail. To the south is a CPR line, with spurs into local industries, which provides freight service to points in the region. The local high school is Ingersoll District Collegiate Institute.
  The Ingersoll area was first settled in the 1790s by families from New England, became famous for homemade cheese production before the War of 1812, and its surrounding County of Oxford was home to the first cheese factories in Canada, starting in 1864. In 1866, through collaboration by the town's businessmen, a giant wheel of cheese weighing 7,300 pounds was produced at the James Harris Cheese Factory just south of Ingersoll, for promotion of the area's cheese industry.
context_section_description: The congregation was established in 1846. It was originally named Knox Presbyterian until the union of a number of parishes - Knox, Erskine and St. Andrews - at what became St. Paul's in 1889. A fascinating description (available online) of the early days of the Knox congregation and the interplay between the Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists and Anglicans in Ingersoll in the 1840s and 1850s was written by the son of the first pastor of Knox Church, Rev. Robert Wallace (1820-1897). The Presbyterian church sometimes drew followers who could not abide the "ranters" presiding at the other churches.
caption: Rev Luke Hitchcock (1813-1898), Methodist Episcopal Church, grandson of Thomas Ingersoll, son of Julius and Myra (Ingersoll) Hitchcock
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