Thomas Christie, an early settler, was seeking spiritual guidance when he organized the ‘Regular Close Communion Baptist Church’ in the summer of 1841. In 1843 a frame church was built on this site on land donated by Phineas Pelton. The red brick structure seen today was constructed in 1886 and incorporates several building styles. Predominant among them is Gothic Revival. The church was once almost entirely surrounded by drive sheds for the congregants’ horses and rigs. It survived a fire in 1988. The church closed for nearly 10 years in the 1970s. The church reopened and held services until 2006.
Peltons Corners
South Gower takes its name from Admiral the Hon. John Leveson Gower, second son of the first Earl of Gower, 1740-1792. He distinguished himself as Commander of Quebec and at the relief of Gibraltar in 1782 and was Lord of the Admiralty from 1783-1789. South Gower was surveyed in 1799 and incorporated in 1834, although people were settled in the area much earlier. Tradition holds that the earliest burial in the present South Gower Cemetery was in 1797, a first nations man whose frozen remains were found in the bush.
Phineus Pelton came to Upper Canada from the United States in 1801 under Royal Proclamation and settled on Lot 6 Concession 4 with four sons and four daughters. Peltons Corners, the family after which the community is named, once supported a school, store, cheese factory, blacksmith shop, several sawmills as well as a Baptist and a Presbyterian church.