St. Andrew’s History

A few Acadian families lived around Savage Harbour in the mid 1700s and in the 1770s Scottish immigrants began settling the area. In 1806 the parishioners built their first church and in 1823 a new parish house followed. This house eventually became St. Andrew’s College which operated on that site from 1831 to 1844. It then became a parochial house again until replaced around 1885.

Outstanding missionary priest, later Bishop Angus MacEachern, came from Scotland in 1790 and made St. Andrew’s his home base during his 45 years here as he travelled the Island and the mainland. Auxiliary Bishop of Quebec from 1821 and first Bishop of Charlottetown from 1829 until 1835, his remains rest within a tiny chapel, erected in the 1970s, at St. Andrew’s. On either side lie the remains of two parish natives, Bishop Bernard MacDonald and Bishop Charles MacDonald, both bishops of Charlottetown. A third native son, James Morrison, was a long-time Bishop of Antigonish. The parishioners built a larger and more beautiful church in 1862 which served until it fell victim to fire in 1946. The parish hall then became a temporary church.

In 1864 the first church, then vacant, was moved down the ice to Pownal Street, Charlottetown to become the main part of St. Joseph’s Convent-School. In the late 1980s, after that school closed, it was moved back to its original site and reconstructed to become today’s “St. Andrew’s Chapel”. In 1960 the new parish church was erected in Mount Stewart, leaving the parochial house, constructed in 1934, back in St. Andrew’s.

Approximately 225 families constitute St. Andrew’s Parish today.