Martha Circle, St. Timothy's Lutheran Church, Copper Cliff

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Image

Item Type

Photographs

Description

Black and white group photograph of Martha Circle, a women's group at St. Timothy's Lutheran Church in Copper Cliff, Ontario. The women are posed indoors.

Notes

Martha Circle was formed at St. Timothy's Lutheran Church in 1932. The women's group raised funds through bake sales, teas, church programs and bazaars. The money raised was used for church and parsonage furnishings, church renovation funds, and monetary donations to various charities.

St. Timothy's Lutheran Church was founded in Copper Cliff, Ontario in 1897. In 2016 it joined with St. Matthew's Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sudbury, Ontario to form New Hope Lutheran Church. It is a member of the Eastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada.

The congregation was founded by Finnish settlers on September 12, 1987 as Wuoristo Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church. It was a member of the Suomi Conference of the Finnish-American Evangelical Lutheran Church. In 1931 Wuoristo transferred membership to the Canada Synod of the United Lutheran Church in America.
In the early years, services were held in private homes or the Temperance Society Hall. Without a permanent pastor, the congregation was served by various pastors that visited once every three months. In June 1915 Pastor Otto Maki, a recent graduate of Suomi College, accepted the call as the first permanent pastor at Wuoristo Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church.

In 1907 a church building was constructed on land provided by the Canadian Copper Company. A joint effort of the Wuoristo congregation and the Temperance Society, the 2-story building provided space for a Temperance Society Hall on the first floor, and a church on the second. The official opening took place on October 25, 1908. A major renovation led to the re-dedication of the church building in 1961.

In 1948 Wuoristo began to offer monthly English-language services. By 1953, services weekly services were held in English and Finnish. Starting in 1961, Church records, including Church Council minutes, were recorded in English only. In 1962 the congregation voted to change the name from Wuoristo Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church to St. Timothy’s Lutheran Church.

In 2016 St. Timothy's Lutheran Church and St. Matthew's Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sudbury, Ontario joined together forming New Hope Lutheran Church. St. Timothy’s parsonage was sold in June 2016, but the church remains open.

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