CHALMERS, William: 1830 - 1896
William Chalmers was the second son of Peter Chalmers senior and Margaret Chalmers. He was brother to James, Peter and Thomas Chalmers (Tiles # 18, 21). His two sisters, Margaret Chalmers Drury and Eliza Chalmers Hart, are also commemorated on a St. Alban’s Memorial Tile (Tile # 20).
Patron’s 1887 Directory of Adolphustown notes that “William Chalmers, farmer, born in Ireland, settled on concession 2, lot 6, Adolphustown in 1851.”(1) William married Martha Pringle (1844-1919) and they had ten children.
Their eighth child was George Frederick Chalmers (1886-1968). He married Sara Dorothea Roberts (1894 - 1979) a daughter of the Reverend Canon William Roberts who served as rector of St. Alban’s from 1899 until 1915. Sara Dorothea, known as Dorothea, was raised in the St. Alban’s rectory. After their marriage, George and Dorothea continued as faithful members of the church, and Dorothea played the organ for services and special events for many years. Recently, the Chalmers family, in Dorothea and George’s memory, had a beautiful stained glass window depicting Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music, installed just to the left of the entrance to St. Alban’s (in the last remaining single window to be replaced with stained glass).
George and Dorothea had three children: Mary and James who spent their lives in Adolphustown and John (Jack) who lived in Kingston.
The sons of Peter Chalmers Senior, the original 1848 settler; James, Peter and William, all died within a three-year period. William, the last to die, passed away in 1896. When their funerals were held at St. Alban’s, mourners overflowed the church.
William Chalmers, the subject of the tile, died in 1896 and his wife Martha died in 1919. They are both buried in St. Alban’s Cemetery.
1. Patron’s Directory of Adolphustown, Illustrated Historical Atlas of Frontenac, Lennox and Addington (Toronto: J.H. Meacham & Co., 1878), p. 109.