Virtual settlement

The Association for Manitoba Archives has launched a historical Web exhibit, Recorders of Community: The Archival Legacy of the Red River Settlement Churches 1818-1870.

“Churches were central to the lives of settlers in this remote fur trade community on the banks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers. Archival documents left by the churches and their parishioners reveal much about that now vanished society,” reported Rupert’s Land News, the newspaper of the diocese of Rupert’s Land. “One viewer describes this exhibit as ‘like going through the contents of an interesting old trunk.'” Interactive maps show the settlement as it was in 1825, 1855 and 1870.

The exhibit includes information about the Church of England, which was the only Protestant denomination at Red River until 1851.

Visitors to the exhibit may also read the letters and diaries of missionaries and parishioners and learn how stone and frame church buildings were built out of local materials.