/'*' Churches The people of Souris have always been God-fearing folk, perhaps because of their closeness to the natural elements of land, sea and sky, and their dependence upon them for livelihood. The majority of the inhabitants have roots going back to Acadian, Highland Scottish, and Irish immigrant forebears, and the religious affilia¬ tion of these ancestors is reflected in the ecclesiastical memberships of the people today — mainly Roman Catholic, with a much smaller Presbyterian element now incorporated in the United Church of Canada. A small Methodist community which dated back to 1858, and which built a pretty little Gothic Revival Style church in 1873, moved in with the Presbyterians in 1925 when the United Church was formed. The Anglicans, who had dif¬ ficulty in rallying and shepherding their flock throughout the whole of eastern Prince Edward Island , built a church in Souris in 1895 and closed it in 1919. A Baptist church has also long since disappeared. The first permanent inhabitants of Souris village came from the neighbourhood of St. Peter 's in 1810 and were joined soon afterwards by several Acadian families from Arichat on Isle Madame in . The Presbyterians established a strong mission at Bay For¬ tune as an outstation from St. Peter 's in 1806 with the Reverend Peter Gordon as its first minister; in 1852 the Souris Presbyterians were organized as a separate charge under the Reverend Henry Crawford . In the next decade a Protestant union church was built in Souris West , but it fell into disuse after first the Methodists and then the Presbyterians (in 1877) built churches in Souris East . The Roman Catholics at first depended upon missions at East Point and , and it wasn't until 1838 that they erected their first church, a structure 60 feet long by 35 feet wide. The Reverend John MacDonald of Glenala- 16