Maidstone, Ontario

[7] Low enrollment and high cost of maintenance forced the Greater Essex County District School Board to sell the building and the eight-plus acre property to the "Saint Petka" Serbian Orthodox Mission Parish in April 2014.

Immigrants came by sailing vessel: the journey requiring about eleven weeks on the water.

As early as 1831, Maidstone Cross was a mission of Assumption parish in Sandwich and was intermittently serviced by the priests - originally in the homes of the settlers.

Angus MacDonell built the first mission church(a log structure) at Maidstone Cross.

An 1866 Farmers Directory describes Maidstone Cross as follows: A post village, situated in the Township of Sandwich East, Talbot Street, on Lots 293 and 294, both N. and S. and twelve miles from Windsor and the same distance from Sandwich, the County Town.

The village now contains two stores, three blacksmith shops - two of the same, manufacture wagons - one butcher, two shoe shops, two hotels, one church, one St. Patrick's Society, and a good school; there is a saw mill within one mile west of the village, carried on by James Halford, on lot 296, Talbot Street, south.