Mount Pleasant, Newport, Onondaga, Middleport, Ontario in Colour Photos – My Top 16 Picks

Township of Brantford

Brantford Township was the largest and most central township of Brant County. The first area settled was along Fairchild’s Creek north west of Cainsville. The township was blessed with many creeks that were developed with mills. The first industrial operation in the township was a mill operated by James Percy in Mount Pleasant. The township also has fertile soil and land was quickly settled and within twenty-five years was well under cultivation and thriving. Within the township are the villages of Mount Pleasant, Burtch, Newport, Cainsville and Langford, as well as the homes of Alexander Graham Bell and George Brown, a father of confederation.

Within decades of its founding in 1799 by the Ellis and Sturgis families, Mount Pleasant was a prosperous and cultured settlement with flourishing farms, inns, mills, schools, a drill hall, and commercial establishments. Today Mount Pleasant’s long and lovely main street retains much of its rural charm and many of its old homes, churches, and farmsteads. Mount Pleasant Road is part of the Long Point Trail, an old Indian trail which went from the Grand River in Brantford south to Lake Erie.

Emily Stowe was the first woman to practice medicine in Canada and also the first woman school principal. After her marriage in 1856 to carriage-maker John Stowe, she taught at the renowned Nelles Academy at 667 Mount Pleasant Road. She studied medicine in the United States because she was refused admission to a Canadian medical school. She did a lot of campaigning for increased education opportunities for women, and her daughter, Augusta Stowe Gullen, born in Mount Pleasant in 1857, became the first woman to graduate in medicine from a Canadian university in 1883.

One of the earliest settlers in the area of Newport was Edee Burtch who purchased land from Joseph Brant around 1796. As more settlers arrived, the area became known as Burtch’s Landing and was later renamed Newport. Newport was laid out for settlement by Thaddeus Smith in l857. Newport was a thriving shipping port offering passenger service to Buffalo on the Red Jacket and Queen paddle wheel steamers that operated on the Grand River. There were also facilities for handling general freight. The village with several hundred people had two wagon and carriage shops, two blacksmith shops, brickyards, several general stores, a post office, two churches, a school, a tavern/ hotel, a sawmill, grain warehouses and a grist mill.

Township of Onondaga

The township was named for the Onondagas, a nation within the Six Nations. They settled on land granted to the Six Nations under the Haldimand Proclamation of 1784. The Grand River, which forms the southern boundary of the county of Brant, was the main artery for transportation, communication, and economic sustenance. Today this river is mainly used for recreation. In the 1830s settlers began moving into this rich agricultural area.

This Village of Onondaga was first known as Smith’s Corners for David Smith who operated a grocery store and a saloon. The name was later changed to Onondaga. The village became a thriving community in the mid-19^th century because of the Buffalo, Brantford, and Goderich Railway station located here. Schools, churches, hotels and taverns, grist and sawmills, blacksmith shops, stores and small manufacturing shops developed.

The Grand River Navigation Company played an important role in the establishment of the Village of Middleport. On November 7, 1848 navigation was opened on the Grand River from Brantford to Dunnville through a series of locks and dams. Middleport, founded by John Solomon Hager, was midway between the locks at Brantford and the Village of Caledonia making it an important port.