Author

Southwest Oxford and Norwich Townships, Ontario

South-West Oxford is a township in Ontario in Oxford County. A predominantly rural municipality, South-West Oxford was formed in 1975 through the amalgamation of Dereham and West Oxford townships and the village of Beachville.

South-West Oxford extends north to south from the middle of Oxford County along the Thames River/Highway 401/Woodstock-Ingersoll east-west corridor to the southern boundary of the county along the Delhi-Tillsonburg-Aylmer/Ontario Highway 3 east-west corridor. The northern boundary follows the course of the Thames River except where carveouts have extended the boundaries of Ingersoll and Woodstock into former township lands.

In its wilderness state, the former Dereham township had thousands of acres of swamp and marsh land which limited its use for agriculture. Several large drainage projects brought great improvement and remain as essential parts of the township’s farmland infrastructure. The township topography still has several large forested areas which are remnants of the original swamps on which drainage system runoff is concentrated.

At its north end, the township is underlain with an unusually pure limestone deposit centered between Ingersoll and Beachville that extends north-west through most of Zorra and south-east into Norwich. Open-pit mining of the limestone and kiln-firing to produce lime has been underway along the Thames River since pioneer days, and since the 1950s heavy industrial operations have led to nearly three thousand acres being licensed for extraction from pits more than 100 feet deep. The size of the limestone deposits is sufficient to support these operations for another century or more.

South-West Oxford includes lands in the former West Oxford township which were the earliest to be settled in Oxford County and also lands in the former Dereham township which were the last in the county to be settled. The greatest cause for slow growth in Dereham was the provincial government’s decision in 1799 to auction off all the wilderness land in the township in large blocks, which thereby fell into the hands of speculators who held the land dormant for decades.

The township of South-West Oxford comprises a number of villages and hamlets, including the following communities such as *Beachville, Brownsville, Brownsville Station, Centreville, Culloden, Delmer, Dereham Centre, Foldens, Hagles Corners, Mount Elgin, Ostrander, Salford, Sweaburg, Verschoyle and Zenda.

Salford is a small village along Highway 19; it is surrounded by agricultural land and the Oxford landfill to the east. There are two churches, and the Salford Community Centre with a ball diamond.

Sweaburg is located five kilometers southwest of Woodstock. Its main intersection is Sweaburg Road and Dodge Line (County Roads 12 and 41). It had a public school for students up to grade three until 2009, and currently has Sweaburg United Church and cemetery, a ball diamond, and a convenience store.

The Township of Norwich is a located in Oxford County in southwestern Ontario. Oxford County Road 59 is the major north–south highway through much of the township. The local economy is largely agricultural, based on corn, soybean, and wheat production with dairy farming in the north part of the township and tobacco, vegetable, and ginseng farming to the south. Slowly, ginseng and traditional cash crops are replacing the former cash crop – tobacco, as demand shrinks.

Upon his arrival in the province in 1792, the first proclamation issued by John Graves Simcoe, the Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada while still at Kingston, announced the names and boundaries he had decided upon as political boundaries for Upper Canada. For areas lying to the west of Kingston, he decided that county names would be a “mirror of Britain”. To accomplish this, the sequence of names for counties along Lake Ontario became Northumberland, Durham, York and Lincoln, and for counties along Lake Erie, the names became Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Kent. (This was the same sequence of county names in place along the eastern seacoast of England, running from the Scottish boundary down to the English Channel.) The proclamation defined the northern boundary of Norfolk County as being the Thames River. Norwich and Dereham townships were originally within the land area designated as belonging to Norfolk County in Upper Canada, and were named after the towns of Norwich and Dereham in Norfolk County in England.

Governor Simcoe with several other government officers, guided by a party of Six Nations warriors, conducted a wilderness tour on foot up the length of the Thames River in 1793 and decided to assign additional place names to mirror those they knew along the Thames River in England. Middlesex County was the name assigned to the area around a town site reserved at the “lower forks” in the river, to be called London; Dorchester was the name for a town site at the “middle forks”, and the area around the “upper forks” was to be Oxford – the same sequence of names as found along the Thames in England. When legislation was passed in Upper Canada in 1798 to implement these new divisions, Norwich and Dereham were separated from Norfolk County and added to the new Oxford County, which included also Burford, Blenheim, Blandford and Oxford townships – names drawn from Oxfordshire in England.

Shortly after returning from this tour, in March 1793, Simcoe received a petition from Thomas Ingersoll and associates asking for grant of a township to which they promised to bring settlers from New England. The group was granted the township of Oxford-on-the-Thames. In order to bring settlers into the wilderness area township, a road had to be built from Brantford up to the Thames River, a distance of thirty miles (forty-eight kilometers), and Thomas Ingersoll arranged that work over the course of the next two years. The first ones to become permanently settled in the township were likely Samuel Canfield Sr. and his wife and sons, who agreed to make their new home into a half-way stopping point for travelers along the road, at what became known as Oxford Centre.

Beachville was the heart of Oxford County with settlement beginning in 1791.

The Bostwicks, Ingersolls and Canfields were New England families who had made their start in the New World in the 1600s, and frontier living had been second nature to them for generations.

Settlement in the former Norwich Township came more than fifteen years after Oxford Township. The Norwich settlement was founded by two men: Peter Lossing and Peter De Long. Both men were from New York. Peter Lossing’s house was the first one in Norwich. It now stands by the old Quaker Meeting House. Both men where Quakers. The town of Norwich began as a completely Quaker settlement.

In 1799, the Township of Norwich was laid out by surveyor William Hambly into lines and concessions and 200-acre lots. The township was divided into North and South Norwich Townships in 1855.

In 1975, Oxford County underwent countywide municipal restructuring. The Village of Norwich and the Townships of East Oxford, North Norwich and South Norwich were amalgamated to create the Township of Norwich.

Norwich includes the communities of Beaconsfield, Bond’s Corners, Brown’s Corners, Burgessville, Cornell, Creditville, Curries, Eastwood, Hawtrey, Hink’s Corners, Holbrook, Milldale, Muir, Newark, New Durham, Norwich, Oriel, Otterville, Oxford Centre, Rock’s Mills, Rosanna, Springford, Summerville, Blows, and Vandecar.

Zorra Township

Zorra is a township in Oxford County in south-western Ontario. A predominantly rural municipality, Zorra was formed in 1975 through the amalgamation of East Nissouri, West Zorra and North Oxford townships. It is best known for the Highland Games weekend held each summer in Embro, celebrating the heritage of the Scottish pioneer families. The township comprises the communities of Banner, Bennington, Brooksdale, Brown’s Corners, Cody’s Corners, Dicksons Corners, Dunn’s Corner, Embro, Golspie, Granthurst, Harrington, Harrington West, Holiday, Kintore, Lakeside, Maplewood, McConkey, Medina, Rayside, Thamesford, Uniondale, Youngsville, and Zorra Station.

Among the earliest settlers of Zorra Township, were United Empire Loyalists from the New England States. Zorra was first surveyed in 1820 and Embro became a separate municipality in 1858. Embro is located on a branch of the Thames River. The first buildings were two distilleries owned by McDonald and Crittenden.

Flour, grist and oatmeal mills were built. John McDonald built a carding and cloth factory. Businesses started up: watchmaker and jeweler, boots and shoes, eight blacksmith shops, wagon and carriage makers, tinsmith, carpenters, potash manufacturer, four general stores, two cabinet makers, undertaker, three doctors, and a pump manufacturer. In 1875, Embro had two newspapers, “The Planet” and “The Review”, with a third added in 1880, “The Embro Courier”. The Embro Public Library started as a Mechanics Institute in 1882; it became a public library in 1895.

Ingersoll, Ontario Book 2

Ingersoll, Ontario Book 1

The town of Ingersoll is ten miles from Woodstock, twenty-one miles from London, and ninety-eight from Toronto. Ingersoll was incorporated in 1865, and by the enterprise of its inhabitants enjoyed a steady and progressive growth. Most of the town was built on the sides and summit of the high gravelly banks of the River Thames, which flows through it and supplies constant water power, of which due advantage was taken by several factories at the waterside. The town got its name from a pioneer family named Ingersoll, who were among the first settlers in this district and took a very prominent part in the early career of the community.

It was situated on the Great Western Division of the Grand Trunk Railway, and also on the Credit Valley Branch of the Canadian Pacific. The country around is fertile, and large quantities of cheese were shipped from here. The manufacture of flour and cornmeal, with woolen and planing mills, a tannery and four agricultural implement factories, formed its chief industries; grain, livestock, and general manufactured products, in addition to cheese, formed its chief shipments.

In 1886 a special effort was made to induce desirable factories to locate here and in the following year the John Morrow Machine Screw Works, the Evans Bros. and Littler Piano factory and the Hault furniture factory were secured by giving liberal bonuses. Later on, the St. Charles Condenser and the Ingersoll Nut Factory were opened.

Ingersoll was the first town in Canada to adopt the silica-barytic sidewalks in 1890 when a contract was given to Otto Guelich of Detroit, to construct a sidewalk on the east side of Thames Street from the Atlantic House to the Baptist Tabernacle, a distance of three blocks. In 1891 a local company was organized with Walter Mills as manager, and year by year the work has been carried on till now nearly every street on both sides has a nice, clean, smooth silica-barytic sidewalk, totaling about fifty miles.

Tavistock and Innerkip and Area

Tavistock is located 15 kilometers southeast of Stratford and five kilometers south of Shakespeare on County Road 59. In 1848, Captain Henry Eckstein founded Tavistock. The world championship crokinole tournament has been held here annually since 1999.

Innerkip is located on Oxford Road 29 north of Highway 401, northeast of Woodstock.

Huntingford is located on County Road 59, north of Woodstock, west of Innerkip.

Punkeydoodles Corners is located four miles east of Tavistock. Today the corner has a scattering of houses and farms. At one time it was a bustling stop along the Huron Road. The most popular legend about how it got its name is from the song “Yankee Doodle Dandy” which was popular in the 1800s and often sung around the piano at the inn and tavern located at the Corner during the late nineteenth century. Today, the corner is the meeting place of three districts – Oxford County, Perth County and the Region of Waterloo.

Hickson is located at the intersection of Highway 59 and County Road 8, about thirteen kilometers north of Woodstock and ten kilometers south of Tavistock. Hickson was founded in 1876 when the Port Dover and Lake Huron Railway created a whistle-stop here. The new village was named after Sir Joseph Hickson, the general manager of the Grand Trunk Railway.

Woodstock, Ontario Book 4

Woodstock, Ontario Book 3

Woodstock, Ontario Book 2

Woodstock, Ontario Book 1

Woodstock is located in the heart of South Western Ontario, at the junction of highways 401 and 403, 50 kilometers east of London and 60 kilometers west of Kitchener. Woodstock is the largest municipality in Oxford County, a county known for its rich farmland, and for its dairy and cash crop farming. As well as being “The Dairy Capital of Canada”, Woodstock also has a large industrial base, much of which is related to the auto manufacturing industry.

In 1792, Sir John Graves Simcoe became Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada and made plans for the development of the interior of Upper Canada. He envisioned a series of town sites linked by a military road and a system of rivers and canals, providing inland access during an era when commerce and settlements depended on major waterways. London, Chatham, Dorchester and Oxford were designated town sites with London as the defensible capital. The military road stretching from Burlington Bay through Woodstock to London provided an overland supply route for the safe movement of troops and settlers. Simcoe named this road Dundas Street after Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies.

To speed development in the sparsely populated interior of the province, Simcoe granted whole townships to land companies who were obligated to bring in settlers. Simcoe passed through the area now known as Woodstock and noted it a suitable “Town Plot” and settlement began here in 1800.

In the 1830s, a different group of immigrants were encouraged to settle in Oxford to ensure this community’s loyalty to the British crown. British naval and army officers placed on half-pay looked to the colonies for a new career at the conclusion of military service. The first to arrive was Alexander Whalley Light, a retired colonel who came to Oxford County in 1831. He was joined by Philip Graham in 1832, a retired captain of the Royal Navy, and Captain Andrew Drew, on half-pay from the Royal Navy, arrived in Woodstock to make preparations for his superior, Rear-Admiral Henry Vansittart, also on half-pay. Half-pay officers went to considerable lengths to clear their chosen parcels of land.

Admiral Vansittart commissioned Colonel Andrew Drew to build a church (Old St. Paul’s) in a new area of Oxford that was known as the “Town Plot”. The men later quarreled, which led to the construction of a second church known as “New St. Paul’s”.

Tillsonburg, Ontario

Tillsonburg is a town in Oxford County located about fifty kilometers southeast of London on Highway 3 at the junction of Highway 19 which connects to Highway 401.

The area was settled in 1825 by George Tillson and other immigrants from Massachusetts. A forge and sawmill were erected and roads built which led to the establishment of a settlement on the Big Otter Creek originally called Dereham Forge.

In 1836 the village was renamed Tillsonburg in honor of its founder. It was also in this year that the main street, Broadway, was laid out to its full 100-foot (30 meter) width. Because the village was predominantly a logging and wood product center, the street width was to accommodate the turning of three-team logging wagons. This width has become a benefit toward handling the pressures of modern-day traffic by providing angled parking. The extension of Broadway north was called Plank Line and is now known as Highway 19.

The water system supplied pure water for domestic use, and provided water power to such industries as a sawmill, planing mill, grist mill, spinning mill, pottery and a tannery. Many of these new establishments were owned, started, or financed by George Tillson.

In 1915, a Public Library was built with funds provided by the Carnegie Foundation, and the town’s Memorial Hospital was constructed in 1925. In the 1920s, major enterprises included milk production, manufacture of shoes, tractors, textiles and tobacco.