Drumbo acquired its name in 1852; the community was named after Drumbo,
Ireland. It is located in Blandford-Blenheim Township, Oxford County at the
crossroads of County Road #3 (Wilmot Street) and County Road #29 (Oxford
Street); this is south of the 401 Highway and 24 kilometers northeast of
Woodstock.
Princeton is located in Oxford County on Country Road #3, twenty-two
kilometers east of Woodstock. Etonia, east of Princeton, and Gobles, west of
Princeton, are both located on County Road 2. Richwood is located on Blenheim Road and Township Road 5, north of
Etonia.
The village of Wolverton is named after its founder, Enos Wolverton (1810-1893), who built up a successful milling
enterprise on the Nith River. Enos came to Upper Canada with his parents from Cayuga County, New York state in 1826.
He married Harriet Towl in 1834
and had two daughters, Roseltha (Rose)
and Melissa (Lissa), and five
sons, Alfred, Daniel, Alonzo, Jasper and Newton. Enos’ brother, Asa Wolverton, became a successful
businessman in nearby Paris, Ontario. The Crimean War (1854-1856) brought on an agricultural boom in Upper
Canada and increased the Wolvertons’ fortunes.
Washington is on County Road 3 (Washington Road) and Regional Road 8,
east of Plattsville and north of Drumbo.
Plattsville is located on Township Road 13 & 42 (Albert Street) and
Regional Road 8. It is located north of Highway 401, and 32 kilometers
northeast of Woodstock. The community was named for its founder, Edward Platt,
who settled in 1811 and built a flour mill.
Bright is located where County Roads 22 and 8 cross. Windfall is
located on Oxford Road 29, north of Highway 401, west of Drumbo, south of
Bright.
Ratho is located on Blandford Road and Township Road 13, northwest of
Bright.
Strathroy-Caradoc is located west of the City of London.
After the War of 1812, the British
government encouraged thousands of people from Britain to come to Southwestern
Ontario. There were three main reasons for this:
1. The British were afraid that Americans would invade through the Sydenham
River area again as they had at Baldoon. If there were settlements in the area,
the settlers could warn the British and fight against the Americans.
2. In England, the end of the war meant that many soldiers were out of work.
They were starving and homeless. In Ireland, landlords had mismanaged the
lands, which led to the Potato Famine. Since potatoes were the main source of
income and food, thousands of Irish were starving. In Scotland, landlords chose
to graze sheep in the Highlands, and they forced the Scottish Highlanders to
leave. In an effort to help these people, the British government began to give
away land in Upper Canada.
3. Soldiers of the War of 1812
and the war with France expected land rewards from the King of England; there
was no land left in Britain to give them. Land in Upper Canada was given away
instead.
Land
along the Sydenham River was sparsely settled, the land was fertile and flat
which made it easier to clear. The river gave settlers fresh water, and power
for their water mills. It could also be used as a highway to move goods to
Detroit, where they could be sold. A new road had been built between London and
Goderich, which made it easier to get to the Sydenham River by land.
When the government gave away land, there
were often conditions the new owner had to live up to, including building
roads, mills, and armies, but often, it meant inviting immigrants from Britain
to live on their land. For example, a settler might receive 20 000 acres of
land, but would be forced to give away 5,000 to other settlers. They would be
expected to organize how the immigrants would get to the new settlement, what
they would do when they arrived (such as raise sheep, beef or cotton), and help
them settle in by building churches and schools. This is how settlements and
villages were created along the Sydenham river.
In 1830 James Buchanan, the British Consul at New York City, acquired a
tract of 1,200 acres of unsettled land in Adelaide Township. His son, John
Stewart, settled there and built a sawmill and gristmill on the Sydenham River.
These pioneer industries formed the nucleus of a settlement which was named
Strathroy means “Red Valley†in Gaelic, and is named after James Buchanan’s birthplace in County Tyrone, Ireland. The
construction of a branch line of the Great Western Railway through Strathroy in
1856 stimulated the growth of the community. The line was eventually connected to
Michigan at Windsor, providing the farmers of Strathroy with an extra market
for their produce.
Cheltenham – In 1816 Charles and Martha Haines and three children left
England for New York; the following year they arrived in York, Upper Canada,
where Charles, a millwright, built mills. In 1819, the Chinguacousy Township
survey was completed and Haines purchased 100 acres along the Credit River with
a mill site west of Creditview Road. The Haines family settled in what he named
‘Cheltenham’ after his birthplace. It is located north-west of Brampton.
In 1827 he built a grist mill, dammed the river and chiseled mill
stones. In 1842, Frederick Haines, the second son, built Cheltenham’s first
store. In 1845, the first tavern was built and run by C. Spence. In 1847, to
meet demand, Haines built a larger mill with three runs of stone, and he constructed
a saw mill on the south side of the river. In 1848, William Henry built an Inn.
In 1850,the first blacksmith shop was built. In 1852, Cheltenham post office
opened with William Allan as first postmaster. By 1853, Cheltenham had three
hotels.
In the 1860s, the commercial core expanded with the addition of four
shoe stores, a saddlery, and two cabinet makers. In 1874, the Hamilton &
Northwestern Railway arrived north of the village (later became CNR). In 1877,
the Credit Valley Railway arrived about one kilometer east of the village,
accessed by Station Road. In the 1870s, Kee’s steam tannery was started and two
distilleries produced ‘Cheltenham Wheat Whisky’. In 1887, fire destroyed a
major block of buildings; rebuilding began. In 1914, Interprovincial Brick
Company opened a plant just west of the village center.
In 1822, Joseph Kenny was awarded a Crown Grant in Chinguacousy
Township of 100 acres along the Credit River on which much of Terra Cotta now
sits. It is located south of Cheltenham. In 1857, Henry Tucker purchased 40
acres from Kenny to build grist and saw mills powered by a dam and mill race on
the Credit River. Simon Plewes bought the mills in 1859 and the hamlet became
known as Plewes Mills.
By the time a church, the Wesleyan Methodist Church, was built in 1862
the village had been renamed Salmonville for the annual spawning frenzy. A post
office opened in 1866 and by 1874 there were thirty-four surveyed lots in the
hamlet on the banks of the Credit River.
This early community spread westwards and straddled the boundary of
Chinguacousy and Esquesing townships. This divided the village schoolchildren,
their two schoolhouses being in opposite directions. By 1873 the village had
acquired telegraph facilities, two sawmills and a grist mill, and in 1877 the
Hamilton & Northwestern Railway arrived, stimulating local industry and
farm exports.
Industry began with brickworks exploiting the local red clay, and by
1891 the post office was renamed Terra Cotta. In the 1930s, the brickworks
became victims of the Depression and only a kiln chimney remains. Quarries east
of Terra Cotta were established in the 1840s and the arrival of the railway
broadened their market reach, allowing local sandstone to be used as far away
as Ottawa in the Parliament Buildings.
In the 1940s, community enterprise expanded into recreation. The
river’s abundant water resources were used to develop Clancy’s Ranch as a
weekend resort, expanded in 1949 into Terra Cotta Playground, and purchased in
1958 by Credit Valley Conservation.
Caledon is a town in the Regional Municipality of Peel in the Greater Toronto Area. Caledon remains primarily rural. It consists of an amalgamation of a number of urban areas, villages, and hamlets; its major urban center is Bolton on its eastern side adjacent to York Region.
Caledon is
one of three municipalities of Peel Region. The town is just northwest of the
city of Brampton. In 1973 Caledon acquired more territory when Chinguacousy
dissolved with most sections north of Mayfield Road (excluding Snelgrove) transferred
to the township.
Some of
the smaller communities in the town include: Alton, Belfountain, Boston Mills, Caledon, Caledon Village, Campbell’s
Cross, Cheltenham, Inglewood, Mono Mills, Sandhill, Terra Cotta, and Victoria.
The region is very sparsely populated with farms.
By 1869,
Belfountain was a picturesque village in the Township of Caledon County Peel on the Forks of the Credit Road on the
Credit River. There were stagecoaches to Erin and Georgetown.
After the survey of Caledon Township was completed in 1819, pioneers
such as the Grahams, McColls, McCannells, Martins, Whites and McGregors
settled in the area around present day Inglewood. They cleared the land,
sharing common problems and interests.
In 1843, on the nearby Credit
River, Thomas Corbett built a dam and dug a mill race to provide water power to
run the Riverdale Woolen Mill. David Graham became a partner in the mill in
1860, and after a fire, reconstructed it in stone in 1871. By this time, Graham
was Corbett’s son-in-law. The mill attracted potential employees and their
families to the area. Early settlers discovered deposits of sandstone and
dolomite nearby on the Niagara Escarpment. Joachim Hagerman opened a quarry in
1875, the first of many.
The Hamilton & Northwestern
Railway arrived in 1877 and was crossed over by the Credit Valley Railway in
1878. The railways provided cheap and easily accessible transportation, for
both locally quarried stone and manufactured goods of the woolen mill. A
general store and railway hotel were soon built.
The village housing built in this
period, much of it by Graham, reflected the Ontario Cottage form popular in
that Victorian era. Most houses were
built using local lumber from the William Thompson Planing Mill, a more
affordable option than brick. These cottages usually featured a front verandah,
a center door symmetrically flanked by windows and a steep roof line with a
front center gable surrounding a Gothic or arched window, the basic elements of
the Victorian Gothic style. In Inglewood, most homes were left unadorned, a
style referred to locally as Rural or Carpenter’s Gothic.
The increase in population gave
rise to many small industries, and from the mid-1880s until 1910, Inglewood’s
commercial growth included several general stores, a blacksmith, a livery and
wagon maker’s shop, a butcher shop, a bakery, a general hardware and tinsmith
business, a barber shop, glove factory, post office, library, and a branch
office of the Northern Crown Bank.
Before Canada became a nation in 1867, Port Hope was already a boom town. Its main streets were thronged with horse-drawn carriages and farmers’ wagons, its plank sidewalks crowded with shoppers and merchandise. Wood-burning locomotives pulled heavily loaded trains through town on their way to a harbor filled with schooners and steamships. Solid brick commercial blocks and houses lined the streets.
The town grew rapidly from four
families of English descent who arrived by boat in 1793 and settled at the
river mouth. Until then the area had been home to aboriginal groups—Huron, then
Iroquois, and finally Mississauga—attracted by the salmon and sturgeon that
swarmed in its river.
The first European settlers came
from the new United States. They had chosen to follow the British crown after
the American Revolution. More families arrived including blacksmiths,
carpenters, bricklayers, and merchants. The mills drew farmers from fifty and
sixty kilometers away. Grain that could not be milled was bought by
distilleries—there were eventually five along the river—that produced a famous
Port Hope whisky. In 1856 the Grand Trunk Railway connected Port Hope to
Toronto and the Atlantic seaboard. Its viaduct over the Ganaraska River was the
second greatest engineering challenge on the route, exceeded only by bridging
the St. Lawrence River at Montreal.
Another railway heading north from Port Hope opened up the vast timberlands and new farms of central Ontario and stretched to Peterborough and Lindsay. Eventually it reached
Georgian Bay, at Midland. Down this line came great loads of timber and grain.
Some went east to England, but most was exported to the USA through Rochester
across the lake.
Port Hope is a heritage community situated
on the north shore of Lake Ontario in Northumberland County and offers both an
urban and rural paradise with the perfect combination of heritage charm, modern
vibrancy and cultural allure. The Ganaraska River runs through the heart of
town past historic buildings.
The Township was opened in 1792
and named in honor of Colonel Henry Hope, a member of the Legislative Council
of Canada.
Before Canada became a nation in 1867, Port Hope was already a boom town. Its main streets were thronged with horse-drawn carriages and farmers’ wagons, its plank sidewalks crowded with shoppers and merchandise. Wood-burning locomotives pulled heavily loaded trains through town on their way to a harbor filled with schooners and steamships. Solid brick commercial blocks and houses lined the streets.
The town grew rapidly from four
families of English descent who arrived by boat in 1793 and settled at the
river mouth. Until then the area had been home to aboriginal groups—Huron, then
Iroquois, and finally Mississauga—attracted by the salmon and sturgeon that
swarmed in its river.
The first European settlers came from the new United States. They had chosen to follow the British crown after the American Revolution. So had Elias Smith, a Montreal merchant who, with two partners, Jonathan and Abraham Walton, financed their arrival. In return for settling forty families on the land and building a sawmill and flour mill to serve them, the partners received a grant of land roughly the size of modern urban Port Hope.
More families arrived including
blacksmiths, carpenters, bricklayers, and merchants. The mills drew farmers
from fifty and sixty kilometers away. Grain that could not be milled was bought
by distilleries—there were eventually five along the river—that produced a
famous Port Hope whisky. Its most rapid growth began when railways
revolutionized travel in what is now Ontario. In 1856 the Grand Trunk Railway
connected Port Hope to Toronto and the Atlantic seaboard. Its viaduct over the
Ganaraska River was the second greatest engineering challenge on the route,
exceeded only by bridging the St. Lawrence River at Montreal.
Another railway heading north
from Port Hope opened up the vast timberlands and new farms of central Ontario
and stretched to Peterborough and Lindsay. Eventually it reached Georgian Bay,
at Midland. Down this line came great loads of timber and grain. Some went east
to England, but most was exported to the USA through Rochester across the lake.
Walton Street was named after
Captain Jonathan Walton who brought the first settlers here. The Walton and
Smith families were among the original petitioners for land grants and figured
very prominently in the Town’s history. Port Hope was incorporated as a police village
in 1834.
Cobourg is a town in Southern Ontario ninety-five kilometers (59 miles) east
of Toronto and 62 kilometers (39 miles) east of Oshawa. It is located along
Highway 401. To the south, Cobourg borders Lake Ontario.
Cobourg is a town in Southern Ontario ninety-five kilometers (59 miles) east
of Toronto and 62 kilometers (39 miles) east of Oshawa. It is located along
Highway 401. To the south, Cobourg borders Lake Ontario.