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PAGE SIXTEEN--NINTH SECTION = THE FREE PRESS. LONDON. ONTARIO. SATURDAY. JUNE 11. 1949 = Kent, Chatham, Morpeth Modern Times in Kent County as Far Back as 1847-1850 Began By Glen Hancock ONE YEAR AFTER THE LONDON Free Press was founded, the County of Kent lost its northern frontier, which had stretched as far as the Hudson Bay territory, and broke away from Essex County. This was in the year 1850. Three years before this, the county town of Chatham had graduated from the ranks of the junior towns in Western Ontario and established a courthouse and a territorial jail. These three years, 1847 to 1850, marked the beginning of "modern times" in Kent County, and with a substantial history behind it, the plentiful district bounded by Lake Erie speeded toward its present state of prosperity. Chatham was the key city of early Kent. John Graves Simcoe was the instigator of the settlement, but it was only a secondary choice. His favorite sites had been London, which he planned to make his capital, and Shrewsbury on Rondeau Bay, which was his dream of the Ideal city. His dream never came true, but the CORNHILL'S CHATHAM Is Giving Immediate Delivery of White Stock Brick Shale Face Brick Any quantity, immediate delivery throughout Western Ontario. You can depend on our quality. BUILDING TILE For Immediate Delivery IN LONDON Phone Peter Fisher Metcalf 3974-W CHATHAM SONS LIMITED - PHONE 403 -- ONTARIO city which he had named after the great English statesman became the heart of Kent County. Simcoe had meant Chatham to be a shipbuilding town. A Detroit company had erected weighs in preparation for a boom in shipping. But the hulls were never completed. During the War of 1812, some of the British ships were sunk in J^ake Erie, and during excavations in 1901 one of these frigates was exposed. Historical Society In 1830 Chatham consisted of a house and a fruit orchard. The organization of Kent County's Historical Society came during the early years, when it was realized that agriculture was to be the industry for the district. This occurred in Howard Township in 1837. The Chatham Journal was founded four years later; the first Chatham Pair was held in 1842, and steamboat and stage transportation was largely replaced in 1852 by the Great West Railway. Kent County is noted for many things. It is noted for the tradition of its people, for the grey-brown podsol top soil and the fruit and vegetables which are grown in it; it is noted for prosperous towns, for Chatham and its sugar-beet refinery, Wallace-burg and its glass, Dresden and its canning plants, Tilbury and its auto-part industry. It is famous for the little rural crossroads where people have lived in the air of freedom for over 150 years. With the exception of Essex County, the County of Kent once included all the land west and South of what was known as Canada. Because of this, Kent enjoys a certain seniority among the counties of Western Ontario. Etienne Brule Ontario lagged behind the eastern part of Canada in its settlement, although Etienne Brule visited Lake Ontario in 1615, soon after Port Royal was founded in Nova Scotia. It wasn't until 1780, however, that the first settlement was made on the shores of the Niagara River. When white people had penetrated the unreached wilderness to this extent, the settlement of what was soon to be Kent county was inevitable. In 1792 the County of Kent, that great stretch of land which was then only geographically a part of the new Upper Canada, had only six families. It was in this year that the great figure in Ontario history, John Graves Simcoe, formed the first counties of the province. Three of them, among these the County of Kent, were so sparsely populated that they became part of the other 16 counties for purposes of voting. The forests of Kent were filled with oak, walnut, hickory and beech. The soil was fertile, the climate warm and humid, and the land well drained. Woodmen's Families There are many men and women behind the first scenes of the expanding frontier. There were Simcoe, Talbot, Selkirk and Rankin, who were the leaders; but less is known about those woodmen and their families who together fought the savagery of the unknown, the Indians, the climate, despair. Some of the descendants of those people still live on homesteads of the rich lands of Kent, where corn, tobacco and sugar beets grow best, where pork and beans are as symbolic as they were to the French Habitant. The Earl of Selkirk, that •champion of the Scottish serf, appeared in Kent County in 1803. He was looking for a new land upon which to settle his countrymen. In Scotland the peasants had been turned off the lands to that the nobility might have greater hunting grounds. In Kent County their hegira ended. Selkirk had settled 800 people on Prince Edward Island, and 111 Highlanders were established on Big Bear Creek, now Sydenham. Selkirk named the settlement Baldoon. Selkirk Although Selkirk is better known for his exploits in the Red River district, his efforts were among the first to open up the frontier in what is now Western Ontario. He realized that colonization was impeded by lack of roads, so, in order to open the beautiful land bordering Lake Erie, he offered £20,000 for a road between Baldoon and York (now Toronto). During the first winter at Baldoon 42 colonists died. The winter was severe and the marsh impassable. History continued to unwind. On the riverbanks of the Sydenham and the Thames, settlement after settlement grew up. Some of the settlements disappeared, but others, with their churches, their schools and their railroads, became towns and cities. Wallaceburg has become a port of entry, a shipyard and a factory town. Dresden has a waterworks plant for the area and a canning factory helps consume the produce from the fertile surrounding areas. Blenheim, incorporated in 1885, and Wheatley, Tilbury and Ridge-town are among the Kent towns which symbolize the energy of the Western Ontario people. --From the John Ross Root King Street West, Chatham, C.W., 1860 Chatham Considered For New Capital Town FORTUNE WAS UNKIND to Chatham in its beginnings -- like London, the site was considered as the capital of Upper Canada but was turned down for York, now Toronto. For 150 years Chatham knew only the normal growth of a well-situated community. Then in 1945 fortune smiled and the city began an industrial expansion without parallel in the history of Canada. Despite being rejected as the future capital, the site was soon settled. In 1794, when most of the district was virgin forest, the Government established a shipyard opposite what is now Victoria avenue. For a while the shipyard was quite active, for 23 men were employed there in 1795. The same year Abraham Ire-dell surveyed the site on orders from the Government, laying out 113 lots and leaving the land between Chatham's two streams to ing -- before the War of 1812 -- the site of Chatham was deserted except for the surveyor Iredell. Commander Stranded In 1813, Chatham just missed finding another niche in the pages of history. That year the British Commander in the west, General Proctor, was left stranded by the defeat of a British naval force in Lake Erie. Proctor immediately began a retreat from Detroit towards Lake Ontario up the Thames. Tecumseh, the wily Indian chief, would have become Tecumseh Park. About this time, top, Thomas Clark haited ^ retreat ^at^the^ forks "'John McGregor, turned the £^^ ^jj^ a stlmd there, continued the retreat to to As hundreds of young businessmen returned from the war they envisioned a greater Chatham and set about to realize their dream. With not one new business started as a result of the war, these men started from scratch. Utilizing the natural benefits of resources and location of the area, they publicized the city across Canada and the United States. From 1944 to 1948 the number of businesses increased from 63 • to 119 -- the population almost doubled. Companies from all corners of the continent studied the advantages of the district, realized the vast wealth of the surrounding farms seeking outlets, gauged the potentialities of future markets there, and swarmed into the city, buying building lots and starting construction. At first only small firms began operations -- later bigger companies, erecting million-dollar plants, speeded the expansion. Chatham is taking its sudden expansion in its stride and is planning and laying the foundations for a steadv nrnsi^ritv front of the cities of Canada. mill over to him. McGregor built more than one mill, one being destroyed by Tecumseh's Indians in 1813 to prevent it falling into the hands of the Americans. With the decline of shipbuild- RYANCRETE MADE IN LONDON Western Ontario's Most Famous Building Products Congratulations: London Free Press Our association has not been lengthy, but we've enjoyed your co-operation, and assistance . . . may we grow stronger together. Whether you have a small or a large construction project you will appreciate the superior quality of Ryancrete Builders Products - - - Ryancrete is used successfully for the building of sidewalks, roads, garages, hen houses, hog houses, homes, office buildings, theatres, hospitals. When you build with Ryancrete you build with the ""==<• by Test." High-Pressure, Steam-Cured, Pre-Shrunk Concrete Blocks Ready-Mixed Concrete and Concrete Bricks » Sold Under the Registered Trade Name "Ryancrete" RYAN BUILDERS'SUPPLIES LTD TELEPHONE FAIRMONT 5960 LONDON ASHLAND AVE. AND BRYDGES ST. Thamesville, where the battle was fought and lost. For the rest of the war, the Americans were dominant west of Niagara. Not long after the war's end, however, settlers began to move in, by 1820 the first church had been erected, by 1830 there were several houses, and by 1835 the population was around 300. The first industry in the town proper was a carding and grist mill built in 1833. From an early historical booklet "County Landmarks," a vivid description of Chatham can be found. "The street forming part of the London or Tecumseh road was little better than a decent trail full of holes and stumps, twisting along the bends of the river, and barely passable for the stage and wheeled vehicles. Within the town plot there was little clearing. . . . The barrack ground was under crop . . . but with the exception of a few other spots near the market there were no further clearings." River Service After 1840 the north side of the river began to be settled, and ships traveled the Thames. As early as 1840 a regular service connected Chatham and Detroit. The community became a town in 1855, and Smith's "Canada," published two years later, says of the town "it is of considerable business. It has rapidly increased in size during the last three or four years . . . now contains six churches and chapels, a new stone jail and court house ... a new bridge has been constructed across the Thames at a cost of two thousand pounds ... a stage leaves Chatham every morning at eight o'clock for London -- fare three dollars and a half." For the next two decades Chatham grew steadily, if slowly. By 1871 the population was over 5,000. Just a decade the population had almost doubled -- to over 9,000. And soon after the town became a city. The city watched the turn of the century--still growing. It grew with the boom of World War I, slumped with the post-war depressions, and then watched a Second World War threaten and explode. Like all other manufacturing and agricultural centres it expanded under the pressure of World War II, but unlike many other communities, it continued1 its expansion into the post-war years. Manufacturing Town Even at the end of World War II Chatham had far outgrown the comment made in 1881 that the town was "essentially a centre of agricultural trade . . . and few of the factories are remarkable for their extent. Their scope is sufficiently diversified, and their numbers sufficiently great, to constitute Chatham quite a manufacturing town." Greater expansion was in store. First Trees Cut On Site of Village EVEN BEFORE the settlement plans of Colonel Talbot brought pioneers along Talbot street to the area around Morpeth, Joseph Woods, his son, James, and his brother, Robert, cut the first tree on the present site of the village. That was in 1816, just after the end of the War of 1812. The three did not spend the winter of 1816-17 there, but returned in the spring, along with many other settlers. Stores were built in the years after 1826, and the ever-increasing acreage being turned by the plow made Morpeth a busy trading centre along the highway. For 50 years the village grew steadily. In 1860 it boasted seven stores, three hotels, as well as tailors, shoemakers, wagon works and other light industries of the day. But the year 1872 saw the Canada Southern Railway pushed through to the north, and Morpeth was forced to give way to the newer village of Ridgetown. In recent years, however, the ^(v57plnrimAnf nf tViA nrnvirtr.iftl way No. 3 again to prominence. 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