The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

.4 ears-*~:.¢w*~“ 71,}..â€" _.r 3343 i "'n~§:olmaan. FOCUS ON LONG POINT THE HISTORY OF LONG POINT These stories, and others that I hOpe will appear in these pages in the future, are not necessarily finished. They simply describe the extent of my research at the time of publication. I welcome input from any reader who may detect errors in the stories, or from anyone who can provide further details or pictures, or leads on other stories of Long Point. Art Shaw, R. R. #1 Lyndhurst (continued from June issue) In 1820, Inward Collins received the grant of Lot 3. In 1824 he sold it to William Bryan. That same year Joseph Warren took up the east half of Lot 1 in the eighth. In the spring of 1828 a number of settlers arrived on Long Point. Among them was Richard Singleton who took up the west half of Lot 1. He immediately bought out Joseph warren on the east half, and sold the south oneâ€"quarter to another new arrival, Anson Lee. Thomas wansend took up part of Lot 4 where his grandson lived until 1945, and Jacob Bryan and Richard Johnson arrived on Lot A. Jacob Bryan accumulated most of Lot A from various owners before his death in 1872. His farm is one of the few still operating on Long Point, and is the oldest farm remaining in the name of the original grantee. The same year John Wheeler took land in Lot 3. However, the Wheelers are said to have built a log cabin on the front of Lot 8 in the ninth Concession in 1830. On May 14 of that year, Mrs. Wheeler gave birth to a baby girl. Winter set in before the chinking was finished in their cabin and baby Sophiais diapers froze each night in a pail behind the stOVe. In 1858 SOphia and Thomas Berry, her husband of 11 years, moved to Sweet's Corners where their descendants still reside. As these families built their first log cabins and began clearing the virgin forests, the neighbouring lots began to fill up. In 1831, Henry Nevin took up part of Lot 4 and William and Amelia Tye bought the east half of Lot A in the ninth. In 1832, Enoch Chase bought 50 acres from Richard Singleton in Lot 1. In 1833 Matthew Ryan arrived on Lot 2 and the following year Benjamin Bigford and Daniel O'Connor joined him on the same lot. Daniel O'Connor gradually acquired all of Lot 2 which still belongs to his great grandson. Joel and Melinda Rice came in 1840 and sold out the following year. However, their name is perpetuated on the map at Rice's Narrows and Rice's mountain. By 1842 the population was such that there was a need for a school. Richard Singleton, for whom Singleton Lake is named, built his beautiful stone house that year, and the log cabin which he vacated became a classroom for the instruction of the children. The stone house still stands on Lot 1 south of Singleton Lake, now owned by Mrs. Garrean. The cabin stood on the opposite side of the old road from the house, and south of the creek which flows between them on a knoll where a subsequent driveshed has recently collapsed. William Warren came from Ireland to Long Point in 1847. Benedict Kelsey came in 1849. In 1853 William Killenbeck came to Lot 7 in the eighth. That same year George Killenbeck settled on Lot 11 in the seventh which borders on what we now call Killenbeck Lake. By 1885, almost all the land had been taken except for several tracts of rock on which no one could subsist. By that time there had arrived (in approximate order) William Plunkett, Tobias Bevins, John Slack, Harvey and George Weeks, Arthur Bryan, William Perry, Patrick McAvoy, Isaac Larose and John Moorhead. The Moorheads were acquaintances of the Plunketts in Newtonards, Iteland, and immigrated to the same area. Besides these families there were many others who are not mentioned because of the brevity of their residence in the area. By 1853, it was obvious that a larger school was required and a Board of Trustees was formed for So S. No. 5, Long POinto They purchased a building lot from Daniel O'Connor in Lot 2 at the junction of the Lyndhurst-Black Rapids Road and the township road which follows Grippen Creek to Ellisville. The stone school which is now a residence was built in 1862 from sandstone quarried from a ridge in Lot 1, Concession 9 along the road to Lyndhurst. Cost of construction was $378. In 1885, the enrolment was 85. Luckily, the full enrolment was never in attendance as the weather often precluded travel on the primitive roads, and farm work took precedence over book learning. Asher Lee, a veteran of that period, recalled that in the fall of the year there were sometimes three kids in each seat and three on each of the wide windowsills. The picture accompanying this article is believed to have been taken in 1888. For many years Anglican and Methodist Church services were held in the school on alternate Sundays as well as Sunday School and prayer meetings led by Arga Sherman and other itinerant preachers. In the early days, the Gananoque River was crossed by fording the stream at Black Rapids. Both banks of the river are steep at this point and the wagon road descended by hairpin turns on each bank. The ford was two hundred feet upstream from the present bridge. In 1888 a steel bridge was built (see picture), the abutments of which are still visible on the downstream side of the existing bridge. There was an earlier wooden bridge of which no evidence remains and no written record can be found. The steel bridge preserved half of the hairpin descent on the west bank , (which became notorious as the Black Rapids Hill) but facilitated a level approach from the east. The old wagon road abandoned in 1888 is still Long Point School - Class of 1888 Back Row, 1 to r ': Ike Plunkett, Joe Tye, Frank Tye, Johnson Moorhead, Alfred Ellis (behind Johnson Moorhead), Sarah Liza Sheldon, Jane Moorhead, Patience Ellen S' leton, Ella Seabrook (Mrs. Jim Townsend , Maggie Kelsey, Liz Henderson, Edith Lee, Fanny O'Donoghue (teacher), Benny Thurston, John Meorhead and Charles O'Connor (trustees). in front of Maggie Kelsey (?) Front Row : Charlie Tye, Ross Killenbeck, John Pluhkett, , Eflith Tye, Patience Tye (Mrs. Jim Dillong, Sophia Sheldon (Mrs. Benedict Kelsey , Sadie Bryan, Lizzy Tye (kneeling) Lydia Perry (Spicer), Charles Burns, Jim Burns, , Will Warren, Fergus O'Connor, Horace Warren, Eh Kelsey, Phillip Kelsey. ***HH***HHH***HHH***HHH***HHH* visible in the woods on the east bank much overgrown by trees and obstructed by rock slides. Most of the farms of the period were little more than subsistence operations by which families produced their own requirements. Cattle were not a source of income and were kept only for milk, butter and meat, the size of the herd varying only with the size of the family. Hogs and fowl were kept for meat and eggs, and horses to work the land. The original barns were only big enough to shelter the animals and their feed for winter, and the cleared lands were no more than required to grow the feed. Much depended on the family garden which produced great quantities of potatoes for the root cellar. Only near the towns and villages was there any market for farm produce, and on Long Point cash was hard to come by. Some farmers ran sheep which produced wool for yarn and homespun cloth, thus providing one more commodity without cash expenditure. Eyery farmer had his own timber at hand when buildings were required and many spent their winters cutting logs to sell at the mill in the spring. Others, especially young men without families, hired out for the winter in logging camps in the Ottawa Valley. Many ran traplines in the winter and sold their pelts to the fur buyer in the spring. Some farmers had a sideline, such as George Lee, who had a small blacksmith shop on the front of Lot 1. He was quite mechanically-inclined and besides doing repairs for his neighbours, he worked on perfecting a perpetual motion machine in a shed which he kept locked. In 1913 he traded properties with Isaac Larose and moved to Larose Bay on Charleston Lake (see picture in May issue). Mike Slack, who lived at Black Rapids, was a carpenter and boat builder as well as a farmer. Some chose to burn line which was used for mortar, plaster and whitewash and could be sold wherever there was building going on. The crystalline