Uppermost Canada by Douglas R;

Author:Douglas, R;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Published: 2017-06-05T00:00:00+00:00

A few days later Hands learned that Gouin had a competitor seeking the Sombra postmastership: Neil Campbell, “Located in as desirable a place as any in the Township and half way from Chatham to the Rapids of St. Clair.”72

Some attention was devoted to roads and bridges in the northern townships—the river road through Sarnia Township, and another beside the north branch of Bear Creek (modern North Sydenham River) in Sombra, for example. By July 1835, however, four thousand pounds granted by the province for roads in 1833 and 1834 was exhausted, and a further request for a road in Plympton had to be refused for lack of funds.

Sarnia Township was attracting the attention of absentee speculators. Samuel Street of Niagara was one, whose attempted purchase of 14,777 acres in 1834 was opposed by Captain Richard Emeric Vidal, lately retired from the Royal Navy and settled on the St. Clair River, on the ground that the land was worth more than the 1s. 10d. per acre that Street was offering. After a year of haggling, a total price of £4,494. 13s. 5d. was agreed upon.

By 1835 a hamlet on the east bank near the upper end of the St. Clair River had come into existence and acquired a name: “Buenosayres.”73 It appears that the name must have been speedily withdrawn and replaced by Glasgow at a meeting of the inhabitants held about October 14, and that at another public meeting between November 16, 1835, and January 6, 1836, Glasgow was succeeded by a name less likely to lead to confusion with other world capitals: Port Sarnia.

Another of the communities coming into being on the St. Clair River in 1835 was Corunna, in Moore Township—place-names, like many others, having connections to Lieutenant Governor Sir John Colborne.74 Wallaceburg, at the forks of Big Bear Creek, was also laid out early in 1835, as a subdivision by the owner of lot 13 in the second concession of Sombra Township. One of the advantages of which Wallaceburg could boast was “a good, substantial floating bridge on Bear Creek,” at that location.75 Froomfield (originally Froomefield, or Talfourd’s, after settler Froome Talfourd) sprang up by 1836. Uneasy and perhaps embarrassed at their own lack of familiarity with the new, northern townships, the authorities at Sandwich asked surveyor John A. Wilkinson to obtain a map of the area.

In October 1836, dissension similar to that accompanying the evolution of the Huron Reserve into Anderdon Township in Essex County marked the surrender of land in Zone Township, on the north side of the River Thames.76 Zone was part of the Moravian Reserve, whose population declined as the disaffected moved away to Missouri.

By March 1837, Wilkinson’s plan for Corunna having been considered by the bureaucrats in Surveyor General John Macaulay’s office, they had certain deficiencies to call to his attention. The plan was not signed; the accompanying field notes were not notarized; dimensions were given for one of each type of block shown on the plan, but not for all, which

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