History of Elma Township and Perth County, Ontario

The Huron Tract and the Queen's Bush

By 1650, Iroquois raids from the east pushed the various nations in southern Ontario out, killing many and forcing many to flee or be captured. After fifty years, the Ojibwa (Chippewa) moved into southern Ontario in small numbers from Michigan and northern Ontario, to fill the void, once the Iroquois five Nations signed a peace treaty with the French. Between 1825-1836, two treaties between the Chippewa and the Upper Canada government allowed the opening of the Huron Tract, and the Queen’s Bush to the north, for settlement. The Canada Company surveyed the million acres of the Huron Tract, all of which opened for settlement by 1840.

The Canada Company was incorporated in 1824 and the Huron Road was surveyed and built by 1828-1829. This allowed access to the Huron Tract which extended from Goderich to Guelph. Three taverns were placed 20 miles apart between New Hamburg and Goderich. The first settlers came to Stratford along the Huron Road in 1832. A tavern named the Shakespeare Inn was the first building erected at Stratford.

A campaign to attract immigrants from Germany, Ireland and Scotland resulted in early settlers arriving from those areas to the townships of Ellice, North and South Easthopes and Hibbert. Perth County has the second highest German population in Ontario, following the Kitchener-Waterloo area, and many of the cemetery stones in Ellice and other townships are in German script.

The townships were named after directors of the Canada Company. Thomas Mercer Jones is responsible for naming most of the area municipalities, including St. Marys (after his wife) and Stratford (after Stratford-on-Avon).

[The Canada Company, which would now be considered one of the biggest land grabs in history, was a group of financiers from England who were fronted by John Galt who gave his name to a town which is now part of the City of Cambridge. The original base of the C.C. was Guelph but Galt moved his operations further south and from Galt drove a road to Goderich on Lake Huron which basically follows the present Provincial Hwy. # 8.

The Huron Tract as the Canada Company [land] was known, incorporated the present townships of North Easthope, Ellice, Logan, (in what is now Perth County) McKillop, Hullett and Colborne on the northern boundary. Downie, Blanshard, Fullarton and Hibbert are also now included in Perth County. The other townships were Biddulph, Usborne, Tuckersmith, Goderich, Stanley, Hay, Stephen, McGillivray, Williams and Bosanquet. These
names all belonged to governors and directors of the Canada Company.

This area encompasses part of the present day townships of Perth (Stratford), Huron, (Goderich), Middlesex (London) and Lambton (Sarnia).

The term Queen's Bush is mainly a generic name for the country lying immediately north of the Huron Tract and was often referred to as the North West long before anyone knew anything of Western Canada. Certainly, Wellesley. Mornington, Elma, Grey, Moriss, Howick, Wallace, Minto etc. were considered part of the Queen's Bush. These
townships were mainly opened up by squatters who moved onto free land wherever they felt like it.

Their reason for avoiding the Canada Co, was that they [C.C.] had not fulfilled their obligations to build roads and the infrastructure necessary in their area and these settlers felt they might as well have free land which was in about the same condition as paying for the C.C. Land.

As early as 1835 people were settling on the lake ports such as Kincardine and they had driven a road from there (now # 4) through to Walkerton, Hanover and Durham where it connected with the Garafraxa Road (now # 6) from Guelph to Owen Sound and Collingwood and Penetanguishene which were all ports on Georgian Bay. The area north of the Durham Road was generally referred to as Indian Country.

The counties as would be recognizable to-day came into being about 1852 and it took some more time before the townships were organized due to the problem with the surveyors and the general inertia of the government.

I have come across a document, in which, my gr-grandfather, Oliver Mayberry and his neighbour William Chalmers, who settled on the Mornington -Wellesley boundary both paid $100.00 to the Widow Howden for her to sign a quit claim giving up her right to land which must have been close to, and probably lying across, the two new claims. A commission was set up to hear claims of the various land locations claimed by squatters and they make intriguing reading in the Township papers.
-
Don]

Perth County was so named in 1849. Previous suggestions were Peel and Bannockburn (why Bannockburn, I don't know!) John Linton selected the name Perth to commemorate early settlers who came from Perthshire, Scotland.
Source: W. S. Johnston, p. 54

Donegal - the original name was Buchananville because there were so many Buchanans; seven Buchanan brothers had settled there in 1848. The first postmaster, John Foster, came from Donegal, Ireland, and suggested this name.
Source: Reveries of a Pioneer: Elma

Atwood - was first named Elma Center in 1854. In 1876, when the railway came through, it became Newry Station (Newry was nearby). However, in 1883, a new name was suggested "when Eliza Gray of Detroit observed that the new hamlet was in the shadow of a surrounding wood, and her uncle William Dunn proposed the adoption of Atwood." Source: Place Names of Ontario, p. 17-18. ]


Between 1848-1856 the northern part of the county which was part of the Queen’s Bush was opened for settlement. The townships in this area included Mornington, Elma and Wallace. In 1853, Perth County separated from Huron County when its new courthouse and jail were completed in Stratford.
http://www.visitperth.ca/dev/history.html

Agriculture is important to Perth County. Following the wheat midge which destroyed crops and caused an economic depression in the 1870s, farmers turned to cooperative dairying resulting in the creation of creameries and cheese factories. By the 1880s, Perth County was the second largest producer of cheese in Ontario (Oxford County was the first). Animal farming is also important with dairy and beef cattle and pork. Perth County is known as the home of the Ontario Pork Congress because of its pork production.
http://www.visitperth.ca/history2.html

During the 1870s, railways were built through the north part of the county to Milverton, Listowel and Atwood. All became associated with the Grand Trunk Railway, later the Canadian National Railways. The Canadian Pacific Railways began to build in the County. In 1907 the line between Guelph and Goderich was completed cutting through Millbank, Milverton and Monkton, with a spur line to Listowel. However, the CPR’s campaign for a line through Stratford was defeated in a public referendum in 1913 by a majority who were intent on preserving the city’s parks. http://www.visitperth.ca/history3.html

The years around 1880 saw most of the family moving to the reputedly "greener pastures" of Manitoba. See David James Watson's story of the move in the Old Family Stories and see the 1878 Advertisement and 1879 Settlers' Excursion to Manitoba.

The families who moved then were Robert's widow Margaret and her husband Alex Long, John & Isabel, Samuel & Mary, James (came west but continued to the cariboo county of BC), and Jane who had married James Watson jr. Andrew (whose wife had died) later came to Manitoba. The other Watsons who came to Manitoba were David & Jane Watson, William James & Elizabeth Watson. Robert Watson may have died in 1854, although there is a family in North Dakota who think otherwise. Elizabeth Watson married Solomon Simons, and they stayed in Ontario, so did John Watson's widow, who had remarried Malcolm McDonald. George & Jane Watson moved to Raber, Michigan in 1882 then moved to Millet, Alberta in 1904. William & Ann Buchanan and Charles & Ann Buchanan stayed in Elma. By 1905, Saskatchewan and Alberta were attracting many of the family, and some of Andrew's family moved to the Friday Harbor area of Washington state. Since then, we have dispersed all over the map.