The Village Squire, 1981-08, Page 71
OUR TOWNS
Ripley
by Dean Robinson
A small but mighty place of 500 soul's with its own community centre
Much of the past of Ripley is stored in the mind of this man, Albert Wylds, writer. local
historian and retired teacher and principal.
The number 500 doesn't make it a to t'n.
but everyone calls it that.
If it's the town history you want to know about. it's likely you'll
be directed to Albert Wylds. He's sort of a thin man. white hair
but short, wears a cap most of the time. and he lives in that
yellow brick house over there, just before the tracks. He's
usually around somewhere.
The man, on his way back from the mill with a couple of sacks
of feed for his geese. is most accommodating when it comes to
talking about Ripley which, with its posted population of 500, is
not really a town but everybody calls it one.
Ab Wylds, born just a farm's length from the main
intersection (8th concession of Huron Township and Bruce
County Road 7. which actually is the 15th sideroad), is Ripley's
local historian, a commodity that every town should have.
After a stint at two Toronto schools he returned to native soil
and spent 34 years at Ripley District High School, the last 13 as
both principal and teacher. He retired from the formal education
system in 1969 but, at the age of 70, he continues to write his
weekly column in three area newspapers. He's been doing that
since 1943.
Ab Wylds will tell you about how the early settlers in the
Ripley area were from Lewis Island. the largest of the Outer
Hebrides, in the Atlantic Ocean just off Scotland. It seems their
island was bought by a lord who had little patience with those
who fell behind in their land taxes. Their eviction notices
included passage to the new land on one of his sailing ships,
along with cargos of pig iron that he was sending to Quebec City.
Hundreds of these Lewis Scots, as they came to be known. left
their hometowns of Barvas and Shader in May 1851. After a
stormy 67 -day crossing they landed in Quebec and divided into
smaller boats. Some settled in the Eastern Townships of French
Canada and the rest continued westward to Toronto and
Hamilton, where many of the men found work building the
railroad from Hamilton to Galt to Goderich.
In September 1852, 109 families of the Lewis Scots came to
Goderich. Eventually some filtered into the bushland to the
north. The first of them settled along what is now the sixth
concession of Huron Township. There were Martyns, Mac-
Donalds, McLeans, MacKinnons and MacLeods.
"I remember a daughter of some of those people," says Ab
Wylds, "Mary McArthur, she was an old lady when 1 knew her
and she spoke only Gaelic. She was born here. Don McLay, who
is now the postmaster here, is a direct descendant of those Lewis
Scots. A lot of them around here are."
Soon a school was erected and Aeneas MacCharles (a Scot
from Cape Breton) was paid $200 a year (plus an extra $4 for
doing the caretaking work) to be its first teacher. Then the
Dahmer School went up and soon there was half a dozen of them.
And a log church. It was built on Lot 14 Concession 6. A minister
came from Ashfield to do the preaching.
By 1870 Ripley had become something of a country corner. A
few years later a religious split resulted in the building of Knox
Church in what ultimately became the village. Until 1925 the
area supported two Presbyterian churches.
But the Scots weren't the only inhabitants. Besides the bears
and the Indians there were the Anglos, people who had come
from another part of the Isles and had settled along the eighth
concession. When a regular mail drop was required one of those
Anglos, Thomas Harris, volunteered a room in his house. He
called that room (actually the postal address) Ripley because. as
a magistrate in his native County of Derby, he was quite familiar
With one of England's four Ripleys. (There are eight in the
United States, though so far just one one in Canada.)
The part-time postmaster's duties were passed around in the
early years but eventually they fell to Dan MacDonald, a county
councillor. His farm home was where Ripley's main intersection
is now. Councillor Dan looked after the mail until 1874. about the
VILLAGE SQUIRE/AUGUST 1981 PG 5