Village Squire, 1979-05, Page 17Wingham plans
a celebration
The first 100 years in the town by the Maitland have
been interesting. Its residents plan to start the
second hundred off with a bang.
While the founding of the Canada Company, the organization
that opened up much of Western Ontario took place 150 years
ago last year, there were still huge tracts of virgin forest
untouched more than 20 years later. It was a huge area north of
the Huron Tract and south of the Indian territories of Bruce and
Grey counties that wasn't opened for settlement for many years
after the Canada Company started its settlements from Guelph
to Stratford to Goderich and Bayfield.
It was into this new territory in the spring of 1858 that Edward
Farley pushed his way with the object of settling in the new town
plot of Wingham. The difficulties of travel in Ontario at the time
can be seen in the torturous journey he undertook. He left his
home in Owen Sound with his wife and went to Collingwood by
water, then south to Toronto by the Northern Railway, on to
Stratford on the Grand Trunk and from there travelled by wagon.
He hired a crew of freighters to help him make his way but by
the time they got to Blyth, they'd had enough of the horrible
spring road conditions and quit. The tenacious Irishman then
hired a wagon and two yokes of oxen and headed out himself. He
pushed his way as far northward as the tiny community of
Bodmin on the Maitland river in Morris township. There he built
a raft, piled his wife and all his belongings on board and floated
on the spring floods down to what is now known as Wingham. He
was the first settler in the town. And so the history of the town on
the Maitland began leading this year to the celebration of the
100th anniversary of the incorporation of the town.
Actually setting this as the beginning of the town of Wingham
is a little ironic since the spot that Farley chose for his settlement
isn't today part of Wingham at all. Farley settled in what was to
later be known as Lower Town. Early settlers who came to the
townsite designated by the surveyors must have been dismayed
to see the place they were supposed to settle. It lay in the valley
of the Maitland at the meeting of two branches of the river and
its chief characteristic was that when the floodwaters came
boiling down the two rivers each spring they backed up to form a
small lake where the town was supposed to be. Yet only a few
hundred yards away was a high hill where settlers could be high
and dry.
Well Farley at least got the pick of the lower town plots. You
can see where he lived today if you're travelling on Highway 86
heading west to Lucknow. Just at the edge of the "town" on your
right hand side you'll see a little hummock overgrown with trees
today. Just behind the little hill is where Farley settled. It's a
long way from what we call Wingham today.
Farley and those who followed him such as Peter and
Archibald Fisher and Thomas and John Gregory settled in lower
town. The latter families were interested in building mills and
lower town was the natural place to build these. Water power
was an essential part of any settlement that was to amount to
anything in those days, which probably accounted for the
seemingly poor choice of a site for the new town. For many years
because of the grist mills and flour mills and carding mills and
other water -powered industries that settled along the river,
Lower town prospered.
But it wasn't long before others began to look to drier
territory. In 1859 John Cornyn and his family erected the first
"hotel" on what is now the main street of Wingham, about
where the Manor Hotel stands today. Even that wasn't exactly a
desert. The entire east side of main street in the village for many
years was a pond of water. One early settler recalled as a boy
kneeling down with a friend for a drink of water from the pond
and the friend fell in and drowned before he could be rescued.
Along the west side of the street there was a boardwalk
constructed that was four feet above streetlevel.
The fight against the river on main street continued as Upper
Town continued to grow. For a long time Lower Town's
population continued ahead of that of Upper Town but the real
boost to the fortunes of Upper Town came in 1873 when the
Wellington, Grey and Bruce Railway reached Wingham. Next
came the London, Huron and Bruce, the "Butter and Eggs
Special" that was pushed north from London largely through the
work of Pat Kelly, the energetic reeve of Blyth. Originally it was
to have stopped in Blyth but later the section to Wingham was
added. Finally the C.P.R. spur -line from Teeswater was pushed
southward to give Wingham three different railways.
The spur the railways gave the town was easily seen in the
population figures. In 1874, 16 years after the first settler
arrived, Wingham was incorporated as a village with a
population of about 700 but only five years later, the population
had soared to the point that it could be incorporated as a town.
May 1979, Village Squire 15