county of MIddlesex

The Appin Cemetery Commemoration

The Appin Cemetery Commemoration

Brien Page

Appin Cemetery Commemoration   July 28, 2024

As part of an annual commemoration of area cemeteries, Glencoe & District Historical Society (G&DHS) organized a presentation and community walk at the Appin Cemetery. Prayers, dedications, singing, and community conversation were key parts of the afternoon.

Members of the G&DHS and guests offered welcome, poetry reading, and historical insight to the cemetery and its connection to the community.

Jim May, Appin Cemetery board member, offered an historical account of the origins and continued support for the cemetery “on the sandy knoll above the town of Appin”. His address mirrored a, 10 year ago, presentation at the hundredth anniversary celebration of the Appin Cemetery. Here it is at this link.

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The cemetery land was procured in 1914 and a company was formed, Appin Cemetery Co. Ltd., by a group of community members. Eleven men agreed to pay $15 per share to form the company to purchase the land. The property, 4 acres plus roadway, was purchased for $400.00.

The price of a plot, which included 8 burial sites, was $15.00. Several families representing early shareholders, (Johnson, McFee, May), purchased large family plots with 32 graves each. This provided early operating funds for the new company.

There was a total of 6 burials in the first year.

The stone gates were built at the entrance in 1957-58. The iron arch was added in 1974 and has since been refurbished.

Women have played a key role in the development and maintenance of the cemetery. Appin Women’s Institute helped create the roadway and tree planting efforts. They also offered the first donation for the stone gate construction and maintained persistent pressure for its completion through organizations such as the Appin Dramatic Club, headed by Ivy Galbraith.

Marj Zavitz was the first female Secretary-Treasurer of the cemetery board and many other women followed to support and lead the board.

David May, current President of the cemetery board spoke and offered welcome and highlighted the current situation with the Appin Cemetery. He indicated that land had been purchased to expand the cemetery from its current location, along the laneway to Thames Road at the gates.

Having a place of remembrance and honour was the focus for those original settlers. They envisioned and built a resting place for community members in and around the town of Appin.

The Appin Cemetery has been part of the community for over 100 years and is a reflection of the people who were and are in our midst.

Like the toils on early farms and settlements that made up Ekfrid and Appin, much hard work and dedication was necessary to have a lasting and sustainable place for family members to find their final rest.

The Glencoe and District Historical Society are thankful to The Appin Cemetery board for the cooperation and support for this commemoration event. Community spirit creates strength for all.

Mary Simpson, President of Glencoe & District Historical Society, and Ken Beecroft, Past President start the afternoon program.
James May shares the history of The Appin Cemetery
The Mona Lisa

“It’s a Silent Fire”!

Glencoe & District Historical Society

Film industry pros sweat the possibility that many digital files will eventually become unusable — an archival tragedy reminiscent of the celluloid era.

Martin Scorsese: “The preservation of every art form is fundamental.”  

For the movie business, these are valuable studio assets — to use one example, the MGM Library (roughly 4,000 film titles including the James Bond franchise and 17,000 series episodes) is worth an estimated $3.4 billion to Amazon — but there’s a misconception that digital files are safe forever. In fact, files end up corrupted, data is improperly transferred, hard drives fail, formats change, work simply vanishes. “It’s a silent fire,” says Linda Tadic, CEO of Digital Bedrock, an archiving servicer that works with studios and indie producers. “We find issues with every single show or film that we try to preserve.” So, what exactly has gone missing? “I could tell you stories — but I can’t, because of confidentiality.”

Specialists across the space don’t publicly speak about specific lost works, citing confidentiality issues. So, only disquieting rumors circulate — along with rare, heart-stopping lore that breaches public consciousness. One infamous example: In 1998, a Pixar employee accidentally typed a fatal command function, instructing the computer system to delete Toy Story 2, which was then almost complete. Luckily, a supervising technical director who’d been working from home (she’d just had a baby) had a 2-week-old backup file.

Experts note that indie filmmakers, operating under constrained financial circumstances, are most at risk of seeing their art disappear. “You have an entire era of cinema that’s in severe danger of being lost,” contends screenwriter Larry Karaszewski, a board member of the National Film Preservation Foundation. His cohort on the board, historian Leonard Maltin, notes that this era could suffer the same fate as has befallen so many silent pictures and midcentury B movies. “Those films were not attended to at the time — not archived properly because they weren’t the products of major studios,” he says.

Excerpt from:

“It’s a Silent Fire”: Decaying Digital Movie and TV Show Files Are a Hollywood Crisis

BY GARY BAUM, CAROLYN GIARDINA. MARCH 15, 2024

Can you imagine digitising the Mona Lisa painting and destroying the original? The Magna Carta?  The British North America Act? 1798 Act of Parliament to create London District? The answer to  maintaining records is not paper or digital – it is both! 

Committee To Establish a Middlesex County Archives
Read more →
Napier Decoration Day Service

Napier Decoration Day Service

Please join us for the annual Decoration Day Service at St. Mary’s Anglican Church – Napier, Ontario on June 23, 2024 at 3 pm. 

 

St. Mary’s Anglican Church Napier – 1418 Melwood Drive, Strathroy, ON  N7G 3H5.

 

The following history is an excerpt from an old service bulletin and the author is unknown. 

This church has been standing straight, fine and true for over one hundred and eighty years.  It stands as a testament to the faith of those who built it, those who came to regular services, and to those who worked over the years to keep their church alive and active.  But it is a symbol, not primarily of their strength and perseverance, but of the presence of God in their midst.

The first settler in this general area was Captain John Charlton in 1825.  In 1829, Richard, Thomas, and Christopher Moyle and their families and Captain Christopher Beer established residences along the river in the Napier area.  In 1831, Lieutenant Charles Preston and his family came from Cornwall in Upper Canada.  Preston had been granted 100 acres when he commuted his pension for land.  They settled on this property where St. Mary’s Church stands.

The first church services were held in Captain Christopher Beer’s house.  Captain Beer’s rank gave him the privilege of conducting the first church services and first burials in the community.  After the congregation became too large, they moved to the home of Captain Johnson.  When the congregation became too large for his house, a school was built on this property in 1839 and used for church services.  The log school was built on one acre of land donated by Charles Preston for a church and a cemetery.  Preston also gave three acres of land for a rectory. 

In 1841, the residents of the community sent a petition to the Bishop of Toronto requesting permission and assistance to build a church. The petitioners declared themselves to be generally poor and unable to pay for a frame church to be built but the increase in the congregation was such that the school was no longer large enough. Captain Beer had prepared some walnut lumber to use in building a new house.  However, when the news came that a church could be built, he donated this lumber to the church and postponed construction of his own home.  This gift, which represented a considerable sacrifice, was well used; the walnut was worked into pews, wainscotting and the chancel.  It still stands here as a memorial to a man who loved his church and community.

In 1860, the church and cemetery were consecrated by the Right Reverend Benjamin Cronyn, the Bishop of Huron and the church officially received the name “St. Mary”.  In Ireland, the Cronyn’s had attended St. Mary’s Church Kilkenny.  This name linked the new land with the old.

The last regular weekly service was held on January 29, 1920 and annual services were initiated in the early 1930’s.  We must be grateful to the residents of this area and especially to the Toohill family for their loving care of St. Mary’s Church.  It is thanks to them that this oldest church building in Middlesex County still exists. 

Aug 21 The McEachren Collection @ Forty-87

Aug 21 The McEachren Collection @ Forty-87

August 21, 2024

7:00 p.m. 

The McEachren Collection @ Forty-87 

4087 Olde Drive, Glencoe, ON

7:00 p.m.  Arrive at 4087 Olde Drive, Glencoe, ON.  Bring your lawn chairs.  Stroll around the half-acre tractor collection.  

7:30 p.m.  Dave McEachren will tell us about local dealer history.  

8:00 p.m.  Explore the new museum.  

As a 10-year old boy, Dave witnessed a few fellow neighborhood farm boys displaying their collections of farm toys at the Glencoe Fair.  It was that day that he decided to stop “playing in the dirt” with his toys and start collecting them instead.  More than a few decades later the dream of opening his own museum to share his ever-growing John Deere collection has come to light.  

The McEachren Collection @ Forty-87 includes over 40 real tractors, thousands of farm toy models, and tens of thousands of pieces of memorabilia and sales-related literature.  There will be something of interest for everyone, from local dealer history to samples of equipment you may never knew existed.

 

 

The McEachren Collection @ Forty-87

The McEachren Collection @ Forty-87

 

 

Blood on the Snow – lecture about the Donnellys

Blood on the Snow – lecture about the Donnellys

Glencoe & District Historical Society

Glenn’s talk on YouTube – give it a listen

Glenn Stott tells about 33 years of troubles that took place in Biddulph Township and Lucan Ontario region in Upper Canada from 1847 to 1880 and ended with the murder of five members of the Donnelly family.

Read more →

Lecture about the Donnellys: Blood on the Snow

Glenn Stott – Blood on the Snow: The Donnellys and the Biddulph Tragedy

December 16 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Register : https://www.historysymposium.com/glenn-stott

The talk will be a livestream on YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeOdo89QhQQOSnROHKN3HoA.

The Donnellys are one of Southwestern Ontario’s most notorious families. This talk will be an overview of the 33 year troubles that took place in Biddulph Township and Lucan, Ontario region from 1847 to 1880 and ultimately ended with the murder of the five members of the Donnelly family.

 

The “Black” Donnellys were an Irish Catholic immigrant family who settled in Biddulph township, Canada West (later the province of Ontario), about 15 km northwest of London, in the 1840s. The family settled on a concession road which became known as the Roman Line due to its high concentration of Irish Catholic immigrants in the predominantly Protestant area. Many Irish Canadians arrived in the 19th-century, many fleeing the Great Famine of Ireland (1845-52). The Donnellys’ ongoing feuds with local residents culminated in an attack on the family’s homestead by a vigilante mob on 4 February 1880, leaving five of the family dead and their farm burned to the ground. No one was convicted of the murders, despite two trials and a reliable eyewitness

AGM: Show & Tell. Celebrating 45 years.

7 p.m. Annual General Meeting.  

Join the Glencoe & District Historical Society and come to the meeting of the members to review the accomplishments of 2022 and make plans for the coming year.  Individual Memberships are $20 and family memberships are $25.  Tax Receipts will be issued by Membership Secretary Harold Carruthers.

Show and Tell!  Bring a family heirloom, artifact, or mysterious thing from the past to share with the group.  We’ll have some fun with this.

 

Existing members: this is your official notice to attend the annual general meeting to be held at the Archives, 178 McKellar Street, Glencoe, Ontario.  

Or attend via Zoom meeting.

Topic: Glencoe & District Historical Society Annual General Meeting 45 years!

Time: Apr 19, 2023 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83282727090?pwd=KzRZL0k2anJIbVhCaFNnamp3NzY5UT09

 

Meeting ID: 832 8272 7090

Passcode: 298019

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Battle Hill Memorial

Memorial Service: Battle of Longwoods

Join us on March 5th as we commemorate the Battle of Longwoods which was originally fought on March 4th 1814.  Arrive at 1:45 p.m. and park carefully.  We will remember them. 

We will  remember those injured and killed at the Battle of the Longwoods in 1814.

Battle Hill National Historic Site, 2945 Longwoods Rd, Glencoe, ON N0L 1M0

Watch this beautiful short video of the MOURNING RING OF LIEUTENANT PATRICK GRAEME OF THE 89TH REGIMENT OF FOOT. KILLED ON MARCH 4, 1814, WHILE LEADING THE BRITISH ATTACK AT THE BATTLE OF LONGWOODS.

 

Click to Facebook Event by the Upper Thames Military Re-enactment Society  https://www.royal-scots.com/

Co-hosted by the Glencoe & District Historical Society

McGill Farm History & the Gunnery School

Glencoe & District Historical Society

My name is Andrew McGill, I’m a young farmer and a photographer. I grew up on a farm 6 kilometres north of Glencoe, Ontario. In mid 1940 my great grandfather Fred McGill purchased a farm building which was to be moved from the site of the No. 4 Bombing and Gunnery School at Fingal Ontario. The building was dismantled and moved 45 kilometres north of Fingal to its final resting place on the McGill farm at Taits rd. Glencoe where it has sat to this day. My father and I think the building was then reassembled with a new roof sometime in 1941. The site of No. 4 B&G school sat on a swath of 724 acres of land that was returned to the crown for the purpose of building the training facility. One can imagine the numerous agricultural buildings on the land that would have had to be dismantled and moved in short order to make way for the multiple airplane hangers and triangle runway of the Fingal school. 

Aerial photo of the McGill farm circa 1977. The building in question can be seen directly to the left of the barn. (Photo care of McGill family Archive, 1977.)

McGill farm building moved from Fingal Bombing And Gunnery School site in 1940. (Photo: Andrew McGill. September, 2022.)
Aerial photo of the site of the Fingal Bombing and Gunnery School. (Photo: Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum.)
Route from Fingal B&G school site to the McGill farm. (Photo: Google Maps)
Interior detail of the McGill farm building which continues to house tools and horse equipment which would have been used by the late Fred McGill circa 1940’s. (Photo: Andrew McGill, 2016.)
A restored 1942 Minneapolis Moline “Waterloo” tractor stored in the building on the McGill farms site. (Photo: Andrew McGill, 2022.)
Winifred (Eddie), Fred, and Blake McGill using their 1942 Minneapolis Moline Tractor to plant sugar beets for seed to aid the allied forces war effort. (Photo care of McGill family Archive, 1942.)
Alternate angle of Winifred (Eddie), Fred, and Blake McGill using their 1942 Minneapolis Moline Tractor to plant sugar beets for seed to aid the allied forces war effort. (Photo care of McGill family Archive, 1942.)
Clare McGill and Dorothy Brown in front of the McGill homestead with the 1942 Minneapolis Moline “Waterloo” tractor. (Photo care of McGill family Archive, 1942.)
Clare, Winifred (Eddie), and Blake McGill in front of the McGill homestead to mark the moment King George VI announced enlistment of eligible men into the military in Canada. (Photo care of McGill family Archive, 1941.)

 

Blake McGill standing with his newly restored 1942 Minneapolis Moline tractor on the McGill farm in 1993. (Photo care of McGill family Archive, 1993.)
McGill Farm
Aerial photo of the McGill farm taken the year of its 100th anniversary in 2016. The relocated building can be seen clearly to the left of the barn. (Photo care of McGill family Archive, 2016.)
Dorothy (Knapp), Doug, and Ron McRae in Ilderton Ontario, 1955
Dorothy (Knapp), Doug, and Ron McRae in Ilderton Ontario, 1955. During WWII, as a 13 year old, my grandmother Dorothy along with her schoolmates were tasked with finding a plant called Alder Buckthorn, which because of its consistent burn time was used to create fuses for depth charges used to sink German navy vessels. It is told that Dorothy found enough of the valuable plant for her father to pay off the mortgage of their farm. (Photo care of the McRae family Archive, 1955.)

How to Transfer Municipal Records to a County Archive.

Glencoe & District Historical Society

Check out this YouTube presentation for The Hasting and Belleville Community Archives entitled “How To Access The Community Archives When They Are Closed”. Published October 2020, their archivist, Amanda Hill, describes the Archives facility which was established ten years ago. She shows people how to access the collections from a computer.

The Community Archives of Belleville and Hastings County is a service provided by the County of Hastings and the City of Belleville to help the municipalities of Hastings County preserve and provide access to their documentary heritage. https://www.cabhc.ca/en/about/resources/Transfer-of-municipal-records-to-the-Community-Archives.pdf 
This two-page document describes the process of transferring municial records to the county archives.

Although the Middlesex Centre Archives do not have the Municipal Records for Middlesex Centre, they do use a similar process. Each donor signs a Deed of Gift for their donation. The number for that donation is recorded on the Deed of Gift and every article within the donation. That is part of the processing work of donations.

When completely processed (number added, repairs completed), the donation is placed in the Archives on a specific shelf in a specific bay of shelving. The donation and its place in the Archives are then recorded. That donation can be found at any time with all its pertinent information. Access is easy and timely. If the donation has privacy implications, it is filed in the restricted files area. 

All these policies are already in place at the Middlesex Centre Archives under the direction of Archivist, Carolynn Bart-Riedstra. The processes were designed so that when Middlesex County establishes an archive facility, some of the work is already done and easily transferable.

Written by Carol Small, Chair, The Committee To Establish a Middlesex County Archives

Southwest Middlesex has a duty to save records

Glencoe & District Historical Society

Municipal Act and Responsibility

Legal Mandate

  • Federal and Provincial Governments in Canada have mandated that public records be officially archived for legal, governance, and historical purposes.  
  • The division of records kept usually coincides with jurisdictional boundaries: Federal, Provincial, County, and Municipalities.  (Library and Archives of Canada Act, S.C.2004).
  • Ontario has further mandated that preserved public records be available to the public.  (Archives Act, RSO 1990; Archives and Recordkeeping Act, 2006; Archives and Recordkeeping Amendment Act, 2019.
  • The Ontario Municipal Act 2001, S.O. 2001. C. 25 Section 254 further states that municipal offices must preserve certain documents and they are to be publicly accessible. Those records need to be adequately stored.  It further indicates that municipal offices could deposit their records in an archives.

Many neighbouring Ontario counties have created their own archives to fulfill their legal obligations and to preserve important heritage materials. These include Elgin, Oxford, Huron, Perth, Grey, Bruce, Lambton, Haldimand, Wellington and more recently in 2020, Norfolk.  Middlesex County has not done so yet.

Often records are not easily accessible due to the location of the records in the municipality.  They are either stored off-site in another municipal structure or are not available for access to the public.  Whether in digital or hard copy, records need to be accessible in a timely manner, especially when there are MFIPPA requests.  

Environmentally controlled (EC) storage facilities are necessary for preserving records.  The temperature must be 18-21 degrees Celsius, which is colder than an office environment. Relative humidity (RH) should be between 45-50%.  If both elements are not met, mold can occur if humidity is too high, and paper can deteriorate if the temperature and RH are too low.  Based on the surveys returned from the municipalities in Middlesex County, none of the records are in EC areas. A few municipalities indicated the records are stored in their community centres. While these facilities may have air-conditioning, the RH control is still an issue.  

Even if municipal records are covered in Records Retention Schedules as per the Municipal Act 2001, S.O. 2001. C. 25 Section 253, some records have historical value that can be retained for researcher and/or historical value.   When records no longer serve administrative value, they could still have cultural value for information.  Less than 3% of municipal records are archival. While it might not be a lot, municipal records like tax assessment rolls, building plans, environmental assessments and other documents should be considered for placement in the Middlesex County Archives. 

Written by the Committee to Establish a Middlesex County Archives, July 2021

We Need a County Archives

Glencoe & District Historical Society

Middlesex County does not have a county archives to protect our history for future generations.

Report from the Committee To Establish A Middlesex County Archives (CEMCA):

Unlike other counties that have established a County Archives (Lambton, Kent, Elgin, Oxford, Norfolk, Perth, Huron etc.) to house municipal as well as important historical materials, Middlesex County has not. In February 2020, representatives of historical societies and interested citizens from across Middlesex County gathered to ascertain the interest in establishing a Middlesex County Archives. The group had concerns about what would happen to their precious historical documents due to aging volunteers and lack of resources.  The group gave resounding approval to the initiative and the Committee to Establish a Middlesex County Archives was born. After two meetings, Covid-19 halted those for the year but work remained ongoing.  In February 2021 virtual meetings commenced via Zoom. 

How best to achieve the goal? The primary focus had to be municipal records. Through legislation, County and Municipal governments are mandated to officially store public records for legal, governance, and historical purposes.  The Ontario Municipal Act 2001, S.O. 2001. C. 25 Section 254 further states that municipal offices must preserve certain documents, and that they are to be publicly accessible.  Those records need to be properly stored and available in a timely manner.  It further indicates that municipal offices could deposit their records in an archive, to be secured. In addition, many historical societies hold historically significant documents and still more remain in private hands. Without a County Archives, there is concern about the location and condition under which many valuable historical documents are being stored.

CEMCA, through a survey to Mayors and Clerks, and another survey to Historical Societies within Middlesex County, ascertained much data – most materials were not stored in secure, environmentally-safe areas and most were not easily accessible.  That is a problem for municipal as well as local historical documents.

In June, CEMCA developed a series of “Facts Sheets” and other pertinent information to be sent weekly to County and Municipal Councillors and Administrative Staff. Information included: Municipal Act and Responsibilities, What is an Archives? How Will the Municipality and Clerks Benefit? Where Are the Records Now? Who Would Use the Middlesex County Archives, Resources Required and Challenges and Opportunities. To see any of this information, please check Middlesex Centre Archives webpage: www.middlesexcentrearchive.ca or email proposedmiddlesexcountyarchive@gmail.com.

Committee representatives from each municipality are contacting their councillors and/or making presentations to their councils. On September 28, 2021, CEMCA will be making a presentation to County Council to formally ask that a Middlesex County Archives be established.

Who benefits from a County Archives? Municipal clerks, town planners and developers, lawyers and architects, heritage advocates, scholars and educators, genealogists and family historians, tourists. The biggest benefactors will be our future generations!!!!!!!

How can you help? Contact your county councillors by writing, email or telephone to express your support for the Archives. For more information, please email proposedmiddlesexcountyarchive@gmail.com.

Let us lose nothing of the past, it is only with the past that one builds the future. Anatole France