Owen Sound

How Kilsyth Almost Got a Train Station

Gwen Harris Derby Township, Owen Sound , , , , ,

The 1850s was the decade of railway fever in Canada West. Every community from the tiniest hamlet campaigned to have a railway line – and the citizens of the Township of Derby were among them. We don’t know if the Flemings invested in railway bonds, but they must have followed the local Council meetings, and they eventually benefited from improved access to markets for their produce and greater ease of travel.

Image: The Toronto Grey and Bruce, Toronto and Nipissing, and Lake Simcoe Junction Railways 1877. Adapted by Rod Clarke from map of the Province of Ontario by James Campbell & Son of Toronto, 1874. The TG&BR extension from Teeswater to Kinloss was never built. Map also shows Northern Railway Toronto-Barrie-Collingwood-Meaford.

In the 1850s, railway building was booming. Over 2,000 miles of track were laid in the provinces of British North America. [i] By 1859 the Grand Trunk Railway ran from Quebec City, through Montreal and Toronto, to Sarnia, with extensions to Chicago, Illinois and Portland, Maine. Its rival, the Great Western, had lines from Niagara Falls to Windsor through Hamilton and London and connecting to Toronto.   The Northern Railway (previously the Toronto, Simcoe and Huron Railroad) reached Collingwood from Barrie in 1855.[ii] Jennie Fleming took this route for her trip to Toronto in 1869.[iii] But the great triangle of the Queen’s Bush along Lake Huron, the west half of Georgian Bay and south along the Garafraxa Road was unserved.   

Derby Township became involved with railway mania in July 1857 when Mr. Carney and Mr. W.A. Stephens came as a deputation from a railroad committee in Owen Sound – “to solicit a grant of money to aid in procuring the passing of the ByLaw for taking stock in the Toronto and Owen Sound Central Railway” (T&OSCR). Council was immediately enthusiastic and moved to set up a fund of 12 Pounds and 10 Shillings towards getting “sanction” from the ratepayers to buy ₤ 100,000. Further, Reeve Sam Jones and the Council expressed their thanks to the deputation “for affording them an opportunity of expressing their desire to see Railway communication afforded to the County of Grey and for honoring them with the first call for pecuniary assistance towards that object.” [iv]  The proposal, complete with routes, costs and benefits, and considerations, was documented by J.W. Tate in the Report on the proposed route of the Toronto and Owen Sound central railway.[v] The proposed route would run from Weston, up the Humber Valley to Mono Mills, across to Orangeville, north to Chatsworth and from there either along the Sydenham Valley through part of Derby Township or along another stream to the north of Owen Sound.[vi] 

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Vernon’s Owen Sound City Directories

Gwen Harris Resources ,

Page from Vernon's Directory for Owen Sound 1917
Page from Vernon’s Directory for Owen Sound 1917

People researching residents and businesses in Owen Sound may now go to Family Search to use digitized copies of Owen Sound Vernon city directories for the years: 1942, 1961, 1964,  1991, 1997/98, 2001/02. Search Family Search > Books (https://www.familysearch.org/library/books/records/) for owen sound to see the selection. This tremendous project of the Ontario Genealogical Society is described in this announcement –  Vernon Directory Digitization Project (February 18, 2019). Let’s hope that more of the earlier years are added soon.

The 1917 Vernon directory for Owen Sound that is held by the Toronto Public Library directory has been digitized and is at both the Internet Archive and at Toronto Public Library site.

Postscript 23 Nov 2019 – Gail Dever (Genealogy à la carte) in Dozens more Ontario Vernon’s Directories on FamilySearch describes the project and briefly, the search. For example: “a free FamilySearch account is required to view each individual directory. ”

Postscript 28 Dec 2019 – Digitized years now available are: 1928, 1930,1932,1936, 1938,1940,1942, 1958, 1961,1964, 1968, 1970, 1972, 1974, 1977,1979, 1981, 1983, 1985,1987, 1989, 1991, 1993/94, 1995/96, 1997/98, 1999/2000, 2001/02, 2003/04, 2005/06.

Owen Sound in the 1850s

Gwen Harris Fleming Lives, Owen Sound , , ,

Jennie Fleming, the youngest of the Fleming family who settled in 1850 at Kilsyth, Derby Township, had deep memories of her pioneer days.

“As a frequent visitor in the early days to Owen Sound, Derby’s market place, she saw this hamlet on the arm of Georgian Bay grown from a little village of Sydenham into the thriving commercial town and city of Owen Sound. She sometimes recalled the fact that at first on entering the town she had to cross the Sydenham River on a log where the Second Avenue bridge [sic] now stands, and walk deep in mire on the main part of Poulett Street.”(1) [Roy Fleming, 1942]

Roy Fleming more than once recalled that in Owen Sound’s early days his Aunt Jennie crossed the Sydenham River by traversing – very carefully, we might surmise – a felled log, and then in town having to deal with the muck of the main street. One can imagine Jennie, a vital woman who lived into her nineties, reflecting on the changes she had witnessed since her arrival to the forested wilderness – walking long distances as a teenager, driving horse-drawn buggies on gravel-covered roads in her twenties, travelling by express trains to Toronto in her seventies.

Felled trees probably served as bridges in more than one spot – and in those years the tree could be at least three feet in width and easily tall enough to reach from bank to bank.  In 1841, according to Paul White in Owen Sound: The Port City, it was possible to cross the Sydenham River on the west side of town by tree. He wrote, “The only easily accessible crossing was to the south of the new community, at the present day site of the mill dam on 2nd Avenue West. Here, a tree had been felled and travellers could pass over the river by walking on the bridge created by the fallen log.”  (2)

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