The death of the eccentric founder of the settlement divides nearly equally the history of the county from the time when its only inhabitants were the bear, wolf and panther, to the end of the century, which finds the county well cleared and cultivated throughout its entire extent; intersected by splendid highways, including the lines of five railway companies; peopled with a numerous and enterprising community, God-fearing and law-abiding, industrious and prosperous. The thriving city of St. Thomas, the enterprising and flourishing town of Aylmer, and numerous promising villages, advancing with rapid strides in magnitude and importance, form centres of population, where a century ago the primeval silence was unbroken, save by the footfall of the Mississaga ranging the woods in pursuit of game.
It was during the first decades of the century that the pioneers came. From them the present population is largely sprung. Dunwich was the first to be settled. A few immigrants from the Eastern States settled near Port Talbot. Then the overflow of settlement from Long Point made itself felt in Southwold, Yarmouth, Malahide and Bayham. Before 1820 the Highland settlements began in Aldborough and Dunwich. The wanderings of the Kildonan settlers from Hudson's Bay to Red River, and thence eastward to Upper Canada and southward, to the settlements on Lake Erie, add a tragic episode to the story of the pioneers of West Elgin. Their hardships, sufferings and heroism can never be forgotten. Much later came the settlement of South Dorchester.
These were the men who felled the forest, let the sunlight into the wilderness, drained the swamps, cleared and fenced the bush, made the roads and bridged the fords, "drave out the beasts," and established schools and churches. They were the sifted grain of Canadian immigration. For the Colonel was determined to have none but the loyal, industrious and enterprising, and was discriminating in the choice of settlers for this County, among the numerous applicants for land.
Such were the pioneers of Elgin. We inherit the fruits of their strenuous toil and struggle. It was they who, with dauntless courage and unfaltering determination, braved all hardships, the loneliness, the privations, the sufferings of pioneer life, that we might enjoy the harvest of their labors. They slept on the bare ground in the forest shanty, and hewed with mighty toil the log huts, that their sons might live in framed houses, and their grandchildren in houses of brick furnished with the appliances of modern civilization. They sowed and we reap.
In the old churchyards at Tyrconnel, New Glasgow, St. Thomas, and elsewhere near the lake shore, they rest well after their labors. The mouldered headboards have given way to the marble slab or stately monument, that records their brief history—that they lived and died. Their true and imperishable monument is the manhood and womanhood of Elgin, the beautiful farms and homes, the noble institutions of religion and education. Their names will be forever honored among the founders of the Canadian nation, and after a thousand years men will be proud to count their descent from the pioneers of Elgin.
The public buildings of a community are a fair index of the character of the people. In this view, the completion of the new Court House is an event, and its evolution, as recorded in this volume, is a study of historical and sociological value.
The new building is admirably adapted to the purposes for which it is intended. It is up-to-date in every particular. Visitors from other parts pronounce it, as its predecessor was pronounced when first erected, one of the handsomest and most commodious public buildings in the Province. The architect and contractors have done their part well; but the credit is mainly and beyond all due to the public spirit of the people of Elgin, who were resolved that nothing short of best would satisfy them, and who were willing to be taxed to a reasonable extent upon the sole condition that the building should be well and honestly built, be a credit to the county and answer its purpose.
Doubtless before another century rolls round, the increase of population and wealth may call for an enlarged building, but it is certain that no changes in architectural science will produce one that will better reflect the intelligence and enterprise, the wealth and the culture of the people, than the beautiful and commodious structure, which is to-day the pride and the boast of the citizens of this county.
James H. Coyne.