Enlightened Librarian: Very local history

Very local history · Dec 23, 11:10 PM

In the early 1980s, my wife’s parents bought some land—200 acres in Osprey township, Grey County, in the Province of Ontario. On a current road map the place is indistinguishable, situated on an unmarked concession road somewhere southeast of the tiny village of Singhampton. But in the Grey County supplement in the Illustrated Atlas of the Dominion of Canada (Toronto: H. Belden & Co., 1880), the farm stands with its neighbours in the emphatic network of surveyed lots, and Singhampton to the northeast is a budding metropolis.

In its day, a county atlas worked much the same way as the white pages and yellow pages do now. Post offices, churches and taverns were duly noted in their places, and if a lot was farmed, its owner’s name was engraved right on his land. Even more informative, however, was the ever-handy county gazeteer, which advertised local businesses, listed the names and occupations of prominent folk and included a travel guide noting the quality of the roads, the soil and the local watering holes:

From the village of Flesherton it is three or four miles to the next tavern (T. Munshaw’s), then another mile and a half to Miller’s tavern; and about 3m. farther to the village of Maxwell in Osprey. We are now going East through the centre of Osprey, in a beautiful and level country, 3 or 4 mi. North of the real “Durham Road.” There is one Hotel at Maxwell, new and commodious. Frem thence we go about 7 m. East on a straight and beautiful road, to the County Line of Simcoe. We are now in sight of Singhampton, and only 1/2 m. S. of it. We turn North on the County line, put up comfortably at Singhampton, and when we go on again toward Bowmore and Collingwood Harbour (the latter 13 m. from Singhampton), we find we are out of the County of Grey, and have lost our Gravel Road.
—William Wye Smith, Gazetteer and Directory of the County of Grey for 1865-6, p. 73.

Two digital collections have done the exceedingly valuable service of digitizing rare and out-of-print county atlases and local histories, helping to re-vivify the era of homesteads and pioneers. A cooperative venture between the universities of Calgary and Laval, Our roots has digitized several thousand accounts of the birth of towns, villages and regions across Canada. Many of these rare books were prepared lovingly by amateur historians, printed locally and most are now impossible to find. And a McGill University project, In Search of Your Canadian Past: The Canadian County Atlas Digital Project has digitized 43 county atlases prepared between 1874 and 1881, covering counties in the Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes. Names mentioned on the maps are included in a searchable database, a boon for genealogists. The maps themselves have been scanned at high resolution, and although they take a while to load, the details are sharp.

Oh, and my wife’s parents’ farm is here.

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