Acton
Description of the city worth a drive
Search for:
|
Ezra Adams is usually recognised as the founder of Acton. He was a saddlebags Methodist preacher whose health had failed by 1822 from the grind of travelling. He probably hired himself to Silas Emes to clear the land for Emes to be able to claim a patent on it. In return, Adams got half of the land. So Adams became owner of the eastern half of Lot 28 Concession 2 Esquesing Township. This was on the western side of Main Street from about River Street to Cobbleshill Road. Soon he was joined by his brothers Rufus, in 1825, and Zenas, in 1827. Rufus got Lot 28 Concession 3, which was parallel to Ezra's land but ran from the east side of Main Street to Eastern Street. Nearly all of the early settlement was on his land. He built a house at the eastern end of St Alban's Street. Zenas, like Ezra, was a saddlebags preacher and he too was taking a break to recover his health. Zenas received Lot 27 Concession 2 south of Ezra but also bought the southern half of Rufus' land. So all of the land from the southern side of Mill Street to Agnes Street belonged to Zenas. The streets here were named for Zenas's children. Zenas too built a house on the southeast corner of Church and Main Streets, and, under a worse-for-wear exterior, it is still there. Ezra's house kitty-corner from Zenas' on the northwest corner was demolished to make way for a parking lot. (Pave Paradise, put up a parking lot!) Later, other people began to join the settlement, including Eliphalet and Patience Adams, the brothers' parents. About 1835, Miller Hemstreet built a log cabin and store on the west side of Main Street just north of Mill Street. He may have let his young employee Dan run the store because the store had a sign stating Danville Grocery (or possibly Dan's Village Grocery?) . Soon the settlement began to be named Danville after the store. By 1830, Ezra was ready to get back on the circuit, returning to his land in 1836 to build two mills. He built a gristmill on the land occupied by the present mill, and the lake he created by damming the stream is the present Fairy Lake. The sawmill he built was where the stream crosses Main Street south of Church Street. These mills attracted people to the site and soon a flourishing village sprang up. The village at last became known for the Adams brothers as Adamsville. Ezra finally settled in what is now Drayton in Peel Township. He may have sent one of his flock when Robert Swan came south to buy the remainder of Ezra's land. In 1844, he built a store and post office near the corner of Main and Knox Streets. The name Adamsville had already been given to another post office so Swan gave his post office the name Acton. Soon more of Swan's friends arrived: the Nicklins, Matthews, and Moore families. John Nicklin bought the old Adams mills from Swan and James Matthews succeeded Swan as the postmaster, retaining the job for seventy years. Nicklin may have been the man who hired John Plewes, a newly arrived Yorkshireman, to run the gristmill in 1850. The mill was where his sons Simon and William learned the trade, before moving to Terra Cotta and Kimberley after John died. The leather industry for which Acton is known began when Abraham Nelles opened a tanning factory in 1842. At about the same time, a young Liverpudlian, George Beardmore, and his brother Joseph started a leather company in Hamilton. Joseph died a few years later, but the company flourished until 1854 when a fire destroyed everything. Beardmore started up again, this time in a small factory in Guelph. In 1865, he bought the factory in Acton, which had changed hands several times by then. Although George Beardmore died in 1893, the family kept the business until 1944, when it was taken over by Canada Packers. The present leather store on Eastern Street was once part of the Beardmore warehouse. Places to see in Acton:
|
