1816 - Perth Military Settlement
In the Fall of 1815, European settlement began in Lanark County. Earlier in the year, the Earl of Bathurst, his Majesty's Secretary of State for the colonies, had issued a proclamation in England offering free passage, etc., to anyone who wished to become a settler in Canada. Scottish Highlanders took up the offer that, besides free passage, included one hundred acres of land for each male immigrant over legal age. Three hundred men, women, and children sailed from Greenock on the river Clyde on June 11, 1815. They arrived in Quebec on September 4th only to find that the colonial authorities had made no preparation for their arrival. They proceeded up the St. Lawrence to Brockville where they spent the winter and the next spring in temporary huts. Surveyors were hurriedly brought in to survey a location for them.
The greater number of these Scottish immigrants settled on what is still known today as the Scotch Line (County Road 10) in the geographic township of Bathurst (now part of Tay Valley Township). The Earl of Bathurst, under whose patronage the "Scotch Colony" was formed and by whose influence at Court the Prince Regent's sympathies were secured, issued orders whereby these immigrants obtained not only free passage and land grants but also free rations from the British Government for a year, and to each group of four families the necessary tools and implements with which to start 'life in the bush' - a grindstone, a crosscut and a whip saw. Each family received an adze, handsaw, drawing knife, one shell augur, two gimlets, door-lock and hinges, scythe and snath, reaping-hook, two hoes, hay fork, skillet camp kettle, and a blanket for each of its members. Most of the families in the Scotch Colony lived in tents or bark huts during the summer and fall of 1816 until the cold weather forced them to build log cabins. The local Algonquin people assisted the new settlers with identifying wild food sources and other provisions.
For quite a length of time, there was one yoke of oxen in the County, and one cow in 1817. Most of the supplies that were needed by the European settlers were carried in by themselves from the nearest settlements twenty miles south towards the St. Lawrence. In considering the requirements of the European settlers, the religious and educational needs were not forgotten. The teacher, John Halliday, came in 1815 with the European settlers, while the clergyman, the Reverend Bell, came in June, 1817. The first religious service that Rev. Bell conducted was the first of its kind in this locality.
As well as civilians, soldiers demobbed after the War of 1812 and received lots in the township. On April 17th of 1816, twelve lots in Bathurst Township were sold to new European settlers who belonged to the "Glengarry Fencibles" and, in June of the same year, "The Military Colony of Perth" - British regulars whose terms of service had expired in Canada, and those who had been members of the Canadian corps in the recent war with the United States - settled chiefly in Bathurst and Drummond Townships. More Scottish settlers arrived in 1820.
British North America's First Military Settlement
The Perth Military Settlement was founded in 1816 by disbanded soldiers from the War
of 1812 and settlers from Great Britain who arrived as part of a strategic plan
to secure Upper Canada in the event that the United States should again attack
British North America. Below is the original townships settlement area.
