by Charles Phelps in Sarnia: Gateway to Bluewaterland

 

(1987)  The site of Sarnia at the dawn of the 19th century was an uncharted wilderness ripe for exploration and settlement. Home to only a small band of Chippewa Indians, whose moderate demands for game and fish were more than amply supplied, it was one of the farthest frontiers of Upper Canada.

Sarnia is underlaid by the stable Kettle Point bedrock formation. Black fissile shale held traces of oil and natural gas. Frequent attempts at oil well drilling, given the proximity (20 miles) from the pioneer Canadian oil and gas fields, have in fact disclosed magnificent salt beds, which were an economic benefit to the city for over a century. But the geological legacy of the oil has been, historically, the single greatest economic asset in the history of Sarnia.

From the sandy Huron fringes in the north section of the city, to the heavy, poorly drained Lambton plain in the south, the site was initially fertile and heavily timbered. It occupied a plateau averaging 25 feet above the swift and shining blue waters of the St. Clair River, levelling down near water’s edge where Lake Huron funnels into the river. Flooding, except under extreme conditions near the lake, is therefore, unknown.

Sarnia’s proximity to the lake has made its climate moderate and fresh, especially in the extremes of summer. A fledgling tourist and recreation business based on the attractive climate appeared late in the 19th century. As an added bonus to both early settlers and future development, Sarnia was blessed with a fine natural harbour, owing to the shoreline contour where the lake joins the river. Shallow in early years, it has been deepened and improved constantly.

The first residents of Sarnia occupied an environment far different than the present. A huge glacier covered most of the province, while herds of caribou and the occasional mastodon wandered among meadows and scattered spruce groves. Immense Lake Algonquin filled the Huron Basin at a level six metres higher than the modern average, creating a bay in what is now the northeastern outskirts of the city. Little is known archaeologically of these earliest visitors, except that they camped near the shoreline some 11,000 years ago.

Sarnia and its vicinity became merely a ridge adjacent to an extensive lake plane covered by pine and poplar forests when Lake Algonquin disappeared around 8000 BC. The shore of low-level Lake Stanley was roughly 40 km to the north and there was no St. Clair River as we now know it. Native hunting bands travelled through the area occasionally, but it was not until the return of high water levels 4500 years ago that Sarnia attracted more extensive settlement along the pre-glacial Lake Nipissing shoreline. A Wawanosh embayment was re-established to the east of the city, the St. Clair River began to flow south, and a series of sand dunes, beaches and bars developed along the Great Lake shoreline from modern day Point Edward to Bright’s Grove.

A deciduous and pine forest similar to the present covered these dunes and sheltered small warm season camps of Native peoples who visited the area to fish and hunt and gather wild plant foods, such as butternuts and raspberries. While no sites relating to these late Archaic peoples have been excavated, surfaced recoveries of notched limestone pebble net sinkers from their camps and adjacent creek estuaries attest to the importance of fishing in their economy.

As the Huron basin lake level dropped, Lake Wawanosh became separate, and its sandy northern shoreline became a popular camping location some 3000 years ago. Bands of Native people netted spawning fish in the shallow waters until A.D. 1400 to 1500 when the local population abandoned the Sarnia area. The last 2000 years of their occupation is represented by numerous camp and burial sites on the sandy knolls to the north and east of the city and a cache of chert (flint) blades along Devine Street in the downtown area. The latter discovery reflects the strategic location of present-day Sarnia on a widespread trade network which existed 2000 years ago.

To the south near Corunna the famous Parker Earthwork, an A.D. 1400 palisaded village , suggests the violent nature of the period when the last central Algonquian hunters, fishermen, and farmers resided around Sarnia. Who they were – the Kickapoo, the Sauk, or some other unrecorded group – we may never know.

We do know that Algonquian people return to hunt and fish and perhaps grow corn in present-day Sarnia around A.D. 1700. The camp of Chief Wawanosh was noted on Lot 43 of the ninth concession of Sarnia Township by surveyor Roswell Mount in 1829; however, most local native people resided on the Sarnia Reserve lands shortly thereafter.

Sarnia, with most of the surrounding area which later became the modern County of Lambton,was ceded by the Chippewa Indians to the Crown in 1827. In the 20 years which preceded, the Indians had already permitted the friendly occupation of their lands by the first white settlers, probably for some private means of payment. Such arrangements were frowned upon by authority, yet were generally amicable in nature. Proceeding without the benefit of survey or deed, these early agreements later gave the “squatters” as the settlers were termed, a de facto recognition of title for their farms and homesteads.

Earliest white settlers at Sarnia were French Canadians from the Windsor border region in Michigan. Of 20 families recorded in the year 1811, between Sarnia and the south end of the St. Clair River, all but two bore French names. Three families can be well-documented early in the 19 century on the original Sarnia townsite: those of Aeneus Cazelet, Jean-Baptiste Pare, and Joseph LaForge. The descendants of, Cazelet, later spelled Causley, have lived continuously in Sarnia since the year 1807, making them by perhaps 30 years the longest-running local dynasty. Pare, located at least by 1808, left intriguing details of his purchase from an earlier settler. LaForge is thought to have come in 1809. Needless to say, contemporary documentation of these events is scanty and at variance.

Pare and LaForge, upon learning in 1830 that squatters in the Township of St. Clair ( the union of the later townships of Moore and Sarnia) were ordered to vacate, jointly petitioned Lieutenant-Governor Sir John Colborne to retain their lands and homes. Pare maintained he had “ been 30 years in possession of Lot number 26 [76] in the Township of St. Clair, this land was originally purchased of a Canadian, Laboulliere, who received it as a deed of gift from the Chippewa Indians on his marriage with a daughter of their tribe.”

Eloquently did Pare and LaForge described their wilderness life:

“Your petitioners with the painful drudgery and careful savings of years, have rescued  these spots from the wilderness. They served too their sovereign faithfully, though in a humble capacity, during the late warm (of 1812 – 14) in which their houses were destroyed on this very place and their all lost. It has been the Will of Heaven to cast their lot in a lowly sphere, to doom them to earn a scanty sustenance by the sweat of their brow, and they have hitherto supported thFir [their] families by honest industry that has enabled the  latter petitioner (Laforge) contentedly to maintain his numerous progeny. Your petitioners throw themselves upon the compassion of the Crown. They supplicate your Excellency not to expel them from their deer homes of their youth, from the shelter of their feeble old age… Your petitioners cannot in the colloquial phrase of the country be termed squatters.

As both men, the elder Pare, and LaForge, his son-in-law signed these and other documents with an “x,” it is clear they had assistance, perhaps from land agents, in their quest for security of tenure. Three petitions later, in 1834, they were successful.

The settlers and their Indian neighbours were surrounded and isolated by thousands of acres of dense forest. Communication, other than by Indian trail, travelled entirely by water. For many years, transport by water also proved to be the easiest. In 1826, the American traveller Thomas L McKenney, first to leave us an impression of the area, was deeply impressed by the tranquility of it all:

 Becalmed. Dropped anchor within 30 feet of the Canadian shore, along which are three or four little log cabins, which seem to relieve the eye from the undisturbed solitude that reigns along these shores. Night is the only time when anything is seen or heard; and then they are lit up with numerous fires, and ever and anon you hear the paddle strike against the side of the canoe, or the spear plunge into the deep – when all is well is when all is still again. The shores, for the last 12 miles, are beautiful. The banks are bold, and the woods lovely; and these are reflected as in a mirror in the river that runs rapidly, though smoothly by. The water is delightful to drink, and is very cool withal.”

 

Opposite the Sarnia clearing was the little Michigan settlement named Desmond, or Black River, lying to the south of Fort Gratiot, which had been a defensive point since the constant wars between the English and French for supremacy in the Midwest. Fort Gratiot, now the home of the United States Coast Guard, included a stone lighthouse first erected in 1824. Though later reconstructed, it remains today as the oldest man-made structure in the area of its community, now called Port Huron, and Sarnia. Sarnia and Port Huron were to develop simultaneously, and became unofficial “twin cities.”

In April, 1829 the first survey of the Township of Sarnia and its neighbour to the south, the Township of Moore, was ordered to be done by the surveyor general. at York, the capital of Upper Canada, and was completed by January 1830. Roswell Mount, later an MLA, headed the survey party. A young helper named Freeman Talbot from Mounts’ nearby home,, London, 60 years later wrote of this experience. Describing the settlers the party found already on the land, Talbot wrote:

These people had no laws, no post office, no newspaper, very few books, no custom duties, no doctor, no markets, no officers, – – – no title whatsoever to the land they so long cultivated, and still they appeared contented and fairly prosperous. Their rude agricultural implements, clothing, sheets, hats and caps were made by amateur mechanics that the necessities of the time had educated for action. Women and men showed an industry, thrift and mechanical genius that thousands of the present time man might well be proud to imitate.

By 1830 the little cluster of French settlers on the waterfront and their Indian neighbours were about to experience a frontier “boom” as an influx of newcomers arrived, spread out amongst them, and pushed the edge of settlement back eastwardly into the hinterland.

Five distinctive groups of people shared in the development of the Sarnia townsite, which originally comprised 700 acres, known as lots 70 to 76 in the Front Concession of the Township of Sarnia. The first group was the Chippewa Indians, who retained, after the treaty of 1827, one of the most advantageously placed Indian reservations of any: the Sarnia Reserve. Over the years that followed, the original holding of 10,280 acres was somewhat reduced in size as speculators and developers prevailed upon the Indians and their protector, the Crown, to surrender lands for urban or industrial expansion. By prudent management in later years, however, Sarnia Reserve has become a progressive and at times highly profitable home for the Chippewas. In 1951 it became the only Indian Reserve to lie within the corporate bounds of a Canadian city. The Indian presence and participation in the life of Sarnia has, from the beginning, brought the challenge of the preservation of old traditions and values, with the assimilation of the new.

Five persons received original grants from the Crown comprising the area which became part of the municipality as first incorporated. These were:

Lots 70 and 71: Henry Jones                    July 17, 18                                                                                              Lot 72                Benjamin Fairchild        March 24, 1834                                                                         Lot 73 and 74    Richard Emeric Vidal    April 1, 1834                                                                             Lot 75                Joseph LaForge              April 7, 1835                                                                              Lot 76                 Jean-Baptiste Pare        December 1, 1834

Settlement duties, purchase price and conditions of location would vary; however, all these men would have located upon or purchased, these lands, some months or even years prior to the date of the patent. The patent date indicates only that all prior obligations to government had been satisfied, and that the patent fee itself had been paid for the issuance of the document.

A second group, therefore, was the pre-treaty settlers, Pare and LaForge, who obtained grants of two of the seven long narrow seigniorial lots facing the riverfront at Sarnia. In later years, as opportunity arose, they sold out their holdings to newcomers. Even so, as late as 1868 “LaForge’s orchard” was still marked on the official survey of the town of Sarnia. Lying on the east side of Front Street between Davis and Wellington, this site is now occupied largely by the Federal Building.

The Causley family, for whatever reason, did not obtain a Crown grant for their pioneer holdings, though they long outlasted the Pare and LaForge families. These original French-Canadian settlers remained, but as minor players in the unfolding scenario. They seem not to have participated in the later prosperity based on land speculation and commerce.

English settlers of financial means or social status were third major element in early Sarnia who left an enduring mark. Foremost among these was Richard Emeric Vidal, one of a group of retired Royal Navy officers who settled in Upper Canada. His reward for services to his monarch was 200 acres which, when laid out into mainly residential lots, was to become the choicest part of the residential district of early Sarnia. Vidal founded a local dynasty which became prominent in business and government for well over a century. Another Englishman, Henry Jones, persuaded the Imperial government that he could be a successful settlement leader. As government was very desirous of groups of sponsored settlers taking up land as communities, Jones received a grant of 1000 acres: 800 in the Township hinterland, and 200 on the north edge of the townsite, an area late in developing. Benjamin Fairchild, a non-resident landowner, received a grant of 100 acres which he quickly sold to George Durand, a merchant who is believed to have opened Sarnia’s first store, and became the first postmaster.

Scottish settlers, many already resident in Upper Canada, resilient and resourceful, were the fourth and perhaps the most important element to shape early Sarnia. Led by Malcolm Cameron, an energetic young member of the Upper Canada legislature from Lanark County in eastern Upper Canada, these Scots left rocky and unproductive farms in that county, all too similar to their Scottish homeland. They trekked to Sarnia in search of timber, a bountiful cash crop, then in high demand in England. They quickly selected farms in the immediate hinterland of Sarnia, where the soil, once cleared, was rich and productive and the economic opportunities, compared either to Lanark or their original homeland, were limitless. A number of the leading people back in Perth, the capital of Lanark, came to Sarnia and took up major roles, including James Flintoft, who became the first Sheriff of Lambton County, and James Gemmill, who founded Sarnia’s current and longest running newspaper, the Observer. Scots and Britons form the two distinctive groups in early Sarnia, and frequently generated rivalry in public and business life.

The north half of Sarnia Township, including a large portion of the present-day city of Sarnia, fell into the hands of Samuel Street, a prominent Upper Canada land speculator from the Niagara District. Street purchased his lands, much of it choice, as a block of 14,000 acres, from the Crown. Development will slow and uneven, as the Street family held back land for their future income. The south half was opened to individual settlers, who came in large numbers from the mid-1830s onward. They were described by a contemporary as “a class of men, who, as farmers, will soon begin to show their strength. They are chiefly from the old country, hearty, healthy, and industrious, as the appearance of their farms amply testifies.”  It was important to the provinces as a whole to have such a strategic area populated by able-bodied men who, as potential militia, could counterbalance the American threat to the border which remained as legacy of the war of 1812. At the same time they could be counted upon to vote the government party; the rebellion of 1837 found no overt sympathy here. They vigorously opened up settlement and advanced the areas development.

Malcolm Cameron, Richard E. Vidal, and George Durand collectively may be considered as the founders of Sarnia. In and after the year 1832 they all became established – buying and selling land, engaging in commerce, and dominating the official life of the settlement. First known simply as “The Rapids,” from the turbulence of the waters where river and lake joined, the place was also known as Sarnia, from the name of the township. It was common practice for the first settlement in an Upper Canadian Township to follow that name, though as other settlements arose nomenclature would have to be clarified. The name of Sarnia was given to the Township by Lieutenant-Governor Sir John Colburn in 1829. It was the Roman name, possibly of Celtic origin, for the English Channel island of Guernsey, which had become Sir John’s previous bailiwick. The English element in the settlement favoured the name of Buenos Ayres, a truly romantic choice for the town in the bush. The Scottish faction pushed for the familiar, prosaic Glasgow. It all came to a head at the first local government meeting ever held in Sarnia, on January 4, 1836, where, after much acrimony, the place was simply called Port Sarnia, by a vote of 26 to 16. Both factions nursed their injured feelings and vigorous letters to the editor of the nearest paper – in this instance the Canadian Emigrant in Sandwich (Windsor), the Western District capital, distant 60 miles by water and inaccessible by land. The choice of the name was later confirmed by the assent of the lieutenant-governor of the day, Sir Francis Bond Head..

 

The naming of the settlement, coincidental with the start of the town meetings, eventually became identified in the minds of Sarnians as the major event in the founding of the place. In 1936 the centennial of this event was celebrated in fitting style, with parades, civic events, and a comprehensive historical edition of the daily newspaper, the Canadian Observer. Charlotte Vidal Nisbet, a granddaughter of one of the founders, Richard E. Vidal, was persuaded to transmit a century of family record and tradition through a series of published articles. So popular was Mrs. Nisbet’s work that she continued a regular column until her death 12 years later. A genteel and romantic writer, Mrs. Nisbet greatly influenced contemporary awareness of the community’s history and inspired others to continue in her steps. Although much revisionist thought later followed, her reconstruction of early Sarnia through the family diaries has an endearing charm:

“Nobody now, I fancy, can fully realize what the mill means to the Village of Port Sarnia. The citizens watched the progress with great interest. The frame of it was begun in March and the mill was finished and ready for business in December, for in Captain Vitals diary is this interesting entry – December 15, 1837, saw Durand’s Mill cut the first plank.”

Up to this time every board, rafter, scantling, etc. had to be brought over from Black River, which was often a difficult job. But from this time on, the people of Sarnia and all the country round here have been able to get nearly everything they wanted in the lumbar line, at home. That year, 1837, was a great one for George Durand, for besides the successful completion of the mill and canal, he gave a ball on 25 May to which he invited all his friends from the village and country. We are not told where it was held, but the room was decorated for the occasion and he got several lags from Captain Vidal for that purpose. This was the first ball ever given in this place.

 

The Native Indian presence adjacent to the settlement of Port Sarnia brought the settlers’ first contact with organized religion. The Wesleyan Methodist Church stationed the Reverend Thomas Turner in 1832, for whose occupancy the Mission House was erected near the river bank half a mile south of the reservation boundary. The house of the Indian agent, William Jones, stood nearby, along with the school presided over by Elijah Harris. The site is now marked by a cairnaren on the north side of Devine Street west of Christina Street. Turner was succeeded in 1834 by the famous missionary James Evans, who made his mark in Canadian literature and ethnology by translating and publishing hymns and scripture in the Native tongue, and later for inventing the written Cree syllabic language in the Canadian Northwest. The earnest Methodist parsons daily exhorted the town population and worked mightily to eradicate sin, which they discovered to be running rampant in this pioneer and frontier society. A rough wooden chapel was erected in the village, which was to serve as the barracks in 1838 for the militia who guarded the settlement against a threatened Fenian attack from over the border, which never materialized. Central United Church, Sarnia, the largest and oldest Protestant congregation in the city, dates is founding to the year 1832.

 

Transportation and communication occupied the exertions of the Sarnia community from the outset. Roads through the settlement, roads connecting the village to the hinterland and beyond, roads through Errol (a contemporary settlement 15 miles eastward on the Lake Huron shore, now entirely vanished), and roads to London were a constant concern. Beginning in 1835 the Western District Quarter Sessions granted money to link Sarnia with its neighbours. Evidently early bridges were built by volunteer labour, and tax monies were later expended in repeated maintenance and reconstruction of these primitive structures as they weathered and became rickety. Town meetings of the traditional style made famous in New England were frequently held on matters of public concern, usually relating to improvements and the necessity for higher level government support for this purpose. At a meeting in December 1839, attended by 44 men, the Upper Canada legislature was urged to support an extension of the proposed Great Western Railway project westward from the town of London to Point Edward, this well before there was a possible all-weather road. The much desired Railway would not, in fact, reach Sarnia for almost 20 more years.

After much unhappiness and agitation, Port Sarnia was granted a post office, of which the recorded opening day was February 6, 1837. The first postmaster was George Durand. Mails went twice weekly. The 68-mile trip to London occupied two days, the mail conveyance stopping for the night at Warwick. Ten years later the trip was reduced by the advent of better roads to a single day. The modern traveller covers the same route in an hour, by rail or by automobile. William Jones commented in 1840:

The Chatham and London mails, on account of the badness of the road, are most uncertain here, varying in their time often several hours. They should meet at Port Sarnia on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and leave on the following morning; but from the late hour at which they frequently arrive, it is impossible to answer by the same post – a severe inconvenience to persons in official correspondence and also to merchants.

Whilst the rising village was largely dependent upon water travel, the vagaries of wind, the leisurely pace of the vessels, and the inconvenience of winter mandated the need for better roads. The route to London had been projected to be through Errol Village, which was an early competitor with Port Sarnia for government largess as a strategic outpost on the  water frontier. But the direct route from Sarnia to London was some 10 or 12 miles shorter, and lay through virgin lands which afforded developmental prospects, and therefore profits for land speculators. In typical Upper Canadian fashion, the government acted at the behest of interested parties, headed up by Malcolm Cameron, and granted money to improve the most direct route, thereby cutting off Errol from the mainstream. The turnpike route linking Sarnia to London was improved and completed between 1842 and 1844 with governmental subsidies amounting to $74,560.68, a vast sum of money for the place and time.

 

Ferries ran regularly between Sarnia and Port Huron from the late 1830s onward, a tradition that only ceased in the mid-1950s. Sarnia became a customs port of entry in 1840, with Richard E. Vidal named the first collector of customs. The first recorded newspaper, the Frontier Spectator, flourished for a few months during 1841. It was a brave effort for so small a community. The paper was apparently printed in Port Huron. As no copies are now extant, its existence is only documented in other papers which do survive.

Fascinating remnants from Pioneer papers speak with optimism:

Port Sarnia. This beautiful, and we may with truth add, healthy village, is undoubtedly destined to become a place of very considerable importance, whether we look at it in a commercial or military point of view… During the last winter this town has invariably proved the best market for farming, produce, and has the preference, in many cases, by hunters by farmers of equal distance to the town of London. The natural situation is good, being of the head of navigation. The St. Clair, with its numerous steamboats and schooners, forms a grand outlet for all kinds of farming projects, and we only require good roads for the farmer to be able to reach town in summer as well as winter.

Port Sarnia has risen as if by magic, within the last two years. We have five large and well-stocked stores, two large taverns, where the traveller can find every accommodation, a sawmill, tannery, harness and boot manufactory. Bricklayers, brick makers, bakers, carpenters, coopers, joiners, tailors, tanners, blacksmiths, etc. all in full operation… Upon the whole we may be considered in what we may call a healthy condition. Our buildings and improvements are begun and ended on a solid basis – or in other words, real capital.

A short-lived paper called the Banner appeared briefly in the late 1840s. J.N. Stone, from Michigan, came over and started the Lambton Herald in 1851. It too was short-lived. Stone  “was a very young man then, and fresh, and got Canuck politics and politicians so sadly mixed up that he thought his health would be improved by returning to the States.”  Stone lived a long and peacefully in the settled order of the state of Wisconsin where his view of local politics was presumably much clearer. Historians cannot but regret the lack of even a single copy of what must’ve been a robust and interesting journal.

Early in 1852 the short-lived but long known Lambton Shield began publication, edited by Alexander Mackenzie, the Reform minded stonemason who settled in Sarnia in 1847 and would become perhaps Sarnia’s most famous citizen during his lifetime and long afterwards. Upon the first issue, the London Free Press commented,

It is reform in its principles… very credibly got up, both in matter and appearance and we wish it every success. If the inhabitants of Port Sarnia desire the place to be known, they cannot do better for that end then by affording a generous support to the Shield. Never having visited the locality, we may confess the extended view which this first number affords of the size, wealth and enterprise of the place.

 

The Shield took strenuous exception to the political life and works of Malcolm Cameron, Sarnia’s preeminent business and political figure, who late in 1853 persuaded John Raeside Gemmill of his old home at Perth in Lanark County, to come to Sarnia and start the Observer, to spread his political views. The Observer first appeared on November 16, 1853, under the title Lambton Observer and Western Advertiser, “A weekly paper devoted to literature, science, agriculture, commerce, politics and general intelligence.”

With two newspapers at loggerheads, the row between the Mackenzie and Cameron factions heated up. In April 1854, Mackenzie published allegations reflecting upon Cameron’s integrity and Cameron successfully sued McKenzie for libel and slander. With the paper already financially vulnerable, the Shield was silenced. The Observer remained in continuous existence, going daily in 1895 and remaining in 1986 as the only daily newspaper in Sarnia and Lambton County.

Local government with extensive public participation came early to the settlement of Sarnia, when the name was chosen during the first town meeting in January 1836. Complete local government records exist from 1840. Annual town meetings selected the clerk, assessor, and tax collector, and a variety of minor officials charged with the duties of running local affairs: overseers, wardens, pound keepers, path masters, and fence viewers. Sarnia was referred to as the “village,” the rest of the township as the “bush.”.” By 1849 population was running neck and neck: for the village, 559; for the bush, 502; total, 1061.

Local Government was controlled in all important respects by the Quarter Sessions of the Peace and their officers, based in Sandwich (now a part of Windsor), the headquarters of the Western District. Owing to the inconvenience of travel and the constant expense of a district capital, the northern part of the Western District, comprising the 10 townships later to form Lambton County, petitioned as early as 1841 to become a separate district. Eventually, in 1847, the middle area, Kent, was set apart as a district, pending the erection of a suitable courthouse and jail.

In 1850 counties replaced districts, and the Western District became the United Counties of Essex, Kent, and Lambton. With the separation of Kent in 1851, Essex and Lambton, though not geographically contiguous, remained United Counties until 1853. During 1852 the provisional Council of Lambton County was formed, and whilst the doughty Alexander Mackenzie was fighting his political battles with Malcolm Cameron, he was also building a sturdy courthouse and jail for his hometown of Sarnia. Upon the completion of the new public buildings Lambton was separated from Essex by governor’s proclamation and the new Council of Lambton County met at Port Sarnia on October 24, 1853.

Despite Sarnia’s being in the northwest corner of the new county, it was always the obvious choice for the county seat, though rural townships to the east and south campaigned vigorously then, and on some later occasions, to have the county capital removed to a more central location. Ironically, a century and a quarter later, when the city and the county had long since ceased to be united for municipal purposes, if you meet the municipal county administration left Sarnia for a central location in the village of Wyoming, whilst the courts remained in Sarnia.

Early in their deliberations the town meetings turned their attention to education. By a law in the year 1842, school commissioners were appointed by the town meetings and charged with the duty of improving education in the townships. Township commissioners functioned for only three years; in 1844 Upper Canada reverted to a system of local area trustees, placing school administration at a very parochial level. Only a century later, in 1944, was the need for consolidation and cooperation in local education perceived, when the school system essentially went full circle, back to township boards and eventually, in 1969, to county boards.

The township school commissioners found a small “bush school” in the township already begun, founded by private donations. They bought land and commence the erection of a brick school in the village, managing to spend 10 times the amount on the village school as they did on the “ bush school.” This fact no doubt wore on the good nature of the bush settlers, who work right quite relieved in 1844 to take over their schools affairs. So costly was the village school that, by 1843, the commissioners threaten to auction the school and contents if the District Council did not give them help to finish what they had begun. The impasse was resolved and a grammar school (the early name for a high school”  was erected alongside the brick school later in the 1840s.

As the village expanded, so also did its business and industry. Early merchants acted as bankers and moneylenders. By 1844 there was a little surplus capital. Robert’s Skillbeck, an associate of Malcolm Cameron, drew on his earlier experience in “building Societies” in England and originated the idea of a syndicate. Known as the Port Sarnia Syndicate, it operated from 1844 to 1847. In the latter years it became chartered as the Port Sarnia Building Society. Available money was pooled, then loaned to the highest bidder, the bid being the interest rate. Such was the scarcity of capital, and the willingness of entrepreneurs to take risk, that rates as high as 45% per annum were regularly paid. The society evolved in later years to the Lambton Loan and Savings Company, which became a branch of the Victoria and Grey trust Company. It is commonly regarded as Canada’s oldest trust company.

The expansion of the settlement of Sarnia inevitably brought pressures to extend the area of the townsite, and then to set the village apart from the township as a town. Indeed, the achievement of county seat status in 1853 was a powerful spur to achieve town status; even in the 1850s it was unusual in Upper Canada for a place not even incorporated to become the centre of a senior level of government.

Accordingly from the beginning the settlers looked with longing eyes upon the fertile and proximate acreage of the Indian Reservation. As early as 1837, they petitioned the lieutenant-governor to obtain 200 acres of the adjoining reservation to create a townsite. They complained that:

The whole of the frontage of this township on the St. Clair is in the possession of the Indians with the exception of seven narrow lots at the head of the River; five of these lots are on a bay, the water in which is too shallow for vessels of burden, and the remaining two, belonging to private individuals, are too narrow for the space required for a town of even small size.

Year after year the plea renewed; finally in 1850 the desired land was purchased, surveyed into quarter acre lots, and sold to individuals who mainly erected homes. By this time the business district of the village had mainly settled to the north, though the dock and shipping area west of Front Street on the St. Clair River was greatly enlarged.

By the early 1850s the future growth of Sarnia was assured. Stirring times were ahead. Town status, the coming of two railroad lines, the coincidence of the discovery of oil in nearby Enniskillen Township, and the economic benefits of the American Civil War would all materialize within 10 years