Development of The Village
Napier developed into an active village. Robert Johnston built a store and gristmill in 1838, importing two millstones from Scotland. Johnston also had a sawmill built to harvest the many black walnut trees in the area. He then proceeded to build a large woollen mill. The village was known at first as Johnston's Mills. Later it was known as Puffing Town because of the noise made by the steam engine at Johnston's mills. This mill stood on the river behind the general store standing in the village today. People would walk to the mill from as far as Sarnia with bags of wheat on their backs to do their milling.
After the township of Metcalfe was created in 1840, the village became known as Metcalfe. When a post office opened on November 6, 1851, the village was named Napier, probably after Sir Charles James Napier (1782–1853), a British General, or perhaps after his brother, Sir William Francis Patrick Napier (1785–1860), also a general and historian of the Peninsular War.
In 1857, J. G. Sutherland moved into the area, bought the mills from Johnston and built a new woollen mill. The village population at this time was about 150. Sutherland's businesses dominated the community for many years. It was he who built the store known as Napier House in 1872; the post office moved into this building later.
Napier was important enough to become the township "capital." In 1880, the township council started holding regular meetings in the new Napier Town Hall.
Read more about this topic: Napier, Ontario
Famous quotes containing the words development of, development and/or village:
“Good schools are schools for the development of the whole child. They seek to help children develop to their maximum their social powers and their intellectual powers, their emotional capacities, their physical powers.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“The work of adult life is not easy. As in childhood, each step presents not only new tasks of development but requires a letting go of the techniques that worked before. With each passage some magic must be given up, some cherished illusion of safety and comfortably familiar sense of self must be cast off, to allow for the greater expansion of our distinctiveness.”
—Gail Sheehy (20th century)
“Ezra Pound still lives in a village and his world is a kind of village and people keep explaining things when they live in a village.... I have come not to mind if certain people live in villages and some of my friends still appear to live in villages and a village can be cozy as well as intuitive but must one really keep perpetually explaining and elucidating?”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)