History of the County of Lennox and Addington - 1913 by Walter Stevens Herrington

$24.75

Cat No.:   CA0169:

Here is another of the great turn of the (19th) century county histories of Ontario. The author, Walter S. Herrington, K.C., already the author of at least three books about Canadian development, begins his history at the beginning, with a discussion of the First Nations people's use of the area and of the earliest white exploration by Champlain.

This area we now call the County of Lennox and Addington seems to have been little inhabited until it was decided to use it to house a good number of the incoming United Empire Loyalists, the first of whom arrived in 1784 before the government's land survey teams had finished laying out the concessions which made up the first five townships.

The influx of such a large number of settlers all at once led to a rapid development of the area's infrastructure, commercial, social and political. This in its turn led to the keeping of records right from the beginning although the author does lament the number of these records which were lost or destroyed before he went looking for them in the early 1900's. Despite these missing records this book is a mine of detail, including mentions of so many of the early families appearing in records as diverse as Town Council minutes and merchant's account books.

Having made a thorough exposé of the areas initial inhabitation the author goes on to devote individual chapters to local government, Commerce, Schools, Recreation, Banks, Churches and Newspapers... Similarly, he discusses the main centers of population in individual chapters in proportion to their importance to the counties development.

Finally, and arguably most important, the author devotes the last 72 pages of the book to biographical sketches of, … men who have filled the important public offices within the gift of the people of Lennox and Addington…. He should have said men and their families however and this shouldn't be taken to mean that the ordinary citizens do not get mentioned. Although not formally identified as biographies, in the course of giving this history, the author frequently identifies the key players, and where he could he provides any personal information he had to hand. As a result there is personal information on hundreds more early citizens than would be apparent from reading the biographies section alone.

If your family has UEL connections or has origins in the Lennox and Addington County area you are going to want a copy of this book it is a fund of good information and well illustrated with over 80 images, many of early settlers and their property, taken from early portraits and photographs.

As so frequently happens, this book has lost one of its illustration pages during its 90 odd years of existence. It is the picture of the 1905 Napanee Football team which should face p417. As usual we will be searching for it and when we locate it we will put it on our site for downloading. In the meantime the book does not lose any value by the lack of this single, isolated, page.

Although the author has provided an extensive index our searchability features offer a more reliable method of finding any mention of individuals and places, and with the FastFind enhancement, searching for the results is virtually instantaneous.

We have placed a sampler of this book on our Ontario Downloads web page - including the author's index - for you to browse before buying. You can also reach the Sampler by clicking on the following link Sampler. You can return to this page by closing the Sampler Page when you are ready to purchase.

Review all our Free Samplers by clicking on FREE DOWNLOADS.

No. of CDs is:  1 ;   Format is:  PDF ;   Searchable?:  YES;

FastFind:  Yes;  ISBN No.:   978-1-897405-17-8 ;