Wallaceburg

Photo by Alan L Brown - August, 2004

Plaque Location

The Municipality of Chatham-Kent
In Wallaceburg, at the water's edge in a park at the north end of
the Highway 40 bridge over the North Sydenham River
N 42 35.533 W 82 23.279

Plaque Text

The Chippewa surrendered their lands in this area by treaty in 1796. The first European presence in this area was Lord Selkirk's nearby Baldoon Settlement, founded in 1804. It failed because of its poor location, but some of the settlers relocated here at the forks of the Sydenham River. Laughlan McDougall, the first arrival, built a trading post and tavern at "The Forks" in the early 1820s. When a post office opened in 1837, the hamlet was named Wallaceburg after Scottish patriot Sir William Wallace. In subsequent decades the community prospered as the hub of the area's lumber trade and as a market town and industrial centre. Wallaceburg became a village in 1875 and a town in 1896.

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