History of Prescott, Ontario

The area became a battleground during the 1754−1763 French and Indian War between Britain and France, as both parties wanted to control what was a strategic stretch of the Saint Lawrence River. This led to the 1760 Battle of the Thousand Islands, when a 10,000-strong British–Iroquois force besieged the French at Fort Lévis. Despite a spirited defense by the 300-strong French garrison, the British took the fort after an extensive artillery bombardment. Afterward, the British occupied the fort, renaming it Fort William Augustus,[4] though they soon abandoned it in favour of the older Fort de La Présentation, which they renamed Fort Oswegatchie.[4] The ruins of Fort Lévis, and the island the fort stood on, were later submerged during the creation of the Saint Lawrence Seaway.

Following the peace secured by the Jay Treaty, civilian settlers had begun to occupy both sides of the Saint Lawrence in large numbers. Sixteen years after its founding, Ogdensburg had a population of over 1200.[10] There were numerous ties "of blood and trade" on both sides of the border,[10] especially since, for merchants in northern New York, Montreal was the nearest centre of trade.[11] Nathan Ford, the land agent for Samuel Ogden who had overseen much of the settlement of the land around Ogdensburg, was a Federalist who opposed war with Britain.[11] Primary sources from the period discuss cross-border trade, notwithstanding the 1807 United States embargo on Britain and even the start of the War of 1812 itself.[11] Nevertheless, the narrow stretch of the Saint Lawrence between Prescott and Ogdensburg was a strategic corridor which became a regional focal point for military activity.[10]

In the lead-up to the outbreak of the war, eighty American militiamen were sent to Ogdensburg. War was officially declared in June 1812 and by October, there were over 800 militiamen and United States Army regulars stationed in Ogdensburg[12] along with General Jacob Brown. Brown ordered the reconstruction of "Fort Presentation", which would ultimately never be completed.[13]

HMS Duke of Gloucester spent time anchored at Prescott during the War of 1812.

At the declaration of war, eight American schooners were docked at the Ogdensburg harbour. Unprotected, the schooners attempted to escape potential capture by sailing to Sackets Harbor, New York, but they were quickly observed and two of them were captured by British forces, who forced the crews and passengers to disembark on an island before burning the ships' cargoes; the remaining schooners retreated to Ogdensburg.[13] In July, the armed schooner USS Julia, along with a Durham boat carrying a US rifle company, was sent downriver from Sackets Harbor to protect the merchant schooners. However, the Julia was intercepted at Morristown by the brig HMS Earl of Moira. The merchant schooners were ultimately able to escape later in the summer of 1812.[14] Two American colonels, Solomon van Rensselaer and Thomas B. Benedict, formed a plan around this time to raid the harbour at Prescott and burn HMS Duke of Gloucester, but this plan never materialized.[14]

These conflicts made authorities of Prescott believe it was necessary to build a fortification in the town.[15] In July, residents were employed to build a stockade which would be the main point of defence between Montreal and Kingston during the war. This would become the first Fort Wellington, consisting of a square blockhouse built of wood and earth with barracks, officers' quarters, stables and storerooms being added shortly after. The first fort needed to be built quickly, and as a result, it was ill-constructed and primitive.[15] The second fort, which still stands today, was built in 1838.

In late August 1812, Prescott received news that General Brock had captured Detroit; however, in September, a surprise raid took place at Gananoque, which was poorly defended. The American raiders seized arms and ammunition, as well as set fire to a storehouse.[15] By the fall of 1812, Prescott and Ogdensburg were maintaining friendly relations; however, in September this changed when the Americans reinforced the town and fired at convoys of bateaux moving up the river with British supplies. The British failed to retaliate at this time.[15] A few months later, in February 1813, the Americans attacked the area again, this time at Elizabethtown (now Brockville); American troops marched to the courthouse and freed the prisoners while taking prominent citizens of the city prisoner.[15]

These attacks by the Americans angered the British troops of Fort Wellington, who decided to take revenge on the Ogdensburg troops for their raids of the area and other provocations. The garrison, led by Lieutenant-Colonel "Red George" MacDonell, set out across the frozen St. Lawrence River on foot so that the American troops would assume they were performing a drill.[15] Instead, the plan was for the Glengarry Light Infantry to attack the fort and barracks, while the Fort Wellington garrison attacked the flank. Initially, the 500 men stationed at the Ogdensburg fort refused to surrender; however, when British troops entered the fort the Americans evacuated the fort and retreated 23 kilometres (14 mi).[15]

According to MacDonell's account of the following events, the troops then burned the old and new barracks, as well as two schooners, the gunboats, guardhouses, scows, and a few houses.[15] Overall, the attack was a success for the Fort Wellington soldiers. Prescott saw no further action, and the war ended soon after in 1814.

Battle of the Windmill

Fort Wellington became part of its second conflict in 1838, known as the Battle of the Windmill. This battle occurred when a small group of American soldiers called Patriots were convinced that the Canadians across the river in Prescott wanted to be freed from British "oppression" and essentially wanted to restart the rebellion by planning an invasion. Although no war ended up occurring, a battle took place when the Patriots attempted to cross into Prescott. The currents of the St. Lawrence caused problems, trapping their vessels on sandbars before forcing them to land east of Prescott in the new town of Newport, the site of a stone windmill. This gave troops from Fort Wellington plenty of time to prepare for what they assumed was an attack. The Americans eventually surrendered to the British troops, and were sent to Kingston for trial; eleven people, including their leader, were executed as punishment.[15]

Due to Prescott's location at the head of the rapids and its excellent harbour, it became a vital transfer point for freight travelling up the river. In 1810, a wharf and warehouse were built and a forwarding business was established by a William Gilkinson; it was the first of many forwarding operations in the town.[15] Prescott exported large amounts of lumber, potash, and other goods. The forwarding trade led to shipbuilding developments also taking place in Prescott, with many ships being launched from its harbour. Prescott forwarders, by 1833, had formed well-established connections with the steamboat lines running from Prescott to Montreal which allowed the forwarders here to prosper over others in the area.[15]

Forwarding became obsolete in the area much later, with the establishment of the railroads. The original forwarding warehouse built by Gilkinson is still standing, currently used as a museum dedicated to Prescott's forwarding industry. The building is made of stone but has been covered in white stucco. It was used as an American consulate, a lawyer's office, and later a laundromat before being purchased by the historical society in 1970.[15]

The Bytown and Prescott Railway (B&PR) was built between Bytown (which later evolved into the city of Ottawa) and Prescott in the early 1850s. In this era, Bytown was an isolated lumber town, while Prescott was an established community whose harbour was attractive to Bytown businessmen.[16] Construction began at Prescott in late April 1854 and proceeded north toward Bytown. Unofficial passenger trips began almost immediately, and the first official passenger trip was on June 21 and was organized by the local Sons of Temperance.[17] Regular service to Kemptville began on 9 September 1854, with the remainder of the trip to Bytown being by stagecoach and steamship. By November 4, trains had reached Gloucester, just a stagecoach ride away from Bytown. Local oral tradition holds that the first train into Bytown was on Christmas Day of 1854,[17][18] but other evidence indicates a date no earlier than December 29,[19] and possibly as late as January 1855.[20]

Following the establishment of the Bytown and Prescott Railway, Prescott became the connection point for two significant routes to the outside world. The first, as planned, was the set of connections available at Prescott's harbour, primarily the ferry to Ogdensburg,[21] The ferry between Prescott and Ogdensburg provided a convenient route between Ottawa, which was growing in importance, and New York. There, cars could be transferred to American railways such as the Rome, Watertown and Ogdensburg Railroad, which later became a part of the New York Central Railroad system.[20] For several months, this was the only connecting route available at Prescott, as the Grand Trunk Railway mainline through the area, the second connection to the outside world, had not yet opened. After the Grand Trunk line (which now exists in the form of the CN Kingston Subdivision) opened, an issue presented itself: the connection between the two railways at Prescott Junction represented a break of gauge between the B&PR's standard gauge, and the broad Provincial gauge the Grand Trunk used at the time. This required transshipment of goods by hand between the two railways, which was laborious and time-consuming. The Ogdensburg Railroad was highly motivated to pursue interchange with the Grand Trunk for economic reasons, as lake traffic at smaller harbours like Ogdensburg had declined due to competition from the large east–west railways, such as the Great Western Railway; this made the car ferry service and interchange at Prescott vital to the American railway's continued survival.[22]

Solutions to the problem of mixed gauges relied on the cooperation of all three railways: the Grand Trunk, the Ottawa and Prescott, and the Ogdensburg. An agreement between the Ogdensburg and the Grand Trunk was secured in the fall of 1862, and shortly afterward the Grand Trunk negotiated with the Ottawa and Prescott for running rights to the Prescott waterfront. This included the laying of a third rail, creating a short dual gauge system which would accommodate the Grand Trunk's broad-gauge cars. The Ogdensburg Railroad provided a newly built car ferry, the St. Lawrence,[lower-alpha 1][22] which carried the broad-gauge cars brought by the Grand Trunk to Ogdensburg, where the freight was transferred to standard-gauge cars. The Grand Trunk also pursued adjustable-gauge technology across its whole system throughout the 1860s.[23] By 1871, the Ottawa and Prescott had also developed gauge-changing facilities at Prescott Junction that utilized the Grand Trunk's adjustable-gauge technology, which was "likely for the benefit of Ottawa-bound freight."[24] Ultimately, the Grand Trunk solved the problem throughout its entire system by abandoning Provincial gauge for standard gauge, rendering earlier solutions redundant.[23]

With the mixed gauge problem eliminated, harmonized railway and harbour infrastructure at Prescott continued to develop. Dana Ashdown writes in Railway Steamships of Ontario that "[t]he harbour, because of its position above the St. Lawrence rapids, was also an important grain transfer point between the larger Great Lakes ships and the railways and smaller canal-type ships and barges."[21] Indeed, a 20,000-bushel wooden grain elevator was built in the 1870s, along with a floating transfer elevator, both owned by the St. Lawrence and Ottawa Railway (the Ottawa and Prescott Railway's successor following its 1866 bankruptcy and restructuring).[25]

The Prescott–Ogdensburg connection suffered a serious blow when, in 1873, the St. Lawrence failed a hull inspection and was retired. This time, a Prescott coal merchant named Isaac D. Purkis intervened. Purkis purchased a new ferry, the Transit,[lower-alpha 2] which arrived for service in 1874. The Transit could only carry three rail cars,[24] as opposed to the St. Lawrence's six,[22] but still managed to carry up to fifty freight cars across the river in a single day.[24] Purkis soon acquired steamers to handle passengers and less-than-carload freight. These were the Caribou,[lower-alpha 3] the City of Belleville,[lower-alpha 4] the Henry Plumb, and the Outing. In 1880, Purkis purchased a car float named the Jumbo,[lower-alpha 5] which was normally towed by the City of Belleville or the Henry Plumb, providing capacity for an additional three freight cars.[24]

The William Armstrong in an 1878 illustration.

Purkis and the Prescott–Ogdensburg crossing soon had an upriver competitor, however. A Brockville businessman named Captain David H. Lyon commissioned his own passenger steamer, the William Armstrong,[lower-alpha 6] which provided ferry service between Brockville and Morristown, New York. At the time, Brockville was served by the aging Brockville and Ottawa Railway (soon merged into the Canada Central Railway), which used the first railway tunnel in Canada, the Brockville Tunnel, to access the harbour. Morristown was served by an extension of the Utica and Black River Railroad into the town. The Brockville crossing was at a disadvantage, however, due to its own issues with mismatched gauges, as the Canada Central Railway continued to use broad gauge into the early 1880s.[26] This situation would change significantly when a new railway appeared on the scene: the fledgling Canadian Pacific Railway, chartered with the purpose of constructing a transcontinental route that would unite the disparate Canadian provinces using infrastructure. The Canadian Pacific Railway, eager to gain advantages against its much older and more established competitor, the Grand Trunk, bought up a number of shortlines in Ontario, including the Canada Central.[26] Canadian Pacific had built its own lines using standard gauge from the start, and soon after its acquisition of the Canada Central in 1881, much of the Canada Central's mainline had been converted to standard gauge, allowing the possibility of a convenient car ferry service between Belleville and Morristown. Lyon hastily converted the William Armstrong for car ferry service by cutting out the middle of the ship's superstructure and installing a section of rail track capable of holding three cars. Now a direct competitor of Purkis' ferry line in Prescott, he did not struggle for business. Canadian Pacific (which in 1884 also acquired the St. Lawrence and Ottawa Railway, giving it control over the Canadian side of both crossings) heavily favoured the Belleville route, promoting it as "The Quickest Route between Montreal and the cities of Central and Western New York",[26] but the Belleville crossing still never displaced the Prescott one, which was preferred by shippers.[27] Unwilling to be left out, Lyon soon began operating the William Armstrong at Prescott as well, then in 1888, incorporated his ferry line as the Canadian Pacific Car and Passenger Transfer Company. Purkis, in turn, began operating his ships between Brockville and Morristown, giving both lines a presence at each crossing.[28]

The SS Noronic at Prescott around 1939.

In 1896, Lyon moved his entire operation to Prescott. Freight shipments through Ogdensburg, of which the majority likely also passed through Prescott, reached 307,827 tons in total.[lower-alpha 7][29] Lyon commissioned a new ferry in 1907, the Charles Lyon,[lower-alpha 8] which could carry up to twelve freight cars.