FIRST MAIL For several years the settlers travelled to Portage du Fort, 10 miles south, on the Ottawa River, on horseback, as the trail was too narrow for wheeled vehicles. The first mail was carried from there on the back of a Mr. Russell. The government had made a survey in 1846 to open a road from By town (Ottawa) to Pembroke. It was completed in 1852 and was called the Government Road. The mail then came three times a week from Ottawa to Beachburg and through Westmeath post office to Pembroke. A ferry crossed the Ottawa River at LaPasse, on the easterly side of the Westmeath township peninsula. Its earliest settlers came from downstream, towards Montreal, being mostly French Canadians. Its post office was opened in 1852 as Gower Point, although shortly after parish records used the name LaPasse. Wild geese in their flights were wont to pause there in their flights to and fro in spring and autumn in the cleared marshes and lands, hence the name, LaPasse des ouardes. In 1906 the post office name was changed to LaPasse. Col. Peter White arrived in this vicinity, started a clearing and built a home in the wilderness. Despite the difficulties involved in reaching the new settlement, its growth was fairly rapid; a man named McKay soon built a sawmill on the Ottawa River, near the mouth of the Muskrat. His name was perpetuated in the naming of McKay street, Pembroke. East of the Muskrats source, Muskrat Lake, stretches the largest of Renfrew Countys townships, Westmeath. The name of this township, organized in 1830, is from an Irish county. A large portion of it forms a peninsula around which sweeps the Ottawa River. On its north side the river expands into Coulonge Lake, on its west into Lower Allumette Lake. POST OFFICE It was not Pembroke, but Westmeath township, a few miles south which got the first post office this far north in Renfrew County. In 1837 Caleb Strong Bellowes, one of the earliest settlers, became postmaster when Westmeath post office was established on his farm at the northwest corner of the 6th concession road and the 10th side road. In the early 1850s Westmeath post office moved to Goddards Corners, overlooking Lower Allumette Lake. This village has since been called Westmeath. Previously it had been suggested that it be called Tuckerville, as George Washington Tucker was one of its earliest pioneers and had owned all the land on which the village was built. For many years people locally called it Front Westmeath, because of its location. Mark M. Drew, who had a tannery and shoe store, was postmaster after the war. Then Westmeath post office was moved to the grocery store of Alexander Fraser. Alexander Moffat built a grist mill in 1841 in Pembroke on the Muskrat River. The same year, he surveyed his property into town lots. The village had been called Miramichi, by settlers from New Brunswick, bur now it was called Moffat for a time, then Sydenham. Before 1846, mail came from Westmeath, the nearest post office, but in that year a post office was established in Pembroke, named Pembroke after the township of that name. Moffat was the first postmaster and was succeeded in that office by his son and grandson. The rapids on the Ottawa River in its big bend between Portage du Fort and the Mouth of the Muskrat were avoided by the early lumbermen by taking a more direct route through a chain of lakes which blended into the Muskrat Lake and the Muskrat River.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 20:21:26 +0000
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