On June 19, around 30 local residents gathered at the Shawville Community Lodge for a session of tea, pastries and chronicles of yesteryear courtesy of local historians.

Hosted by the Pontiac Archives, the event served as an opportunity for residents to get together and learn about some of the most important contributors to the town in its early years.

Consisting of four 20-minute presentations from community antiquarians, each one focused on Shawville’s most notable settlers and the impact they had on the town’s establishment during the 1800s.

With a wide array of appetizing food and drink on hand, attendees sat on wood benches while snacking on sweet treats and sipped coffee or tea.

Usually consisting of a single one-hour presentation from a special guest, this year four speakers were present to cover a broader variety of subjects without taking too much time, according to the event’s main organizer Elizabeth Russell.

For Russell, the goal of the event was to give back to the community for all their support to the town’s archives by providing locals with a dose of their town’s history.

“The archives are completely volunteer,” she said. “None of us get paid anything. Shawville and Clarendon provide the space for us and anything else we’re dependent on donations. So, we like to do something every year that we think will be of interest to the local population.”

With such a vast diversity of settlers in the region during the 1800s, it’s important to look back at their experiences to see how good we have it today, Russell said.

“There’s some amazing history here,” she said. “This area was really settled by all kinds of people. There’s Irish, there’s Scottish, there’s Francophone, there’s German, there’s Polish, there’s Aboriginal. It’s got an amazing history and people worked together.”

The featured speakers were Nancy Conroy detailing her family’s connection to the Dale’s, McDowell’s, Armstrong’s and Hamilton’s, Gloria Tubman speaking about George Dagg, Russell divulging on early medicine in the municipality and the Sturgeon family, as well as Venetia Crawford who highlighted some of the biggest contributors to the development of the Pontiac Archives.

For Crawford, the event is vital for the archives as it’s another way of promoting the organization to the community and encouraging locals to contribute to its vast collection of historical data.

“It’s so people realize that we exist and they’ll come and bring us their treasures,” she said. “Because if we didn’t have their treasures, we wouldn’t have an archive.”

Register or subscribe to read this content

Thanks for stopping by! This article is available to readers who have created a free account or who subscribe to The Equity.

When you register for free with your email, you get access to a limited number of stories at no cost. Subscribers enjoy unlimited access to everything we publish—and directly support quality local journalism here in the Pontiac.

Register or Subscribe Today!