Ortonville is an
unincorporated farming community located at a bend of the
Saint John River south of
Grand Falls, New Brunswick. It is on the west side of the river, north, north east of
Limestone. Geographical coordinates are 46°57'29" North and 67°40'48" West.
History
The earliest
British, and probably the earliest
European,
settlement
Settlement may refer to:
*Human settlement, a community where people live
*Settlement (structural), the distortion or disruption of parts of a building
*Closing (real estate), the final step in executing a real estate transaction
*Settlement (fina ...
at or very near Ortonville was across the river at Salmon River Settlement. In May 1814
British North American surveyor-general
Joseph Bouchette settled two
military families here at the direction of
Governor Sir
George Prevost. Sensitive to the presence of the recently hostile
United States nearby, Prevost wanted a
communication route from
Fredericton
Fredericton (; ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of New Brunswick. The city is situated in the west-central portion of the province along the Saint John River, which flows west to east as it bisects the city. The river is the do ...
to
Upper
Upper may refer to:
* Shoe upper or ''vamp'', the part of a shoe on the top of the foot
* Stimulant, drugs which induce temporary improvements in either mental or physical function or both
* ''Upper'', the original film title for the 2013 found fo ...
and
Lower Canada to serve as an alternative if the
St. Lawrence River were to freeze. The two settled families at the
Salmon River had been disbanded from the Tenth or Fourth Royal
Veteran's
Battalion and together with other military settlers formed a series of widely dispersed
station
Station may refer to:
Agriculture
* Station (Australian agriculture), a large Australian landholding used for livestock production
* Station (New Zealand agriculture), a large New Zealand farm used for grazing by sheep and cattle
** Cattle statio ...
s along the Saint John River. Three families were here by 1817.
Early families included Hitchcock, McLaughlin, and Gallagher who settled here before Ortonville received a name separate from the Salmon River Settlement. The Benjamin Hitchcock, Jr., family petitioned for land here in 1862, and settled here by 1865.
A
post office was located in private homes of six different postmasters between 1883 and 1964, all members of the Gallagher, Hitchcock, and McLaughlin families. "In 1898 Ortonville was a
flag station
In public transport, a request stop, flag stop, or whistle stop is a stop or station at which buses or trains, respectively, stop only on request; that is, only if there are passengers or freight to be picked up or dropped off. In this way, st ...
on the
Canadian Pacific Railway
The Canadian Pacific Railway (french: Chemin de fer Canadien Pacifique) , also known simply as CPR or Canadian Pacific and formerly as CP Rail (1968–1996), is a Canadian Class I railway incorporated in 1881. The railway is owned by Canadi ...
and a settlement with a population of 75."
A
cable ferry was located here in the first half of the twentieth century. Perley Hitchcock and then George Gallagher ran a small store at the foot of the ferry hill on the Albert Victor Hitchcock farm in the 1920s and 1930s.
There was a two-room schoolhouse in the 1930s and 1940s. The Ortonville Baptist church was organized in 1861
Name
The name Ortonville was in use by June 1886 when "Ortenville" native John Renfrew Hitchcock's marriage was reported in the Saint John ''Daily Telegraph''.
There is only circumstantial evidence that this community was named after Canada's first olympian,
George Orton, whose prominence as a middle-distance runner was established at approximately the same time as Ortonville was named. The unknown railway official who named it may not have known Orton was Canadian. However neither Rayburn nor
Ganong[W.F. Ganong]
''A Monograph on the Place - Nomenclature of the Province of New Brunswick''
part of a series known as Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada (1896) had an alternative explanation.
Notable people
{{Main, List of people from Victoria County, New Brunswick
See also
*
List of communities in New Brunswick
This is a list of communities in New Brunswick, a province in Canada. For the purposes of this list, a community is defined as either an incorporated municipality, an Indian reserve, or an unincorporated community inside or outside a municipalit ...
References
Communities in Victoria County, New Brunswick