Petworth

History

Things are quiet in Petworth now, very quiet. Not like in the 1870s, when a group of vigilante farmers from nearby Verona, upset about their flooded fields and ruined crops, crept down late one night and blew up Petworth’s dam.

Petworth started out in the 1840s as a lumber town after Stephenson and Lott, a lumbering company with extensive lumbering rights in the area, opened a sawmill. Stephenson and Lott later expanded their efforts into the woollen trade. They established woollen and carding mills and eventually a grist mill. In 1861, the Rathbutn Lumber Company took over their and timber limits.

The year 1861 was also the year Edward Carscallen opened the community’s first post office. By 1871 the village boasted a population of 200. It included a hotel, run by John Babcock, two grocery stores owned by Sylvester Brow and John Garrison and two blacksmith shops run by Elias Peters and Ira Smith. The many loggers who arrived every spring kept the hotel busy, quenching their alcoholic thirst.

Things had quieted down somewhat by the 1880s and Petworth’s population stabilized at around 100. A Methodist Church and school both opened around 1882. Ira Smith, the blacksmith, was the first teacher. Following him were Marilla Hegadorne, Isaac Benn, Bridget Rush and Charles Darling. After a brief closure, James Vannest, a local carpenter re-established the post office. It moved to James Wallace’s store in 1883. In 1888 the Napanee Stream Co. opened a flour mill.

Petworth remained a busy place throughout the 1890s. Along with the flour mill, the village included a blacksmith shop operated by John Franklin Peters and a cheese factory owned by Frank Gerow. However by 1905, Petworth had suffered a complete reversal of fortunes. Sixty years of steady logging had pretty much depleted the surrounding woods. Likewise, after the new railway took a turn eastward bypassing the tiny village. Petworth couldn’t recover.

Petworth is not completely deserted. A few older residents continue to live there along with a handful of newer residents who enjoy the peace and tranquility of rural living. The stone walls of the old Stephenson and Lott mill still stand along with the blacksmith shop, a barn, several original houses and the one room schoolhouse that closed in the 1960s. Newer houses stand amidst the ruins. Other original buildings are still in use as sheds, storage buildings and the like. For now the residents of Petworth refuse to give up their former ghosts and visitors can still get a sense of a mid-19th Ontario century mill town, as it once was.