Rockingham

by S. Bernard Shaw

View of Rockingham Village, c. 1905, National Archives/J.S.J. Watson Collection 1997-213-117

In 1858, John Samuel James Watson departed from Rockingham Castle, in the English Midlands County of Northamptonshire, under a cloud of disgrace. The 36-year old man had married a scullery maid, Mary Martin, 14 years his junior. This alliance, so far “below his station,” was just not acceptable to the Watson family who had lived at the castle, built for William the Conqueror, since Edward Watson leased the property in 1553.

The Watson clan took a practical approach to solving the problem. Legend has it that they invested £10,000 to finance John’s banishment to Canada. He used some of the money to recruit a group of neighbours with the skills necessary to carve a village out of the wilderness. They made their way across the Atlantic, up the St. Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers to Farrell’s Landing near Renfrew. They continued along the primitive Ottawa and Opeongo Colonization Road for about 80 km and the Peterson Branch Road for another 5 km. They then turned off for 3 km to their destination, a wooded valley containing a patch of arable soil, rare in the Canadian Shield. A turbulent creek that they named Rockingham ran through the valley, located halfway between today’s Brudenell and Combermere. An 1837 survey map of Brudenell Township (part of the John Watson Collection in the National Archives) indicates occupation near Charlott[e] and Har[d]wood Lakes at this early date.

John Watson likely had advance knowledge of this desirable valley as he rejected free 100-acre lots on the Opeongo Road to purchase the site of his village. He may have obtained advice from Tom Coghlin, a logger who floated his harvest down the creek to the Madawaska River. No doubt the site was selected, in part, because the creek fell 25 feet over a waterfall, providing the waterpower that drove most frontier villages. The plentiful red and white pine, cedar, oak and maple supplied material for a busy sawmill, built alongside a gristmill. Comfortable log homes and spacious barns were soon in place; several are standing today, a testimony to the size of the first-growth trees and the skill of their builders. The backwoods community, fondly named Rockingham, soon boasted a blacksmith’s shop, hotel, tannery, school, and a general store operated by John Watson who opened the post office there in 1864. In 1875, an Anglican Church was erected on land donated by John Watson and named St. Leonard’s in memory of the stone church in his English home village.

It is probable that Joseph Kinder, a graduate of the new profession of veterinary medicine who had a background as a surveyor, accompanied John Watson from Northamptonshire. Ottawa Valley historian Harry J. Walker noted in The Ottawa Journal, July 11, 1970, that Dr. Kinder had an expert knowledge of the new forms of vaccination developed by Pasteur and Koch. Without attempting serious surgery, he became the physician for the settlement and families as far away as Maynooth and Cormac. Ki