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2 The West Family in Norfolk County

According to the 1861 Census, Thomas West, occupation sawyer, was living on Lot 23, Concession 14, in the Township of Walsingham, one mile west of the village of Lynedoch. He is known to have lived there prior to 1861. Born in 1817 in Glasgow, Scotland, Thomas, along with his wife, immigrated to Upper Canada where he lived to the ripe old age of ninety-eight. His wife, Margaret McGhaughey, born in 1827 in Paisley, Scotland, lived to be ninety-six years of age.¹

The Wests emigrated from Scotland to Canada about 1843, and were known to be living in Dundas, Ontario, when their first child, John Ceburn West, was born on August 21, 1844. The young John worked in Dundas before the family moved to the Lynedoch area when he was in his early teens. Once settled there, Thomas took up employment in the lumber business. Here, they raised a family of five more boys and two girls. The youngest, Isobelle, died as a young girl.

John West, a bright and industrious lad, was soon accompanying his father to work in the woods or in the local sawmills. Their chief employer was John Charlton, a prominent lumberman of Lynedoch. John had a mechanical turn of mind and though he obtained little more than a basic formal education, he was intrigued by the steam engines that powered many of the sawmills working in the area. For a time he had worked for McKechnie and Bertram, machine toolmakers in Dundas, an experience that had sparked an early interest in machinery.

By the time he was twenty-one, West had a thorough understanding of the lumber business, having been a part of it all, from felling the trees and transporting them to the mill, to all the operations required in the mill to produce quality lumber in its many forms for the markets of the day. He is known to have worked in a sawmill near Langton in Walsingham Township, as well as many other sawmill employers in the area. However, he was not content.

John West had grown to be a big, well-proportioned man with a kind and humorous disposition. He was self-educated, ambitious, adventurous, very practical, and very well-liked by his fellow associates. He liked a good story and was himself an accomplished raconteur. But, above all, he had an uncanny ability to make anything mechanical and he loved anything powered by steam. With the advent of the railways with their powerful steam locomotives opening up the country, steam power was just coming into its own. Steam-powered freighters were also rapidly replacing the schooners and sailing vessels on the lakes and the high seas. And now mobile sawmills, powered by steam, were making the harvest of more remote forested areas more practical.

Around 1865, John West went to Simcoe where he was employed by the firm of John and George Jackson, prominent building contractors in the town. About this time he met Margaret Elliott who had recently emigrated from County Donegal in Ireland to join three older sisters now living in Norfolk County. John and Margaret were married on August 21, 1866, the date of his twenty-second birthday. West continued working for the Jacksons and gained a wide experience in methods of construction of all manner of buildings. He also expanded his contacts with tradesmen and suppliers to the building industry as the Jackson brothers gave him more and more responsibilities in their building projects. He remained in their employ for approximately ten years.

This photograph of John Ceburn West was taken circa 1875.

Courtesy of Clarence F. Coons, Mrs. Gordon Skinner Collection.