Norwich Facts.
Compiled by the Norwich & District Historical Society
In the first season 32 acres of land were put into crop; in the
second 735 acres.
The statistical returns of 1818 gave 11 heads of families and 67
children in Norwich Township.
Peter Lossing who was a minister in the Society of Friends
established religious services in his home in 1811. A Friends’
meeting house was built on Quaker Street in 1813.
William Hulet, step-son of Peter Lossing, was the first teacher
in the township; the school was opened in the fall of 1812 in a
small log house on the bank of the Otter. Attendance was 15.
In 1830 a post office was opened at Norwich and Peter Lossing was
the first postmaster.
Dr. Emphraim Cook, the first doctor to settle in Norwich, came in
1831. it is said that he was travelling through the area to visit
friends in St. Thomas; when he stopped at a schoolhouse to warm
himself a farmer who was attending a meeting there begged him to
see his ailing wife. Dr. Cook stayed in the community and was
active in Norwich public affairs, as well as in his profession,
for fifty years.
During the first twenty-five years of the settlement the
population grew rapidly. Baptists, Methodists, Anglicans and
Roman Catholics arrived as did Quakers from England and other
parts of the United States.
One of the ancient institutions of the township was the yearly
town-meeting. The first held was in 1816 at a hotel on Quaker
Street. At these meetings the path-master, pound-keeper,
assessors, collectors and other officials were elected by open
vote. Local court was also held here.
The village of Norwich (first known as Norwichville) began to
grow up around a Methodist church built one concession south of
Quaker street. A general store was opened in 1828: the owners,
James and William Barker, kept dry goods, groceries, glassware,
crockery, hardware, patent medicine and drugs. These goods were
brought by horse and wagon from Toronto and Niagara.
Norwich took an active part in William Lyon Mackenzie’s
Rebellion of 1837. Dr. Duncombe who organized the rebellion in
this part of Upper Canada came to Norwich on December 6, 1837
where he made a rousing speech calling for volunteers.
On December 12 a force of 180 men led by Dr. Cook left Norwich
for York. At Scotland they met volunteers from Long Point but
there also they learned that confusion in Mackenzie’s ranks
had led to a premature march on York and that Colonel McNab’s
government forces were already moving west to deal with rebels.
The Norwich volunteers returned home as discreetly as possible
but many were identified and arrested. All received pardons
except 26 year-old Daniel Bedford. he was hanged in London in
January of 1839 and his father obtained his body for burial in
the Pioneer Cemetery on Quaker Street.
A number of spacious, well-built homes appeared in the 1830’s.
Some were framed with oak. By 1850 home-made brick had been used
to construct a number of homes with lofty ceilings and basement
kitchens.
By 1847 the village of Norwich had a saw mill, a carding mill an
a flour mill, a distillery, two general stores, an ashery,
carriage shop, furniture business, blacksmith shops and a
tannery.
According to the Oxford Gazetteer of 1852 the township of Norwich
produced larger quantities of Indian corn, buck-wheat, barley,
cheese, wool, hay flannel and maple sugar and had a greater
number of meat cattle, milch cows, sheep and hogs than any other
municipality in the county.
A census in that same year showed a population of 5,239 in the
township. Woodstock had a population of slight more than 2000.
In 1855 a division was made in the township and the new township
of North and South Norwich were formed.