28 Front St., |
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Ontario Tourism Region : Southwestern
Description From Owner:
- Pop. 443. In Bayham T., Elgin c., on Big Otter Cr. andC. Rd. 19, 21 km. SW of Tillsonburg.
- One of the earliest settlers was Capt. Samuel Edison, a Loyalist from New Jersey and grandfather of the inventor, Thomas Alva Edison. Capt. Edison, who had fIrst moved to Nova Scotia, arrived in 1811.
- During the War of 1812, he served in the Middlesex Militia. Village lots were laid out by deputy surveyor Mahlon Burwell in 1830.
- Col. Burwell had planned to name the place Shrewsbury, but Edison's suggestion of Vienna, where his wife had been born, was more widely accepted.
- The post office opened as Vienna in 1838. By 1855 the community had a population of 1,200; in that year, fire destroyed a large part of the commercial section of town.
- In 1867 another major fire, coinciding with a decline in the lumber industry, ended the community's growth.
- During the 1840s and 1850s, Thomas Edison was a regular summer visitor at the home of his grandfather. In 1933 the Edison home was moved to the Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI.
Address of this page: http://www.ruralroutes.com/vienna