Founding of St. Marys

When opening Blanshard Township for settlement in 1839, the Canada Company made an arrangement with Thomas Ingersoll, a brother of Laura Secord, to build mills at "the Little Falls" of the Thames. In 1841-43 he erected a sawmill and a grist-mill and in return obtained 136 ha of land in this vicinity. The mills formed the nucleus of a settlement named St. Marys. In 1854 the community was incorporated as a village. The building of railways, 1857-60, stimulated development and in 1864, when St. Marys became a town, it was already the centre of lumber and limestone quarry industries and the adjacent prosperous agricultural region.