Historical Community: St Ola, Lot 14, Conc 2

Township: Limerick Township

Locality: Hastings County

Municipality: Limerick

Province: ON

Cemetery Status: inactive

Registration Status: Not Registered



By 1850 most of the good arable land in south Hastings was cleared and occupied. To encourage settlement in the northern part of the County the government created a network of colonization roads including The Hastings Colonization Road (now called Old Hastings Road).



Between 1856 and 1863, more than 1000 people sought to make a new life along the Old Hastings Road where land was attractively marketed to potential homesteaders as an area with an abundant water supply and superior heavy timber that could be sold and burned for potash—a commodity in demand at the time. The pioneers were also told, once cleared, the land could be used for growing crops such as wheat.

By the latter part of the 1800s, farmers realized it was easier to settle in Western Canada where the land was fertile and much easier to clear and an exodus of North Hastings pioneers headed west. Gristmills ceased to operate when wheat farming declined. Rail lines, once busy servicing lumbering and mining operations, closed. Hotels were boarded up as the temperance movement succeeded in stopping liquor sales. By the 1900s Ontario had entered its urbanization phase, and many people from small hamlets who had not moved out west drifted to larger centres. This movement led to highways being built, often bypassing what remained of the villages.

The present Highway 62 follows much of the original Hastings Road at both the southern and northern ends, but the central section, about 50 kilometres (30 miles), the stretch, between Millbridge and Bancroft, where the villages of Glanmire, Murphy Corners, Thanet, Ormsby, and Umphraville existed has all but vanished and any records of burials in the small cemeteries such as Old St Ola/Thanet Pioneer Cemetery have been lost as well.



Only a small cemetery now remains to mark the location of Thanet, (2.5 kilometres /1.5 miles north of Murphy Corners) where three hotels once offered food, lodging and plenty of drink to customers.