The Founding of Almonte

Photo by Alan L Brown - June 25, 2004

Plaque Location

The County of Lanark
The Town of Mississippi Mills
In Almonte, on the NW corner of Bridge Street and Little Bridge Street

Plaque Text

The sawmill and grist-mill completed here on the Mississippi River in 1823 by Daniel Shipman provided a nucleus around which a community known as Shipman's Mills had developed by 1824. About 1850 two town plots were laid out here - "Victoria" by Edward Mitcheson and "Ramsayville" by Daniel Shipman. They were combined in 1853 as "Waterford", which in 1855 was renamed "Almonte", probably after Juan N. Almonte, a famous Mexican general and diplomat. The opening of several woollen mills and the completion of a railway to Brockville, fostered the growth of Almonte, which by 1870 was one of Ontario's leading woollen cloth manufacturing centres. Incorporated as a village in 1871, with a population of about 2,000, Almonte was proclaimed a town in 1880.

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