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By WILLIAM BROCK JOSEPH BIGELOW Every town owes its prosperity in some part to individual men who at crucial ist took it upon themselves to lead ) *& Btheir fellows onto a path of development aa ' their superior wisdom and fore- ike feudal barons impose prosperity on yall. Frequently their efforts were not @, fully appreciated by their fellows, especi- | sally if they prospered themselves as a re- Ps sult of their vision One such man was Joseph Bigelow Born in 1829, one of ten sons of Hiram Bigelow of Simcoe County, he moved with a family to Lindsay in 1844. His ran a successful flour milling \s there. In 1851 Joseph and his Me twin brother Joel moved to Port Perry ae e they opened a general store under ae mame 'J. & J. Bigelow.' Joel soon wawaamoved on to Whitby and later to Chicago business and reai estate. he had a distinguished career in Joseph Bigelow wes identified financi- ality and otherwise with every important improvement in the Port Perry and Scugog = adistrict during his active years. He was the > *t postmaster in Port Perry from 1852 ea eto 1869. In the late fifties, he took over ")% fa woollen factory and planing mill which aJ. C. Bowerman & Co. operated on the MAsite of the old railway engine sheds about biwhere the Yacht Club is today. He added mthe manufacture of berrel staves and e2eicontinued until the property wes expro- priated for the railway in 1870. The mill f moved to John and Paxton Streets it wa@s eventually demolished. In 1853, Stephen Doty had built a mill on 'Scugog Street just west of the bridge. Doty installed inferior equipment and did ot do well, so he sold to Joseph Bigelow D rectified the situation and ran it for Ee years. There he cut all the wood for UB the fencing of the railway right-of-way to Whitby. in 1862 a branch of the Royal Cana Bank opened in Port Perry with Mr. as manager. He retired from this of his busy career in 1868 to give attention to his business which was expanded by the construction of "Royal Arcade," a three-storey comm- cial emporium unlike anything ever before north of the ridges. it was Op d until some time before the fire of 1889. it is thought thet Mr. Bigelow pid the "Arcade" in about 1882 to satisfy bank credit squeeze which accompanie d First Reeve Of Port Perry Joseph Bigelow, Man Of Vision And Action with. the Grand Trunk system would be completed, he and his colleagues, Paxton, C. E. English and James Dryden withdrew most of their investment and passed contro! to Mr. James Austin, Pres- ident of the Dominion Bank, Toronto, James Michie a merchant of TofGnto, and James Holden of Whitby. This led to many rumours and accusations on the part of his fellow townsmen and investors, who even charged that he wes against push- ing the railway on to Lindsay as many wished to do. He didn't say he was against that, but he probably knew that it would do Port Perry no good. At any rate he can hardly be biamed for selling out his interest to protect his own fortune. He had invested more than he should have, just to get the reilway built. Once it was completed, and the town along with him- self was able to enjoy its commercial benefit, there was obviously no reason why he should continue to beat a risk that others were willing to assume. An editorial on the subject in the Port Perry Standard, May 23, 1873 concluded -- "We hope the croakers will now end their abuse. These gentlemen have shown by their willingness to retire, what we have always contended for, that it was not the CONTROL they wanted, but that they were actuated wholly and solely by the desire, first to secure the road, and then to secure themselves, and we don't blame them for nt. Bigelow's withdrawal enabled him to devote himself to furthering the prosperity of the village he had just provided with transportation. The first council of Port Perry in 1872 had as its Reeve, Mr. Joseph Bigelow. He held the office through 1873 and 1874 during which years the Town Hall at Queen and Lilla Streets was constructed, and more important, the Union Public and High School which for many years had an enviable reputation as an educat- ional institution. Mr. Bigelow became a Justice of the Peace in 1877 and in 1881 he ran as a Reform candidate for the 25 : if Fg ie tal f £32 H Fizii before 1887 to Madison Williams. This private consortium supported by the Grand Trunk Railway, the town and local township councils, the Government, local businessmen, and begrudgingly by the Counties of Ontario and Durham-North- umberland, Even after the road was completed, there was considerable diffi- tulty in inducing the County Councils to assume the new roadway. After the completion of the Cartwright bridge, Mr.Bigelow seems to have turned his attention eastward. In 1898, the Tor- onto Board of Trade was attempting to persuade the Government to abandon the still incomplete Trent Canal system. Bigelow carried on his own in a series of well-written letters to various newspapers throughout Ontario, denouncing the Toronto Board of Trade as being opposed to any scheme that would be beneficial to any part of the country except Toronto. The Toronto papers refused to publish his letters but his campaign wes not in vain for the Joseph campaign a0 unin PRIVATE RESIDENCE OF JOSEPH BIGELOW ESQ,MERGHANT, PORT PERRY,ONT. PORT PERRY STAR ye CENTENNIAL EDITION POPP PPP eee eee ee eee eee) ! In this Centennial edition, the Star : : devotes itself to telling the story of ; fewte deihe epee A wshgpn yap + beginnings. The main event and 3 leading personage of the last hundred : : years -- the coming of the railway and - : Mr, Joseph Bigelow -- could not have : t had their strong impact without the : + foundation laid by Mr. Peter Perry in : : the town's first twenty-five years. In : > the careers of Messrs Perry and Bigelow, : the history of the growth of the village : : unfolds chapter by chapter through - : the last half of the nineteenth cen-: : tury. No man in the twentieth cen-: : tury to date has influenced the destiny ; : of Port Perry to such an extent. Other : : names stand out in our history --: : Crandell, Paxton, Sexton, Davis, Car- : = negie, Parrish and many others -- but : sthey were not prime movers. They : tkept the home fires burning, but : Perry and ; "heen dew e eee neneeee Trent system was completed to Trenton, although the northern portion was never finished, and Western grain never used the Trent system on its way to market. During the campaign for completion of the Trent system, Mr. Bigelow was actually living in Trenton, With his two sons, he had purchased a bankrupt dry goods store there and operated it until about, 1907. While there, he observed the commercial process of evaporation used to dry apples to preserve them for ship- ment abroad. So it was that at the age of 80, on giving up business in Trenton, he established an evaporator in an old woollen mill on the corner of Lilla and Perry Streets, just north of the present Scout Hall, This business he continued to 'ope- rate until his death in 1917 at the age of 89. The evaporator was sold to a Trenton firm who abandoned it about a year later. Mr. Bigelow wes always interested in real estate in addition to his many other enterprises. In the five years 1888 - 1893, after retiring from business in Port Perry, and while involved in the construc- tion of the Cartwright bridge, he bought, divided and sold several acres in down- town Springfield, Missouri, U.S.A. More important to Port Perry, in 1868 he registered a plan for fifty acres of land on the north side of Queen Street between Lilla and Rosa Streets, including Bigelow and Cochrane. He was accused later of profiteering in this venture by none other than Caleb Crandeli who had at the