|
Gallows
& Graveyards
Walking
tours
Take a journey into the past and discover
the darker side of the county.
Historic walking tours of Picton
6:30pm Friday and Saturday nights
July through September
$10/pp $25/family
Tours are booked through
The Regent Theatre, 224 Main Street, Picton
613-476-8416
info@TheRegentTheatre.org
Gallows & Graveyards Walking Tours Promo
WALKING BACK IN TIME
By Peter Lockyer
History Lives Here Inc.
www.historyliveshere.ca
Every community has its stories to tell – stories
of small deeds and great endeavours that shaped their early history.
These old, forgotten stories are often hidden away
in archives, cemeteries and museums. But this summer, you can hear some
classic tales of Prince Edward County by taking in weekend walking tours
of Picton. The Gallows & Graveyards historic walking tours are
back for another season beginning on the Canada Day weekend.
Friday night tours are devoted to the Gallows
tour.
Beginning at 6:30 pm at the parking lot of
Macaulay Museum on Church Street in Picton, the tour takes you on a
journey into the past back to the 1820s and ‘30s when Reverend William
Macaulay, an Anglican minister, was one of the titans of his time.
Macaulay guided the early settlement that clustered around the harbour
area – ship chandlery shops,
sail makers, food merchants and even taverns
catering to the bustling port. Macaulay had inherited 500 acres of land
from his father and he set out to use his position and assets to
influence this early development. His church and
magnificent house still stand, and Macaulay, the man responsible for
naming the town Picton after Welsh soldier Sir Thomas Picton (after the
townsfolk had already chosen to call the place Port William) is buried
in the fenced, family plot in his churchyard.
Macaulay also donated land to build the stately
old courthouse built in the 1830s and it was here that the most
celebrated legal case in County history took place in the spring of
1884. Pressured by the strong emotional currents surging through a
community seeking vengeance for a murder, a local jury sentenced two men
to hang for the crime. Hear the
story of their trial as you visit the cellblock
where the two men spent their final hours before walking the short
distance to the double gallows that still remain in the old gaol.
Saturday’s Graveyard tours start at 6:30
pm. at the recently restored Chapel at the Glenwood Cemetery on Ferguson
Street in Picton, the final resting place of many early settlers. With
its six stained glass windows, the elegant Chapel is the centerpiece of
this 62-acre property just moments from Main Street. Glenwood is a
timepiece – a peaceful, park-like setting of rolling hills, winding
roads and mature trees typical of the Victorian age. Originally a land
tract awarded to Loyalist soldier Arra Ferguson, Glenwood has had
several lives as a farm, the site of a brewery, and later a leather
tanning factory, and finally as a cemetery opened in 1873. Famous
personalities like Letitia Youmans, a teacher who founded the Women’s
Temperance Movement of Canada, and Wellington Boulter, the father of the
canning industry in Canada are buried at Glenwood. And the crude
inscription on the humble grave of George Lowder, one of the two men
hanged in June 1884, still protests his innocence through eternity.
The Gallows and Graveyards walking tours
are a presentation of several community heritage organizations – the
Glenwood Cemetery, The Museums of Prince Edward County, and The Regent
Theatre in partnership with History Lives Here Inc. a Picton multimedia
company specializing in community history projects.
Tours are booked through The Regent Theatre, 224
Main St. in Picton. Call 613 – 476 –8416 or visit
info@theregenttheatre.org for more information. |
![[Company Logo Image]](_borders/Glenwood%20Banner.jpg)
