Old Armories in Perth- now Methodist Church – 144 Gore Street East In 1821 a small log chapel was erected by the Methodists in Perth on this site- Perth Tourism
Perth Courier, March 20, 1891
- A. Consitt, Census Commissioner for S. Lanark left for Ottawa on Tuesday to receive from the district chief census officer instructions in regard to taking the census in S. Lanark.
Albert Page, barrister will return to Brockville from Smith’s Falls and open a law office.
Last week the old house on Gore Street opposite the Methodist Church was torn down and now nothing marks its site but an old time stone chimney and a heap of broken plaster and other rubbish. The building and lot were owned by John McMaster, merchant, who considered that by this time it had outlasted its day and generation. The house was one of the very oldest in the town having been built in the year 1816 by the late Alexander Matheson who drew the lot from the government. The house was built when all around was dense bush and its composition shows that the best of material available was used in its construction. The building, of course, was of logs and they were beech, maple and elms. The rafters were of hickory and were sound as if they had been just cut after their position 76 years ago.
Perth Courier, March 27, 1891
History of an Old House
John W. Adams, one of our veteran residents, has furnished us with some additional information about the old McMaster house opposite the Methodist church which was torn down not long ago. He says the house was built in 1817 by the late Alexander Matheson, a clerk in the government office here in the first year of the settlement. It was soon afterwards occupied for a year or more as the rectory by the late Rev. Michael Harris, Church of England minister and later on was used as a private school by the late Benjamin Tett, M.P. of Newboro, father-in-law of Judge Senkler of Perth. Afterwards it was bought by the late Mr. McMaster and the property yet remains in the possession of the family.
The original owner Mr. Matheson drew a 100 acre farm on the 2nd Concession Bathurst near Perth and removed there soon afterwards receiving the appointment of lockmaster in Smith’s Falls and took up residence there. His son-in-law Josias Richey, P.L.S. succeeded him as the owner of the Tay River farm and afterwards as lockmaster at the Falls. Mr. Adams remembers, when a boy, drawing a load of oats to the old house for Mr. Harris and emptying them in a bin in an upper chamber.
The mice must have hulled a share of the oats for when the house was taken down this spring a quantity of oats chaff was found under the floor at this spot. Among the old stagers who resided in Perth about this time, Col. Marshall, a half pay officer who drew the acre plot in town now occupied by Miss Rutherford and lived there for several years. He moved out to Lanark and then out west and last week a notice appeared in the Courier of the death of his son Dr. James A. Marshall of Chicago at the age of 81 years. The old Colonel, who had been an officer in the Light Dragoons, canvassed the city—about the time of the division of the Bathurst District—for a seat in Parliament but did not apparently go to the polls, the fight being between Col. De Lisle and Hon. William Morris. Capt. Sherwood, a surveyor who laid out the townships of Dalhousie and Lanark, etc., was also a parliamentary aspirant but nothing came of it
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