Published in The BANAR November 1999
The whole section of land known as Blackburn, records tell us, was sold by the Crown around 1790 to lumbermen for timber. When the choice timber was cut, the land must have been sold to our pioneer settlers. Names such as William Lee, Allan McDonnell, Rt. Rev. Alexander McDonald, Laughlin McDonnell, George King, George B. Lyon, ann Gillie (also called McGillie, Isabella Macintosh, Nancy Mcdonell, Jane McGregor, Catherine Chisholm, Catherine Munro, Samuel Falkner, William Johnson Munro, Thomas Darcy, Henry Munro, John Forgie, Deborah Mixter appear to be the first names entered in the Register Book all around the same time 1803-1811.
Some other pioneers were Chris Armstrong, 1827; Louis Perrault and Janet McGregor who willed her property to her daughter Peggy Brown’s son Duncan in 1829; Richard and John Dagg in 1852; Thomas Dagg in 1855; John Kemp in 1857; William Purdy in 1858; Joshua Bradley in 1859; William and Thomas Wilson, Alexander Traillefer, M. Cleroux, John Holden, R. McArdel, Robert Hurst, John McGrath, John Couglan, and William Price around the 1860’s.
The Community was know as Green’s Creek. The road by which the early settlers travelled to Bytown (later Ottawa) stretched north from what is now known as Blackburn and joins the Montreal Road (later a toll road) at a point where this creek crossed the road. A man named Green owned and operated a sawmill on this Creek, so it became know as Green’s Creek. In the 1850’s when the families of Daggs came to settle in the Community it became known as Daggs settlement or Daggville. In the early eighties when the district around what is now Blackburn, eight miles from Ottawa, began to feel the need of a post office. William B. Bradley went to Ottawa and talked to the late Robert Blackburn of New Edinburgh, who was then prominent in county affairs. Mr. Blackburn went to the Post Office Department with Mr. Bradley and backed the claim for a post office. Later the department agreed to permit an office. The Mr. Bradley and other residents urged the office be called Blackburn in honour of the man who helped to get it. And Blackburn it became.
Taken from “Blackburn – Glen Ogilvie Centennial History 1867-1967” compiled and edited by Mrs. Anna Elliott under direction of the Glen Ogilvie Women’s Institute, Blackburn Community Club, Blackburn Home and School Association, Local Church Groups and the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides.