“Thomas Talbot immigrated to Canada in 1791, where he became personal secretary to John Graves Simcoe, Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada. After returning to England, Talbot convinced the government to allow him to implement a land settlement scheme along the shore of Lake Erie. He chose property which today is in Elgin County in adjoining townships, Dunwich and Aldborough (today called West Elgin), when his petition for 5,000 acres was granted in 1803…
“Here he ruled as an absolute, if erratic, potentate, doling out strips of land to people of his choosing, a group that emphatically did not include supporters of the American Revolution, liberals or anyone insufficiently respectful. For every settler he placed on 50 acres…of land, Talbot received an additional 200 acres ….
“One of the conditions attached to the free grant of 50 acres was the right to purchase an additional hundred and 50 acres at $3 each…
“Talbot’s administration was regarded as despotic. He was infamous for registering settlers' names on the local settlement map in pencil and if displeased, was alleged to have erased their entry.”
— wikipedia entry for Thomas Talbot, Upper Canada
“…His style of settlement was opposed by many, including government officials. Fees were not being paid to the government in the appropriate time frame as Talbot’s power was increasing. The only record of settlement could be found in Talbot’s ‘Castle’ on maps with pencilled in names of settlers. He could easily rub a settlers name off the map for reasons including personal dislike or political views. The land would then be given to someone else, with the government not being involved at all. Sometimes years and even decades would go by between the initial settlement and the issue of any legal papers to the settler, stating that the land was indeed theirs.…
“Official assessments of the Talbot Settlement were completed in 1836 and it reveals that over 3000 lots had been settled, and that 63% had not been reported to the surveyor general (government) as occupied and only 25% of the settlers had official documentation that the land was indeed theirs.”
— The Talbot Settlement – Elgin County (Ontario) Museum
Not everyone thought Talbot was a scoundrel. In 1879 George Munro, who probably came from Argyll to Aldborough on the Mars in 1818, recorded his recollections of the early settlement of Aldborough, in which he sung Talbot’s praisies.
In 1818 those settlers who were unhappy with Talbot raised a “Petition of the Inhabitants of Aldborough and Dulwich relative to promises of grants of land held out to them by Col. Talbot”. A transcription follows..