The Founding of Colborne

Commemoration

A store established here about 1819 by Joseph Abbott Keeler, a prominent early settler, provided the nucleus around which a small community began to develop.  Within ten years a distillery and a blacksmith’s shop had been erected.  The settlement named Colborne, reputedly after Lieutenant Governor Sir John Colborne, soon emerged as a service centre for the surrounding region and, with the establishment of a harbour nearby for the shipment of lumber and grain, it prospered.  By 1846 it contained a foundry, a pottery, six stores, three churches, a number of tradesmen and artisans and some 400 residents.  The arrival of the Grand Trunk Railway in 1850 spurred forth growth, and three years later Colborne, with a population of about 500, was incorporated as a village.