Day 117 (9/10): Wallaceburg to Thamesville, Ontario

Mileage: 31; 3,660 total

This was intended to be a "light" day, and it was. And enjoyable, also.

Near Dresden I saw signs for "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and ventured off-route to see what this was all about. I found a very nice interpretive center devoted to Rev. Josiah Henson and the industrial training school that he founded. Josiah was born in 178, a slave in Charles County, Maryland and escaped via the underground railroad to Canada in 1830. Near Dresden, in the now defunct town of Dawn, he started an industrial training school for other fugitive slaves; this was the first industrial training school in Canada. His autobiography, published in 1849, is thought to be the inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin," published two years later. Hence he became known as Uncle Tom, and his house was of course called "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (see photo, below). He is a celebrated hero in Canada, but not widely known in the U.S: our loss was Canada's gain.

Some Uncle Tom trivia:
(a) His great-great nephew was Matthew Henson, who explored the North Pole with Admiral Peary. Matthew must have inherited some of Josiah's genes.
(b) As a youngster, Josiah and his mother wer sold to a slaveowner in Bethesda, Montgomery County, Maryland. The cabin that he lived in there still stands, as an attachment to a house at 11420 Old Georgetown Road, and is now owned by the County....maybe some Maryland readers are familiar with it.
(c) I have ancestors who were slaveowners in Charles County, Maryland and other relatives, Quakers, who were active on the underground railroad: I couldn't help but think how curious it would be if Josiah Henson had crossed paths with both of these families.

Planning to spend the night in the small town of Troy, in which I had thought there was a B&B, I stopped about 10 miles north of there, at a general store, to try to get a phone number for them and to make a reservation. The woman who ran the general store was very helpful, but after about one hour, and several very confusing calls to a couple of businesses in Troy, we discovered that there are two "Troys" in Ontario, quite some distance apart, and we had been talking with people in the wrong town! So, at the suggestion of the woman in the general store, I went off route (but not really out of the way) for about six miles to stay at a very nice little B&B run by Joe and Claudia (see photo of Claudia outside the B&B). The B&B, in Thamesville, was originally a bank and post office built in about 1900; it's use changed some over the years, and Joe opened a barber shop there in about 1955, which he still runs, and converted the rest of the building into living quarters.

The landscape in this part of Ontario is scenic, with lush vegetable farms and fruit orchards, and very pretty brick and stone farmhouses. The files of soybeans are attactive at this time of year, because the leaves are turning yellow: I have attached a photo of a soybean field and another landscape photo, plus a photo of a big willow tree -- ever since eastern Michigan I have been noticing a lot of very large willows, so I thought I should include this photo.