24 The Illumination of Joseph Keeler, Esq. 



Each of these towns, as the immigration increased, became the 

 centre of a business activity in selling to the immigrants and in 

 shipping out lumber and grain equalling, and exceeding even, 

 that of the growing towns of our new Northwest today, since 

 the products were much more varied. I have, indeed, taken 

 some trouble to obtain figures, which I have found in old blue- 

 books, which I suppose my father had sent him by his cousin, 

 the Hon. Joseph Keeler, of Northumberland County. From 

 these I learn that when Lord Durham's report was acted upon 

 and Mr. Poulett Thomson, afterwards Lord Sydenham, got his 

 District Councils Act passed in 1841 and a census taken, the 

 population of Upper Canada was 450,000. and the actual revenues 

 were but $700,000. 



"Now mark what followed. By 1861 after the union with 

 Lower Canada as a legislative union had existed twenty years, 

 the census showed in 1861 a population increase in Upper Canada 

 to 1,396,000, and a revenue of $3,500,000. But what further is 

 of intense interest is the then distribution of population. The 

 townships of Murray and Cramahe in the Bay district were 

 surveyed about 1794, and other lakeside townships westward a 

 little later. The census of 1841 gives the following table, which 

 I have compared with 1861 and 1911 :" 



Townships 1841 1861 1911 



Murray 3061 3612 2765 



Cramahe 3013 3841 2439 



Hamilton .. 4857 6315 3414 



Clarke 2515 6575 3375 



Haldimand 2690 6165 



Hope 3356 5883 3273 



Town of Cobourg 4975 5074 



Town of Port Hope. . 4162 5092 



Rear Townships 



Seymour ._ . . . 847 3842 3331 



Percy... 726 3515 2766 



Asphodel. 551 2911 1661 



Cavan 2899 4901 2499 



Cartwright 365 2727 1584 



