Col. John Bostwick

Col. John Bostwick. Veteran of the War of 18 12. Port Stanley was not yet settled when the War of 18 12 broke out, however, the land on which it sits had been granted to John Bostwick, a native of Massachusetts, then living in the Long Point region. He had come to Upper Canada with his brother in the 1790s and was apprenticed to a surveyor William Hambly. He laid out the first Talbot Road from Port Talbot to Long Point in 1805 though only part of it was built. The route was revised by Mahlon Burwell several years later and opened by the settlers who had obtained lots running north and south from the roadway., During the war Bostwick served as the captain of a flank company in the Norfolk militia, The flank companies received better arms and training than the regular militia and consequently saw more action. He was present at the fall of Detroit, August 16, 1812, and must have performed well as General Sir Isaac Brock told Col. Talbot, who commanded the district militia, that "You cannot send a better Captain than (Bostwick).", His brother Henry was Lieutenant-colonel of the Oxford militia and was in command at Malcolm's Mills on November 6, 1814, when the militia and regular forces attempted to turn back the Kentucky riflemen under General Duncan McArthur. They were flanked by the Americans who subsequently swept through Long Point and down the Talbot Road burning mills and plundering farms on their way back to Detroit., In 1817, Bostwick built a home near the mouth of the Kettle Creek and then in the 1820s built the house that still stands on a hill overlooking the village. The construction is a rare exampte of brick-nogging where a pegged timber frame is filled with brick., The brick was undoubtedly fired on the site. The village developed slowly while Bostwick held the land. A harbour was built and it became a shipping point for merchants using the plank road leading to St. Thomas and London.