St. Marys is a town in southwestern Ontario, Canada. It is located at the confluence of the north branch of the Thames River and Trout Creek southwest of Stratford, and is surrounded by the Township of Perth South in Perth County, Ontario. St. Marys operates under its own municipal government that is independent from the county's government. Nonetheless, the three entities "enjoy a large degree of collaboration and work together to grow the region as a leading location for industry and people". Census data published for Perth County by Statistics Canada includes St. Marys and most Perth County publications also do, at least in some sections of the document.
The town is also known by its nickname, "The Stone Town", due to the abundance of limestone in the surrounding area, giving rise to numerous limestone buildings and homes throughout the town. St. Marys Cement, a large cement producer founded in the town, capitalized on this close feed stock, and grew to be a major producer of cement in the province of Ontario.
St. Marys is home to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. It is the burial place of Arthur Meighen, Canada's ninth prime minister. Timothy Eaton, who went on to become one of Canada's most famous retailers, opened his first businesses in Canada in nearby Kirkton, Ontario, and later St. Marys.
History
In 1839, the Canada Company sent a surveyor to Blanshard Township in the Huron Tract to choose a site for a town on the Thames River which would later be named St. Marys.
The first settlers arrived at the junction of the Thames River and Trout Creek, southwest of Stratford in the early 1840s, attracted by the area's natural resources. At the new town site, the Thames River cascaded over a series of limestone ledges, providing the power to run the first pioneer mills and giving the community an early nickname: Little Falls.
The Smith's Canadian Gazetteer of 1846 describes the settlement as follows: It was laid out in 1844, and contains about 120 inhabitants. There is an excellent limestone quarry close to the village. Professions and Trades.—One grist mill, one saw mill, one physician and surgeon, two asheries, three stores, one tavern, one shoemaker, one tailor, one cooper, one blacksmith. The arrival of the Grand Trunk Railway in the late 1850s increased the growth; the community became a centre for milling, grain-trading and the manufacture of agriculture-related products. In 1854 the community was incorporated as a village and in 1863 as a town. However, it did not incorporate itself into Perth County.
In the riverbed and along the banks, limestone was close to the surface and could be quarried for building materials. Many 19th century limestone structures survive: churches, commercial blocks, and private homes. They have given St. Marys its current nickname: Stonetown.
A plaque erected by the Government of Ontario provides additional details about the early days: When opening Blanshard Township for settlement in 1839, the Canada Company made an arrangement with Thomas Ingersoll, a brother of Laura Secord, to build mills at "the Little Falls" of the Thames. In 1841-43 he erected a sawmill and a grist-mill and in return obtained 337 acres of land in this vicinity. The mills formed the nucleus of a settlement named St. Marys. The building of railways, 1857–60, stimulated development and in 1864, when St. Marys became a town, it was already the centre of lumber and limestone quarry industries and the adjacent prosperous agricultural region. The first library was opened in 1857; it belonged to the local Mechanics Institute but had no permanent home and had to rent space where it could. In 1904, the Andrew Carnegie Foundation provided $10,000 for the construction of a library building. It was built and opened on August 17, 1905. By 1913 the shelves contained 4000 books. Major renovations were completed in 1988 including the addition of a new wing.
In 1908, a handle and hockey stick company was founded by Solen Doolittle in the town of St. Marys called the St. Marys Wood Specialty Company. Located on James Street in St. Marys from the early 1900s, it moved to Hespeler, Ontario in 1933. During their time in St. Marys the company made many such items as hammer handles, hockey sticks and baseball bats. After many ownership changes over the years, by 1988 the now-Cooper bat had risen to #2 in the National Baseball League after Louisville Slugger. This success subsequently inspired the town to bid for the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.
On January 1, 1998, Perth County was restructured by reducing fourteen municipalities to four. However, the City of Stratford and the Town of St. Marys were unaffected, remaining independent entities.