On February 21st, 1871, Walter Beatty obtains a commission to survey Carling and Cowper Townships and a north-south line down Conger Township just to the west of Blackstone Lake. This is between the 18th and 19th lot on the southern limit of Foley. This line seems designed to just touch a point farthest west of Blackstone Lake, a point farthest west in McRobert Bay. The Dept. Of Crown Lands gives him a map of the general area from the previous survey by his brothers and GA Stewart done 5-10 years previously. The townships of Foley and Humphrey are full of details but the Conger Township area is blank. Conger was not an officially designated township till 1874 and would have to wait. However, in Walter's notes Blackstone already is named.
An …show more content…
miles of Conger Twp. The purpose is to create some timber berths. This rectangle completely encompasses Blackstone Lake. He is to “proceed with the least possible delay". He is required “to note and count the number of Pine trees of the land and note the number of Pine Trees cut". His payment was to be $6 per day and 50¢ per day rations. The men he hires are to be paid a normal day's wage of $1 per day and 50¢ per day rations as well.
Forty eight year old Charles Unwin, an experienced surveyor, had already mapped a considerable amount of Toronto (Unwin Avenue in Toronto is named after him) and spent 9 years surveying most of Muskoka County. Clearly he was more than qualified to prepare Blackstone for the lumber industry. In 1878 he had just ended a 10 year partnership with Vernon Wadsworth and like Vernon had apprenticed with John Dennis.
After copying Walter Beatty's notes from his 1871 timber line into Conger, Unwin draws up the surveying plan and on February 27 heads towards Blackstone Lake with Richard Coad who would be his First chain-man. The two get a hackney hire to the railway station and purchase return tickets to Gravenhurst on the Northern Railway, at $7.20 a piece. Interestingly, it costs $10 for them to get from Gravenhurst to Rosseau by a bumpy …show more content…
That night he camps just south of this part of Lawson Bay. This day was the second day of a significant warming trend in the weather. With a low that night of 2°C there was going to be a lot of melting and pooling of water and that was going to hamper Unwin's progress. However, he continues making surveying tracks parallel to this one moving west. March 7 he camps on the east side of Blackstone Lake and he “took a good reading of Polaris''. March 8 and 9 he traverses the long part of the lake and does McRobert Bay. As he does this the maximum temperatures go from 12°C on the 8th to nearly 18°C , parts of the lake became unsafe. The next day, a 15°C day, he was to finish but the “ice being very bad and being unable to finish Blackstone Lake" requires him to spend another day on the lake. He lacks a few provisions and so sends one of the party members to get flour “from a settler". In 1878 there is only one settler near them and that was Wilfred Moore, who himself was just setting up his own farm and likely had no more than a shanty this being his first winter on the