ARMSTRONG, Samuel

Samuel Armstrong walked into the Parry Sound bush in 1867 — a twenty-three-year-old Wexford emigrant with enough capital for a stock of tools and dry goods — and opened the settlement’s first general store at McKellar. The store anchored the township through the next thirty years. It anchored Armstrong’s public career for almost as long: twelve consecutive years as Reeve of McKellar, one term for Parry Sound in the Ontario Legislature from 1886, and a quarter-century as Sheriff of the district until his death.

Early life

Born 24 February 1844 in County Wexford, Samuel Armstrong came out with his family to Canada in 1848 — the middle of the post-Famine emigration — when he was four years old. He spent his boyhood in Canada West.

Muskoka pioneer

In 1862, at the age of eighteen, Armstrong moved north into the Muskoka region, which was then being opened to settlement under the Free Grants and Homestead Act of 1868 and its precursor colonization-road surveys. He was among the very first non-Indigenous settlers in the district.

Five years later, in 1867, he moved west into the neighbouring Parry Sound district and took up at McKellar, about fifty kilometres north-east of Parry Sound town. He opened a general store at McKellar — the first retail operation in the township. For settlers clearing bush lots in the 1860s and 1870s, a general store was an essential institution: it supplied tools, provisions, and credit, and it served as a community gathering point and informal post office.

McKellar Township

McKellar elected Armstrong as its Reeve. He held the office for twelve consecutive years, an unusually long single-ward municipal tenure that reflects the small population and the dependence of the township’s civic life on the few settlers of some means.

Ontario Legislature, 1886

Armstrong contested the Parry Sound riding in the 1886 Ontario general election as an Independent candidate. He won the seat in a district that then covered an enormous geographical area — Parry Sound, Muskoka, and much of what is now the near-north of Ontario, Nipissing, and French River country.

He served one term. He did not seek re-election.

Sheriff

In 1895, Armstrong was appointed Sheriff of the Parry Sound judicial district. The office was, at that date, primarily responsible for serving writs, attending the Assizes when they came to Parry Sound on circuit, and supervising the district jail. He held the sheriffship until his death.

Death

Armstrong died at Parry Sound in 1921, still in office as Sheriff. The North Star carried the notice; the exact day is not recorded in the surviving run of the paper held by the Parry Sound Public Library.