Photographs courtesy of Conrad Poirier

Ogden Brook / Ogden Pond / Ohio / Ohio River

OGDEN BROOK, Antigonish County
    A brook flowing east into George Bay.

OGDEN POND, Antigonish County
    A lake North East of Antigonish named after Benjamin Ogden, Jr. (1765-1835) who received a grant of land at Antigonish near Antigonish Harbour. At the age of fifteen he was fighting for King George III in the American Revolution as a volunteer in the Prince of Wales Regiment, the unit which Timothy Hierlihy had helped recruit in 1777 and in which his father was a lieutenant. After the death of Benjamin Ogden Sr. he came with his mother and brothers and sisters to Nova Scotia and served with the Royal Nova Scotia Volunteer Regiment as an ensign, later marrying Cornelia, a daughter of Colonel Timothy Hierlihy. When the Hierlihy estate was settled Benjamin Ogden took his family to New York where he went into business with his brothers Andrew and Albert. Later he returned to Antigonish when his son Augustus was threatened with tuberculosis because the doctor recommended that he lead an outdoor life. In 1830 Benjamin Ogden was an assistant judge of the Inferior Court and Sessions of the Peace and he died Sept. 6, 1835. The Ogden family lived on the farm at Antigonish Harbour.

OHIO, Antigonish County
    A settlement south west of Antigonish located near the West River of Antigonish, named after Ohio in the United States.
    For many years the name applied to a large district from what is now Addington Forks to College Lake. The first settlers came to the Ohio about 1800 being Andrew McInnes, Donald McPherson, and Angus McGillivray who had emigrated from Moidart, Scotland, and had been living at Cape George. Angus McGillivray, Sergeant, John McInnes, Angus McGillivray and Duncan McLean, Angus and John McInnes, Angus and Donald McLellan, John McDonald, Donald McPherson, John O'Brien, Andrew and Donald McInnis, William McGilvray.
    There was a school at Ohio in 1827 and in 1848 James Foley was teaching twenty-six pupils there.
    In 1838 David and James Fisher and Peter Jordain [sic] had commenced a grist mill at the upper part of the Ohio settlement. By 1898 it was a farming settlement with one store and a population of 85.
    There was a postal way office from 1856 to 1869 when John McDonald was way office keeper.
    A Roman Catholic Church called St. Beans was built in 1841. The mission extended from Marshy Hope in Pictou County to Wine Harbour in Guysborough County and the parish priest ministered to people who had come from Strathglass and Moidart in Scotland and some Irish families. A new Church overlooking the lake on the West River was begun in 1867 and the parish was named St. Joseph's. The population in 1956 was 103.

OHIO RIVER, Antigonish County
    Flows north into West River.