March 21st, 1923

Please Note - This article is full of inaccuracies and should not be taken as factual. Thanks Phil

Mrs. Donnellan, 90, and sister, Mrs. Sweeney, 88, nieces of founder of one of Canada's greatest industries, whose boyhood was spent on North Mountain.

Mrs. Ann Agnes Donnellan, of Harborville, was ninety years old last November, and her sister, Mrs. Mary Sweeney, has just passed her eighty-eighth birthday. These two aged (as far as years go) ladies, are direct descendants through the male line of that doughty old Highland Clan. The Ogilvies, and interwoven with their story is that of their uncle, also born and raised, right here, who was the founder of Canada's greatest milling industry. The Ogilvie Milling Company, of Montreal. That the Ogilvies were a highly important clan none doubt, but historians say that the Ogilvies rank as one of the Highland Clans of Scotland, for though one authority claims they are of Lowland origin, the preponderating bulk of evidence proves a Gaelic, rather than a Lowland, deriviation of the name.

After the last of the Stuart wars, his country devastated, and practically all he had lost, William Ogilvie, one of the younger members of the Clan, with his wife and six children left the land of the Thistle and the Heather, and sailing for the New World, landed at Halifax, in 1773, where the authorities made him a grant of land, furnished him with oxen, waggons, and such other furnishings and supplies as he needed for himself and family; and so, properly fitted out, the family started on their long journey through the wilderness via the old Military road, that connected Halifax with the Fort at Annapolis Royal, and which is now our Post Road.

In due time, they arrived at their location which Mr. Ogilvie named after his family name. Subsequently it was named the Donnellan Brook, which name it now bears.

Here William Ogilvie built a house on the hill back of a brook, and there he and his family resided for several years. After the building of this house, he with assistance of his sons, built a saw mill on the brook, the first mill on the brook for many years. All the lumber cut along the bay shore for miles in either direction was sawed at the Ogilvie Mill. About this time, two desserters of the American army made their way to Ogilvie's Brook and wanted to be taken across the Bay, and Daniel and James Ogilvie started with the men in a birch bark canoe, and nothing more was ever heard of them. The now remaining elder son, John, married a young woman, named Hannah Eagles, who lived down in what is now known as Hortonville. John Ogilvie brought his wife home to Ogilvie's Brook, and then built himself a house on top of the mountain to the south of the shore, and there is where his family was born and raised.

John Ogilvie, had amongst others, two sons, named John and Charles, and with the assistance of those sons, he built a little way from the shore up the Brook, the first Grist Mill in this section of the land, and for years settlers from across the Bay, and from up and down the shore and the mountain, brought their grain to Ogilvie's Brook to be ground into flour (the stones of that mill are still at Mrs. Donnellan's home, - one being in use as a doorstep) and here is where the big industry of the Ogilvie Milling Company was really born, for as young John - in other words, John the 2^nd, became old enough, he married a settler's daughter, one Fannie West, and left with his bride for what was at that time Upper Canada, where he started a grist mill of his own, at Montreal, which in the evolution of time, became the Ogilvie Milling Company, Limited.

About the same time, Charles, the second son, married Margaret Magonicle, the daughter of an Irish settler, and built the house in which were born, Ann Agnes, and Mary Ogilvie. Ann Agnes, being born on the 16^th day of November, 1832, Mary on Oct. 8, 1834.

Ann Agnes Ogilvie was married on the 15^th of November, 1859 in the house where she was born, and has lived there all her life. Her husband, being John Donnellan, from over Dalhousie way, but whose parents were from Ireland, his father coming to Nova Scotia after the Battle of Waterloo, in which he fought as a British soldier. He died some twelve years ago, leaving his widow, three sons and two daughters.

Mary, her sister, married William Sweeney, an Irish settler, on May 20, 1857, and with her husband took up their residence on his tract of land on top of the North Mountain opposite what is now Somerset, and there ten years later, her husband died, leaving her the homestead, and five small children of whom three are living - one son, who makes his home with his mother, and two sisters.