Mount Carmel, Middlesex County, Ontario

Mount Carmel (formerly named at various times in the past, Limerick, Cranford and Offa) is a primarily residential hamletlocated in southwestern Ontario, Canada at the intersection of Mount Carmel Drive, Bronson Line and Lieury Road, on the boundary between the municipality of North Middlesex and the municipality of South Huron. Mount Carmel Drive constitutes the north-south boundary between Middlesex and Huron counties. The community of Mount Carmel was founded in the 1830s and 1840's on the arrival in the area of Irish settlers who had initially resided in the vicinity of Pickering, Ontario, when they first arrived in Canada, but were drawn by advertisements for low cost Canada Company land available in the southern part of the Huron Tract for agricultural purposes. To meet the needs of the predominately Roman Catholic population of the emerging community, in the late 1840s, a small frame church was constructed near the banks of Parkhill Creek,two kilometers ( 1.25 miles) east of the present site of the hamlet on Mount Carmel Drive. Thechurch was located on donated land on the farm of Daniel Coughlin. By 1850, a small commercial core had begun to form at the site of the present intersection and the church building was relocated to a small hill at the northwest corner of the community. During this period, the name of the hamlet was in all likelihood Limerick. The community's growth continued in the 1850s with the arrival of the Grand Trunk Railway line in the region. Mount...
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