News & Events

Gordon Agnew- Newcastle’s Newspaper Man

George “Gordon” Agnew was born in 1910 in Peterborough, Ontario, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Frederick J.Agnew. When Gordon was six years old the family moved to Orono, Ontario and Gordon attended Orono Public School there. About 1926, Gordon’s mother passed away suddenly and his father Frederick was in poor health so Gordon left school at age 16. He began working for the Peterborough Canoe Company but after about a year had to quit that job because of crippling arthritis. Later, he purchased a printing press and started printing tickets, business cards and other items….

While the Historical Room remains closed at this time (mid-September), we continue our work behind the scenes. We’re answering inquiries by email and we’re still working on our big digitization project and hope to eventually have some online exhibits for you to peruse. Work will begin soon on an online version of our walking tour. As always, we appreciate your ongoing support and hope to see you soon!

Photo gallery from our Annual General Meeting on March 10, 2020. The NVDHS Preservation Award certificate was presented to Ben and Jenette Walsh of The Refinery Salon and Barber in recognition of their efforts to preserve and restore their premises at 39 King St. E., Newcastle.

Interesting “Show and Tell” items were presented by Jean Rickard, Erla Jose, Dorella Forget and Bill Lake, among others.

The Watson Wheelbarrow

Newcastle Village & District Historical Society recently received a donation of an interesting old wheelbarrow. This “Massey Harris #1” wheelbarrow was originally purchased by William R. (Will) Watson around 1910. The Watson’s had an apple orchard near the former town of Dixie, Ontario. In the early 1950’s part of the farm was expropriated to expand the Queen Elizabeth Way in what is now Mississauga.

The wheelbarrow was passed down to Will Watson’s son Harold who purchased a farm just west of Bowmanville at what is now Bowmanville Avenue (Hwy #57) and Highway 2. Later, the wheelbarrow was passed on to his son Ted Watson who kept it on his farm west of Bowmanville.

As most of you probably realize, we are not open, due to COVID-19. At this time, we do not know when we will be able to re-open the Historical Room, but if you have questions you’d like answered, please contact us and we’ll see what we can do! While we don’t have access to all of our files or any of our artifacts at this time, we do have access to our electronic files, and we might be able to help.

We hope that you are all safe and healthy, and look forward to seeing you when the Community Hall reopens.

On display now at the Historical Room The pale white dress with green velvet trim on the left was once (in 1902) more colourful than it is today. Between the French lace inserts are hand embroidered flowers which were at one time a bright leaf green colour. The dress is known to have belonged to … Read more