You are in the center of Dunkin, a hamlet located in the beautiful Missisquoi Valley. It was here that Colonel Henry Ruiter, a loyalist who fought against the American revolutionaries, founded the Ruiter settlement in West Potton in 1796. He was then well over 50 years old.
After clearing acres of forest, he and his family built mills and a few houses, to which were added, during the 19th century, an inn, a blacksmith shop, a post office, a school, and cheese factories. Three churches, which are still standing today, were also built there in the late 1880s. One of them, an Anglican Church built around 1877, was nicely renovated by the film director Pierre Falardeau who occupied it for several years.
In 1896, the hamlet was renamed in honor of Christopher Dunkin, a politician and lawyer, who was instrumental in bringing the Southeastern Railway to the township. Dunkin was a fervent advocate of temperance and introduced the Dunkin Temperance Act which was adopted in 1878. It was following a particularly rousing speech that he delivered in the Adventist church of West Potton, that the inhabitants were moved to rename their village Dunkin in his honour!
On the northwest corner of the main intersection stands a magnificent white house built around 1850. The Wayside Inn, or the Sherrer House, as it is known today, was a relay inn on the road from Troy, Vermont to Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and was but one of many inns along this former early military stagecoach route. Stagecoaches were the main means of land transportation before the arrival of the railroad.
From the middle of the 19th century, the forestry industry set the pace for life in Dunkin, where many forestry workers lived. They logged the forest, drove log runs on Ruiter Brook and the Missisquoi River, and worked in sawmills. The headwaters of Ruiter Brook which rise in Fullerton Pond, were held back by a 123 metre dam (around 400 feet) built in 1904. By controlling the sluiceways, there was sufficient flow to run logs to the Missisquoi.
Logs were transported to the Missisquoi River and then on to Richmond, Vermont, where they were processed into plywood and other soft wood derivatives. Hardwood logs, being less buoyant, were generally transported by teams of horses to factories in North Troy, Vermont or in later years, delivered by rail to the Blair Veneer Company there, which manufactured famous pianos and other musical instruments.
Dunkin's logging industry reached its peak in the 1920s with Singer Manufacturing. The famous sewing machine manufacturer cut and sawed oak and maple lumber at a work camp, Singerville, a few miles up Ruiter Brook. The wood was transported by train to the factory in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu to be used to make sewing machine cabinets sold around the world.