The general store was at the heart of any early community. This was certainly the case in Newton Robinson, where the Chantler store provided residents with a place to purchase goods of all kinds, from coffee and cloth to hardware and sugar.
It also provided a welcome sense of continuity, as the store operated under the same family for a century.
William Nathaniel Chantler was born in 1813 in Surrey, England. He received a fine education and, as a young man, found employment with a Manchester merchant, under whom he learned the intricacies of the retail business of the day.
For 27-year-old Chantler, 1839 was a big year. First, he immigrated to Canada and found employment as a clerk in the Bigelow store in Tecumseth Township. A few months later, he married Margaret Booker on June 6, 1839.
Three years later, Chantler opened his own store in the village of Newton Robinson (then known as Latimer’s Corners) on the northwest corner of what is now the 10th Line and County Road 27. Both the business and the man prospered. Latimer’s Corners was growing rapidly at the time, from just a handful of homes to a bustling village that included a tannery, a blacksmith, a wagonmaker, a shoemaker, a tailor, a church and a school.
By 1850, the community had grown large enough to warrant a post office, with Chantler as the village’s first postmaster.
As postmaster, he had the privilege of naming the community. He wanted to call in Springville but listened to his friends and neighbours who were pushing to honour William B. Robinson, who represented the riding in the legislature from 1839 to 1857. The community became known as Newtown Robinson; somehow, in the decades that followed, Newtown was contracted to Newton.
In 1865, Chantler decided to retire and he sold the store to his son-in-law, Joseph R. Hipwell. Hipwell ran the business until 1874, and then sold it to James G. Chantler, William’s and Margaret’s son. James operated the store until 1896, and then passed it to his 26-year-old son, Milton George Clark Chantler. Milton found time to run the business while also publishing the Newton Robinson Hustler newspaper.
In 1905, a year after the death of William, the man who had started it all, Milton sold the store to his uncle, 63-year-old Joseph Robert Chantler, James’s elder brother. The final Chantler to operate the mercantile was Joseph’s youngest son, Marshall, who took over in 1912.
When Marshall sold the business in 1923, it ended a remarkable run that saw four generations of the Chantler family operate the store over 80 years. The Chantler store was the heart of the community — a place where people shopped and picked up mail, where they chatted with friends and neighbours, and (from a room upstairs) where community meetings were held.
Remarkably, though no longer a general store, the building still stands.
