“[…] This place was called Friedsburg in 1860 after two brothers Absolom and Noah Fried, who had settled here in 1853 and built saw and grist mills. In 1871 the name was changed to Dashwood, and Noah Fried served as postmaster until 1888. It may have been named after Dashwood House in London, England, the headquarters in Britain of the Grand Trunk Railway.”
From: Rayburn, Alan (1997), Place Names of Ontario (University of Toronto Press), Toronto-Buffalo-London, ISBN 0-8020-7207-0), pp.88
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“It is believed that the post office known as Dash P.O. changed the name from Friedsburg to Dashwood.”
From: “Friedsburg-Dashwood 1860-1985” by Mary (Patterson) Rader, 1985; pg. 37, ISBN 0-9692115-0-3
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“In 1871 Friedsburg had its first post office, known as the Dash Post Office (Rader Huron Historical Notes 10). The name Dashwood was adopted for the new settlement combining the name Dash with wood, reflecting the staple of the community’s economy.”
From: Mary Rader, Huron Historical Notes #10 (as quoted here.)
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“Friedsburg became Dashwood in 1871 when a post office was established in the village. It is believed that the none-too-modest first postmaster’s name was Dash.”
From: “A Look At Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Our First Millennium”, published by Dashwood Industries Limited; 1978
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“In December 1871, the first post office was opened. The authorities preferred a more English-sounding name than Friedsburg, so they selected Dashwood, in honour of Sir Francis Dashwood.”
extracted from “Hay Township Highlights: 150 years of Diversified Progress, 1846 – 1996”, published by the Hay Township Book Committee under the auspices of Hay Township Council, Alice Gibb ed.; pg. 92 ISBN : 0-919939-43-0
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[Ed.note: The truth is, in all likelihood, we will probably never know exactly why the village received the name “Dashwood”; although some theories appear more likely than others in my opinion. No reference, that I am aware of supports the idea that a person named “Dash” was the original postmaster of the community; nor is “Dash” mentioned anywhere I could find in the sources I looked at as being the original name of the post office. In the first instance, its fairly well documented that community co-founder Noah Fried was the initial postmaster, (1871-1888) and that the original name of the community itself; though “unofficial” (at least as far as Canadian postal authorities were concerned) was “Friedsburg”.
Alan Rayburn’s notion that the village was named after the headquarters of the then regionally significant Grand Trunk Railway, may appear strange at first glance to some; however, it should be kept in mind that Noah Fried, the most likely candidate responsible for handling the naming process when he was postmaster, would have been likely exposed to the name on a regular basis each time he encountered railway advertising or visited the Grand Trunk Railway station in Parkhill Ontario. This was probably not an infrequent occurrence, as he had numerous contacts in that community and actually spent the last few years of his life residing there. Grand Trunk; along with other railway companies of that era, commonly and prominently displayed the name and likeness of their corporate headquarters building on calenders and other items in plain public view in the lobbies of their facilities. They also utilized postering and newspaper advertisements bearing the information as promotional devices as well.
A related possibility, that’s interesting to contemplate, is that when Grand Trunk extended its early rail line from Stratford to Sarnia in 1860, the site of the future community which it passed through, now known as Parkhill, was then called “Westwood”. As a community called Westwood already existed in the province; near Peterborough, the name was shortly changed to “Swainby” and finally to “Park Hill” in 1864. (Rayburn: pgs. 264-265) Perhaps Noah Fried liked the sound of the suffix “wood” and simply innovated the initial “Dash” as a Victorian ‘nod of the head’ of sorts toward “progress” in general. Mary Rader hinted at a similar concept in her contribution.
Without substantiation in my opinion, as well as others, the “Sir Francis Dashwood” scenario is probably an unlikely potential explanation as a source for the name. The 18th century Sir Francis was neither particularly well known during the latter 19th century in Canada; nor was his reputation a particularly potentially attractive one to the conservatively minded British influenced postal officials who would have had to officially approve the names that Noah Fried, as postmaster, put forward for their assessment. This would hold true as well, even if the officials themselves were the ones who chose “Dashwood” as the name in the first place; in my opinion the “gentleman” might have been just a touch too “colourful” for polite society in the latter 19th century. A more likely and more “literary” potential source in 1870’s Ontario for the word, would have been its use as the name of a fictional family, in the well known Jane Austin novel ‘Sense and Sensibility’, published in 1811, it was certainly widely known and easily available during the period.]