Thomas Austin [ 1848 - 1918 ]

Thomas Austin was listed as a 33 year-old grocer in the 1881 Assessor’s Roll of the village. Henry and Thomas Austin, and perhaps other members of the family, may have been as business together as early as December 1875. A butchering business under the name “Austin & Bros.” appears in the D&B directories from 1876 to 1878; Thomas is also listed as a “merchant” in the 1881 Census. Thomas entered into partnership with his brother Henry in December 1880 to form Austin Brothers, a business partnership that lasted until March 1889. Thomas opened his own shop “in the same line” in April of 1889 “in the store lately occupied by Mr. Daniel Duggan” [FFG 15 March 1889; 4]. Thomas’s shop disappears from the directories about 1891, although he does not appear to have left the village. He was listed as selling agricultural implements in the 1892/93 Ontario Directory. He reappears as a butcher about 1903 or 1905, depending on what directory is most authoritative. His butcher shop, “where Central Cafe is now” disappears from the directories about 1908. He was long active on the Village Council and the School Board. Thomas Austin died on June 13th 1918, just short of his 70th birthday, and was buried in the Fenelon Falls Cemetery. For the last seven years of his life he was the village lockmaster [FFPL 18-13].