Mount Horeb

By Guy Scott

Mount Horeb was a small crossroads community straddling the Ops-Manvers township border. It was first settled in the 1840s by Protestant Irish families. The excellent farmland nearby is still intensively farmed, but the village has become a Ghost Town. The hamlet formed on the top of a hill near Feir’s Mills: a substantial mill site that remained until the 1960s. Mount Horeb took its name from the biblical Mount Horeb in Sinai. Mount Horeb was a typical crossroads hamlet that catered to the local farm population. Besides mills it offered two general stores, a hotel, a post office, a blacksmith, a school, an Orange Lodge and a church. The hamlet was officially formed in the late 1840s when 20 village lots were surveyed.

The population peaked about 1880 at 100 souls, but steadily fell as business gravitated to neighbouring villages. The Mount Horeb school was first organized in 1850 as SS#12 Ops Township. The number of students soon outgrew the schoolhouse and a series of ever larger brick schoolhouses were built as the student population exceeded 110. In 1921 the Mount Horeb school burnt down during a heated political debate. Talk about bringing down the house! The last school closed in 1965 and the students bussed to Ops Central School near Reaboro. The loss of the school was a big blow to the community and hastened its decline. The Mount Horeb Methodist church was first opened in 1861 and was part of a large circuit of as many as 8 Methodist churches in Ops Township. The congregation joined the United Church in the 1920s. It would become part of the Janetville Pastoral Charge, and served into the 21^st century: one of the last public places in the hamlet.