Elgin County, Located on the picturesque north shore of Lake Erie, at one time was home to more than forty once-flourishing villages. This sequel to Vanished Villages of Middlesex explores former communities, including Tyrconnell, Port Talbot, Cowal, Grovesend, Mapleton, and Jamestown - now mere ghosts of the past. Today, a few possess a handful of inhabitants, a pioneer church, or a one-room school, while others have only a cemetery or historical marker left to acknowledge their previous existence. Although tranquil today, these former village settings were once the scene of much excitement - shipwrecks, War of 1812 skirmishes, rowdy taverns, eerie hauntings, deafening steam engines thundering by on new rail lines, robberies, and even a murder or two. While the area was dominated by the personalities of aristocratic colonizer Colonel Thomas Talbot and his right-hand man, surveyor Mahlon Burwell, these local villages were also settled by other intrepid pioneers-United Empire Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution, entrepreneurial town builders and American industrialists, Scottish, Irish and German immigrants building a new life in the wilderness - all contributers to the development of southwestern Ontario. Through extensive research and personal exploration, local historian Jennifer Grainger has produced a fresh work on Elgin with absorbing stories and photos of the past that will fascinate ghost-town buffs, genealogists, and daytrippers. Book jacket.