William Beauchamp Sargint and his wife, Alicia Reeves, were the first permanent residents of Stratford

William Beauchamp Sargint was an Irish protestant who came to Stratford in 1831 with his wife, Alicia Reeves, from County Tipperary. The Sargints became Stratford’s first permanent residents in 1831. According to W. Stafford Johnston in his book History of Perth County to 1967, members of the Sargint family were “the first of a stream of Irish immigration which made the Irish the largest element in Perth’s racial blend.”

The Sargints established the Shakespeare Hotel on a site now marked by a stone and bronze tablet in Stratford’s Memorial Park. What is now Memorial Park, formerly the site of the Stratford post office, was originally called Shakespeare Place on early maps of Stratford.........

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