The History of Emo, Ontario, Canada

The Township of Emo was settled in the early 1880's by pioneers who arrived to free homesteads. The settlers were confronted by many hardships and hard work in the undomesticated country. The river was the main route of transportation, until the CNR lines were built in the early 1900's. Emo is comprised of three townships - Carpenter, Lash and Aylsworth, each surveyed in the late 1800's to make up Emo as it is known today. A meeting of the electors was held on October 7, 1899 to nominate the first Reeve and four Councillors. On November 13, 1899, the council hired their first Clerk-Treasurer. Emo was incorporated into a township in 1899, and originally had a five-member council. The former members were John Dungy, Charles Fisher, Alexander Luttrell, Benjamin Phillips, and Thomas Shortreed.

Emo's First Reeve: In the 1880s, Alexander Luttrell travelled from Ireland to Canada, and settled here. He named this place Emo, after the town close to his birthplace. Luttrell became the first postmaster shortly after moving here, and became the first Reeve of Emo in 1899. He died in 1911. His granddaughter, Marg Jewell, still lives in Emo. Marg wrote this in an article about her grandfather in the West End Weekly:
"As well as being a farmer and a father of 12, he wore many hats in his lifetime. Besides the first postmaster, reeve, and "namer" of Emo village, he was a road builder...they were built with hard-earned labour, of digging ditches by hand, and laying corduroy as a base. I would be inclined to think that one of these could be the River Road, since that was where his home and farm were situated. The property where Cecil Ogden lives was originally the Luttrell homestead."