Samuel Dow was an American who moved to the Merrickville area from Vermont in 1805. He was killed in an accident shortly after he arrived and his eldest son , Abram inherited the land. Too young to know better, Abram sold his father's land for a mere $70.00, and came to Bytown where he purchased Elkanah Billing's log house located on the Rideau, where he lived and raised his family until his death in 1832. The Dow family name still lives on at Dows Lake.
In 1793, Deputy Surveyor John Stegmann set out to survey the township of Nepean, which at that time was a considerably larger area than it is today. The last stake he planted was found near the Rideau River at the edge of Dows Swamp, but no sign of Stegmann was ever seen in this area again. He was thought to have drowned, either in the Rideau River or in Dows Great Swamp. Several years later, however, the name John Stegmann appeared on the passenger list of a schooner that sank in Lake Ontario with no known survivors. Could it have been the same John Stegmann? To this day that mystery has not been solved.
Anyone who has skated on Dows Lake on a blustery day can tell you just how cold it can be. When John McTaggart and his party of surveyors bivouacked on the shores of Dows Great Swamp on Christmas Eve of 1726 it was very, very cold indeed, and they did not have the benefits of fancy camping gear or warm winter cloth. They huddled close together to conserve what warmth they could and when they awoke the following morning their hair had frozen to the ground. The next time you skate on the lake, try to imagine where this group might have slept and picture it as it must have looked to them at the time.
Dows Great Swamp, as it was once was known, stretched almost from the Rideau to the Ottawa River and presented a great challenge to Colonel By when the canal route was being planned. In his usual, practical way, Colonel By decided to have earth dams build at each end of the swampy, densely wooded area, effectively flooding the swamp and creating the lake we see today.
For several weeks in the summer of 1870, bushfires raged in many parts of the countryside outside of Ottawa. It had been an extremely hot , dry summer and when the fire began to spread, it traveled at a rapid pace. The only remaining means of escape from the city were by boat on the steamer 'Queen of Grenville', or by train on the 'St.Laurence & Ottawa Railroad'. When the smoke became too thick on the river for navigation, the boat stopped running. The coaches on the railway cars caught fire on some trips, but when the railway ties and telegraph poles started to burn, it too stopped running. The city was in a desperate situation. Finally, a gentleman by the name of Mr. Purcell suggested cutting the 'St. Louis Dam' to create a water barrier, and hopefully put out the fire. With a work party of about one hundred men and the fire burning as close as Hog's Back, Mr. Purcell successfully cut through the dam and allowed the water to flood the lowlands as it followed its old course up Preston Street to the Ottawa River. While much of the city lay in ruins, "Mighty" Dows Lake saved it from total destruction.
Lamira Dow Billings, (sister of Abram Dow) and her husband Braddish Billings are the only known people to have shot the rapids at Hog's Back. While returning from a visit to the home of Lamira's parents near Merrickville, Braddish Billings, his wife and their baby, were accidentally swept over the falls. A horrified witness, Philemon Wright, scrambled to the foot of the falls where he found the young family still in the canoe, shaken but unharmed. The baby, Sabra, was still held secure in her mother's arms.