Brink-Whitelaw Collection

Collection of family material, correspondence, genealogy, memorabilia, and photographs relating to Whitelaw, Brink, Cuthbert, Johnston, and Gunn families of Woodstock, includes the Whitelaw Machinery Company Limited.

Whitelaw Machinery Company Limited was founded by Robert Whitelaw in Beachville in 1856, then later moved to Woodstock in 1874. They produced engines, mill machinery, boilers, cheese-making and butter-making machinery, separators, turbines, sawing machines, agricultural equipment, castings, and threshing machines.

Royal Alexander Brink, graduate of the Ontario Agricultural College in 1919 (son of Royal Wilson Brink and Elizabeth Ann Cuthbert), married Edith Margaret Whitelaw, graduate of the Macdonald Institute in 1921 (daughter of Andrew Whitelaw and Jean Gunn). She was the great-niece of William Whitelaw, Sr., who settled in the "Paisley Block" in Guelph in 1840 and later became Deputy Reeve and Reeve of Guelph Township, then Warden of Wellington County. R. A. Brink later became Emeritus Professor, Department of Genetics, University of Wisconsin, and was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in chemistry.

R. A. Brink's elder brother, Frank Brink, was a wheat farm manager. The Cuthbert, Norsworthy and Brink families were early settlers of West Oxford Township, near Ingersoll, Ontario.  West Oxford Township was the earliest settled township in Oxford County.