As you approach the village of Maryhill, you will notice the spire of the historic St. Boniface Church perched upon the highest hill in the vicinity. It has served as a beacon to guide travellers by horse drawn carriage or modern day automobiles to their destination for almost 130 years.The land surrounding the church was purchased in the 1820's by a group of Alsatian families, who wished to establish a Catholic community far away from the turmoil in their homeland, along the disputed French German border. Within a decade, the German speaking settlers had turned large tracts of land into fertile fields and had established a church and a school in the hamlet, first known as Rottenburg.The Maryhill Inn, formerly known as the St. Boniface Hotel (named after St. Boniface, the apostle of Germany), was built in 1850 as one of the three crossroads hotels. The Inn operated as a stagecoach stop on the road between Guelph and Waterloo for 70 years, carrying mail and welcoming passengers until 1921.The Inn was constructed using the post and beam method popular in Europe at that time. The hand-hewn posts and beams are held together by pegs rather than nails. The thick walls are filled with cement and river rocks. As you can imagine, this made for a very solid contruction that has withstood the test of time.
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