Who Named Sebastopol and Inkerman?
Was it Alexander Mitchell?
The reeve of South Easthope township in 1852 was Alexander Mitchell, a hotel keeper in "Shakespeare" which was the new name given to Bell's Corner. William Johnston, in his book History of Perth County 1825-1902, described Mitchell as "a gentleman of education and some refinement; one of a class of people in many instances ill-fitted to undergo the toils and privations inseparable from pioneer life. He was a person of literary attainments, and conceived the idea of giving 'Bell's Corners' a more appropriate name, by substituting that of his favorite author, the Bard of Avon."
It is also probable that Sebastopol and Inkerman were given their names by Mitchell as well. But the name for that little hamlet just south of Sebastopol and first surveyed by Mitchell did not remain "Inkerman" for long.

THE GRAVEL ROAD
Mitchell had been a hotel keeper at Bell's Corners. He was one of a group of men who had pushed for the Huron Tract to be divided into three separate counties. He also wanted his new proposed County of Perth to improve its ties with its neighbours to the east. Perth did became a separate county in 1850. Mitchell then tried to convince the government to pay for a gravel road to connect Stratford with Galt (through Bell's Corners, naturally). The response to the petitions he wrote in 1848 was one of indifference. With no help from the government he tried to get private investors interested. Once again, however, he could find no interest in a gravel road linking Galt and Stratford through Doon and Hamburg.
Finding no interest in a road to the east, he looked to the south. In February 1850, Mitchell and his friends formed the Stratford and Wilmot Road Company in order to build a road to Woodstock to connect up with the Dundas Highway which ran between London and Hamilton. The company reorganized as the Woodstock and Huron Gravel Road Company and started to build south from Bell’s Corners.
The cost of building the road soon proved to be beyond the resources of the individual backers and so the company appealed to the local municipalities for help. In 1852, South Easthope township (whose reeve at the time just happened to be Alexander Mitchell) bought 70 shares of stock in the Woodstock and Huron Gravel Road at 5 Pounds a share.
By September of 1852, the grading of the road was finished and gravel was laid. This road between the newly renamed "Shakespeare" and Woodstock proved to be the main route that connected the Easthope townships to the markets further east. And the road became an important feeder for the Great Western Railroad when it opened through Woodstock in January of
1854. But in December 1856, a new railroad was built through the Easthopes to Stratford and that lessened the importance of the Woodstock and Huron Gravel Road.

THE RAILWAY
Always the entrepreneur, Alexander Mitchell turned his attention to the railways. Mitchell, an inn keeper in Bell's Corner (later to be Shakespeare), was appointed clerk when the first-ever elected council of South Easthope met in January of 1850. Mr Andrew Helmer was elected the first reeve. Mitchell was clerk again in 1851 but by 1852 he was reeve.
1852 was the year that Mitchell and the other councillors of the United Counties of Huron, Bruce, and Perth got into the railroad business when they committed 125,000 pounds sterling to the Buffalo, Brantford, and Lake Huron Railroad. At a public meeting in Goderich on June 29, 1852, the directors of that railroad convinced the councillors that the United Counties would best be served by a railway that ran from Goderich through Stratford to Buffalo and would thus connect the the Upper Great Lakes with the Erie Canal and the markets of New York.
Alexander Mitchell was smitten with this proposal and its possible financial windfall. Though he already had shares in a more modest railway that was to run from Toronto to Guelph (with an extension to Stratford), Mitchell was swayed by the logic of the directors from Buffalo. From then on, his fortunes were tied to the Buffalo-Goderich line. How could he know then that the other, more modest, line was destined to become part of the Grand Trunk system, the grand design fashioned by Premier Francis Hincks to connect Sarnia with Montreal? In 1852 the Buffalo line had looked to be the safer bet but within two years the situation had changed..

THE SURVEY
In January of 1853, the BB&G railroad received authority to construct a line to Goderich. The first items of business were to get a survey and then buy up the land along the right-of-way. On April 13, 1853, Alexander Mitchell was appointed as the agent to purchase the right-of-way from Paris to Stratford. As a result, Mitchell knew where the line was to go. Within two weeks of his appointment, he purchased lots 35 and 36, Concession 36, Concession 13 in the Township of East Zorra from Henry Schaefer (Mitchell became the owner but a William Lingelbach held the mortgage).
In October 1854, the BB&G announced that a station would be built where the proposed railroad crossed the town line between South Easthope and Zorra (that would be where it crossed the Woodstock and Huron Gravel Road). This is exactly where Mitchell had purchased his property. Obviously excited about his prospects, Alexander Mitchell purchased 50 shares worth $1000 in the railroad at a time when most shareholders were buying only one or two shares at a time. Unfortunately for Mitchell, the railroad went bankrupt almost immediately. The company was soon reorganized under new owners as the Buffalo and Lake Huron Railroad, but the original shareholders (including Mitchell and the County of Perth) lost 100 cents on the dollar.
At about the same time, there was a war going on halfway around the world. Great Britain was involved in a war in Crimea and it wasn't going well for them. But suddenly things changed. In September 1855, the siege of Sebastopol in the Crimea finally succeeded and the British Empire rejoiced. Then there was another victory in the Battle of Inkerman. In January 1856, within four months of those victories, Alexander Mitchell was advertising for sale 100 lots in the village of "Inkerman". With the coming of the railroad in 1857, the lots went quickly. Some of the early property owners were George Miller, J. L. Hodge, Duncan Stewart, William Munro and the B&LH railroad to name just a few.
But William Lingelbach who held the mortgage on the property where the lots were being sold was not happy. He held the mortgage, but despite the many land transactions done by Mitchell, he saw no money. In October 1858, Lingelbach went to court, calling into question all the land deals that had been done by Mitchell. The court took some time to untangle the mess. In May 1860, the west half of lot 36, concession 13, East Zorra was sold by the court to William Hendershot who was the highest bidder. By then, Alexander Mitchell, the man who had named Shakespeare and Sebastopol and Inkerman, was long gone. By 1857 he had moved to the Queen's Bush (Wellesley) and then, when last heard from, he was in Texas.

From Tavistock’s 150th Programme, p. 9 (1998) by R. Paul Bartlett