Amherst Island is located about 3 kilometres (2 mi) offshore from the rest of Loyalist Township and is serviced by public ferry from Millhaven.

In 1823, Sir John's widowed daughter, Catharine Maria Bowes, gained control of the island estate from her disinterested father.

By 1827 Mrs. Bowes was still in financial difficulty and granted a power of attorney to the Stephen Moore, 3rd Earl Mount Cashell, who purchased the balance of the Island Estate outright from her in 1835.

He aspired to establish a feudal estate, and reap large returns on his investment by the settlement of the Island with industrious tenants who would continue to clear and cultivate the land, thereby improving its value and providing his heirs with a perpetual rental income.

Inspired by the evangelical belief in human improvement, he thought that by encouraging emigration from Ireland to Canada he could help solve the overpopulation of his homeland, create a prosperous, loyal farming population in the new world, and strengthen the Empire through a transatlantic grain trade.

[6] Mount Cashell issued the settlers seven-year leases at a nominal rent and requiring them to make certain improvements each year.

These Irish immigrants lived in either shanties or one-storey log houses on their leased land, and never achieved purchasing farms from departing, pre-Mount Cashell freeholders.

[2] It is impossible to imagine the social dichotomy on the Island during Mount Cashell's management: individual freeholders, the minority, who could conduct long term, personal strategies versus the majority, tenants with no prospects of ever owning their farm, who could neither commit resources nor time to beyond next year.

The freeholders owned wood cookstoves in their "improved houses," while the tenants cooked on open hearths in their temporary abodes.

[4][2] While Amherst Islanders had prospered from the grain trade into the 1840s, the soil was depleted, the Hessian Fly agricultural pest had arrived and the Huron Tract beckoned; dozens of tenant families departed to the prospect of owning land on the distant frontier.

Distressed Irish tenants and declining rents placed a heavy burden on a landlord who was already in debt because of lavish living and beleaguered by an untrustworthy agent's embezzlement.

Several more mortgages followed on his Canadian properties, and in 1856 his creditors foreclosed and Amherst Island was sold at public auction to creditor/ kin Robert Perceval Maxwell (1813–1905).

[6] Amherst Island at mid-19th century was a mixed economy of farming wheat and barley, fishing in the Bay of Quinte, sailing the Great Lakes, and shipbuilding at the local yard of David Tait.

[6] In all this, Robert Perceval Maxwell and his agent were the primary financiers, establishing the agricultural society and a cheese factory, promoting improvements, and financing loans and mortgages.

Thereby the island most likely slipped from carbon neutrality to importing Coal circa 1880: the resident agent's country manor house Farnham itself burned 20 tons per year.

A toll ferry service, carrying people, cyclists and motorists, connects the hamlet of Stella on the Island with Millhaven on the mainland.

[19] MTO has further announced plans to construct a new $20 million ferry for Amherst Island to replace the M/V Frontenac II near the end of 2019 M/V_Amherst_Islander_II, anticipated Spring 2023].

It is a 100% volunteer operated station, and is concerned with the preservation of harmony between the rural and urban way of life, accurate and timely information of local events, and the promotion of Canadian musical talent throughout Loyalist Township and beyond.

Fowler stated in his autobiography: "I found a sufficient variety of subjects on the island, along with shore and inland, and never went away on any sketching trip."

Inspired by the Island's bucolic landscape, flora and fauna, Daniel Fowler was considered by his peers as "one of the fathers of Canadian Art".

[22] The annual summer drought and winter wind-burn combine as a harsh environment for all small trees, even before our Climate Crisis.

The museum building itself is also an exhibit; built in 1883 by James S. Neilson, the Island grain merchant who opened this general store.

It provided services in shipping and receiving goods and produce, storing and selling coal, barley and milled feed.

After initial assessment two firms have withdrawn; one is still pursuing this action, encouraged by residents who have signed leases for wind farm turbines to be sited on their lands.

[25] In 2011 Senator Bob Runciman championed a motion which resulted in a unanimous vote for a moratorium on wind-farm development along eastern Lake Ontario until the impact on birds and bats can be studied.

Such a moratorium would protect Important Bird Areas and the migratory flyways - Prince Edward County and Amherst Island were featured.