several years the actual occupant, of the lot immediately opposite
Captain Cozens'. This was Captain Richard Lippincott, a native of New
Jersey. A bold deed of his has found a record in all the histories of
the period. The narrative gives us a glimpse of some of the painful
scenes attendant on wars wherein near relatives and old friends come to
be set in array one against the other.
On the 12th of April, 1782, Captain Lippincott, acting under the
authority of the "Board of Associated Loyalists of New York," executed
by hanging, on the heights near Middleton, Joshua Huddy, an officer in
the revolutionary army, as an act of retaliation,--Huddy having
summarily treated, in the same way, a relative of Captain Lippincott's,
Philip White, surprised within the lines of the revolutionary force,
while on a stolen visit of natural affection to his mother on Christmas
Day.
On Huddy's breast was fastened a paper containing the following written
notice, to be read by his co-revolutionists and friends when they should
discover the body suspended in the air.--"We, the Refugees, having long
with grief beheld the cruel murders of our brethren, and finding nothing
but such measures carrying into execution, therefore determined not to
suffer without taking vengeance for the numerous cruelties; and thus
begin, having made use of Captain Huddy as the first object to present
to your view; and further determine to hang man for man while there is a
Refugee existing. Up goes Huddy for Philip White."
When the surrender of Capt. Lippincott was refused by the Royalist
authorities, Washington ordered the execution of one officer of equal
rank to be selected by lot out of the prisoners in his hands. The lot
fell on Capt. Charles Asgill of the Guards, aged only nineteen. He was
respited however until the issue of a court-martial, promised to be held
on Capt. Lippincott, should be known. The court acquitted; and Capt.
Asgill only narrowly escaped the fate of Andre, through prompt
intervention on the part of the French Government. The French minister
of State, the Count de Vergennes, to whom there had been time for Lady
Asgill, the Captain's mother, to appeal--received directions to ask his
release in the conjoint names of the King and Queen as "a tribute to
humanity." Washington thought proper to accede to this request; but it
was not until the following year, when the revolutionary struggle ended,
that Asgill and Lippincott were set at liberty.
The former lived to succeed to his father's baronetcy and to become a
General officer. Colonel O'Hara, of Toronto, remembered dining at a
table where a General Sir Charles Asgill was pointed out to him as
having been, during the American revolutionary war, for a year under
sentence of death, condemned by General Washington to be hanged in the
place of another person.
Capt. Lippincott received from the Crown three thousand acres in Upper
Canada. He survived until the year 1826, when, aged 81, and after
enjoying half-pay for a period of forty-three years, he expired at the
house of his son-in-law in York, Colonel George Taylor Denison, who gave
to his own eldest son, Richard Lippincott Denison, Captain Lippincott's
name. (A few miles further on, namely, in North and East Gwillimbury,
General Benedict Arnold, known among United States citizens as "the
traitor," received a grant of five thousand acres.)
In connexion with Richmond Hill, which now partially covers the fronts
of Captain Cozens' and Captain Lippincott's lots, we subjoin what
Captain Bonnycastle said of the condition of Yonge Street hereabout in
1846, in his "Canada and the Canadians."
"Behold us at Richmond Hill," he exclaims, "having safely passed the
Slough of Despond which the vaunted Yonge Street mud road presents
between the celebrated hamlet of St. Albans and the aforesaid hill."
And again: "We reached Richmond Hill, seventeen miles from the Landing,
at about 8 o'clock (he was moving southward) having made a better day's
journey than is usually accomplished on a road which will be macadamized
some fine day;--for the Board of Works," he proceeds to inform the
reader, "have a Polish engineer hard at work surveying it; of course, no
Canadian was to be found equal to this intricate piece of engineering;
and I saw a variety of sticks stuck up; but what they meant I cannot
guess at. I suppose they were going to grade it, which is the favourite
American term."
The prejudices of the Englishman and Royal Engineer routinier here crop
out. The Polish engineer, who was commencing operations on this
subdivision of Yonge Street, was Mr. Casimir Stanislaus Gzowski, whose
subsequent Canadian career renders it probable that in setting up "the
variety of sticks," the meaning of which Capt. Bonnycastle does after
all guess at, he understood his business. We are assured that this
portion of Yonge Street was in fact conspicuous for the superior
excellence of its finish.
Captain Bonnycastle indulges in a further little fling at civilians who
presume to undertake engineering duties, in a story which serves to fill
a page or two of his book, immediately after the above remarks on Yonge
Street, about Richmond Hill. He narrates an incident of his voyage
out:--
"A Character," he says, "set out from England to try his fortune in
Canada. He was conversing about prospects in that country, on board the
vessel, with a person who knew him, but whom he knew not. 'I have not
quite made up my mind,' said the character, 'as to what pursuit I shall
follow in Canada; but that which brings most grist to the mill will
answer best; and I hear a man may turn his hand to anything there,
without the folly of an apprenticeship being necessary; for if he have
only brains, bread will come; now what do you think would be the best
business for my market?' 'Why,' said the gentleman, after pondering a
little, 'I should advise you to try civil engineering; for they are
getting up a Board of Works there, and want that branch of industry very
much, for they won't take natives: nothing but foreigners and strangers
will go down.' 'What is a civil engineer?' said the Character. 'A man
always measuring and calculating,' responded his adviser, 'and that will
just suit you.' 'So it will,' rejoined Character, and a civil engineer
he became accordingly, and a very good one into the bargain, for he had
brains, and had used a yard measure all his lifetime."--Who "the
Character" was, we do not for certain know.
A short distance beyond Richmond Hill was the abode of Colonel Moodie,
on the right,--distinguished by a flag-staff in front of it, after the
custom of Lower Canada, where an officer's house used to be known in
this way. (In the neighbourhood of Sorel, as we remember, in the winter
of 1837, it was one of the symptoms of disaffection come to a head, when
in front of a substantial habitan's home a flag-staff was suddenly seen
bearing the inscription "----, Capitaine, elu par le peuple.")
Colonel Moodie's title came from his rank in the regular army. He had
been Lieut.-Colonel of the 104th regiment. Sad, that a distinguished
officer, after escaping the perils of the Peninsular war, and of the war
with the United States here in 1812-13, should have yet, nevertheless,
met with a violent death in a petty local civil tumult. He was shot, as
all remember, in the troubles of 1837, while attempting to ride past
Montgomery's, regardless of the insurgent challenge to stop.
"Thou might'st have dreamed of brighter hours to close thy chequered life
Beneath thy country's victor-flag, sure beacon in the strife;
Or in the shadow of thy home with those who mourn thee now,
To whisper comfort in thine ear, to calm thine aged brow.
Well! peaceful be thy changeless rest,--thine is a soldier's grave;
Hearts like thine own shall mourn thy doom--meet requiem for the brave--
And ne'er 'till Freedom's ray is pale and Valour's pulse grown cold
Shall be thy bright career forgot, thy gloomy fate untold."
So sang one in the columns of a local contemporary paper, in "Lines
suggested by the Lamented Death of the late Colonel Moodie."
At a certain period in the history of Yonge Street, as indeed of all the
leading thoroughfares of Upper Canada, about 1830-33, a frequent sign
that property had changed hands, and that a second wave of population
was rolling in, was the springing up, at intervals, of houses of an
improved style, with surroundings, lawns, sheltering plantations,
winding drives, well-constructed entrance-gates, and so on, indicating
an appreciation of the elegant and the comfortable.
We recall two instances of this, which we used to contemplate with
particular interest, a little way beyond Richmond Hill, on the left: the
cosy, English-looking residences, not far apart, with a cluster of
appurtenances round each--of Mr. Larratt Smith, and Mr. Francis Boyd.
Both gentlemen settled here with their families in 1836.
Mr. Smith had been previously in Canada in a military capacity during
the war of 1812-13, and for many years subsequently he had been Chief
Commissary of the Field Train Department and Paymaster of the Artillery.
He died at Southampton in 1860.
Mr. Boyd, who emigrated hither from the county of Kent, was one of the
first, in these parts, to import from England improved breeds of cattle.
In his house was to be seen a collection of really fine paintings,
amongst them a Holbein, a Teniers, a Dominichino, a Smirke, a Wilkie,
and two Horace Vernets. The families of Mr. Boyd and Mr. Smith were
related by marriage. Mr. Boyd died in Toronto in 1861.
Beyond Mr. Boyd's, a solitary house, on the same side of Yonge Street,
lying back near the woods, used to be eyed askance in passing:--its
occupant and proprietor, Mr. Kinnear, had in 1843 been murdered therein
by his man-servant, assisted by a female domestic. It was imagined by
them that a considerable sum of money had just been brought to the house
by Mr. Kinnear. Both criminals would probably have escaped justice had
not Mr. F. C. Capreol, of Toronto, on the spur of the moment, and purely
from a sense of duty to the public, undertaken their capture, which he
cleverly effected at Lewiston in the United States.
The land now began to be somewhat broken as we ascended the rough and
long-uncultivated region known as the Oak Ridges. The predominant tree
in the primitive forest here was the pine, which attained a gigantic
size; but specimens of the black oak were intermingled.
Down in one of the numerous clefts and chasms which were to be seen in
this locality, in a woody dell on the right, was Bond's Lake, a pretty
crescent-shaped sheet of water. We have the surrounding property offered
for sale in a _Gazette_ of 1805, in the following terms; "For Sale, Lots
No. 62 and 63, in the first concession of the township of Whitchurch, on
the east side of Yonge Street, containing 380 acres of land: a deed in
fee simple will be given by the subscriber to any person inclined to
purchase. Johnson Butler. N.B. The above lots include the whole of the
Pond commonly called Bond's Lake, the house and clearing round the same.
For particulars enquire of Mr. R. Ferguson and Mr. T. B. Gough at York,
and the subscriber at Niagara. March 23, 1805."
Bond's farm and lake had their name from Mr. William Bond, who so early
as 1800 had established in York a Nursery Garden, and introduced there
most of the useful fruits. In 1801 Mr. Bond was devising to sell his
York property, as appears from a quaint advertisement in a _Gazette_ of
that year. He therein professes to offer his lot in York as a free gift;
the recipient however being at the same time required to do certain
things.
"To be given away," he says, "that beautifully situated lot No. one,
fronting on Ontario and Duchess Streets: the buildings thereon are--a
small two-and-a-half storey house, with a gallery in front, which
commands a view of the lake and the bay: in the cellar a never failing
spring of fine water; and a stream of fine water running through one
corner of the lot; there is a good kitchen in the rear of the house, and
a stable sufficient for two cows and two horses, and the lot is in good
fence.
"The conditions are, with the person or persons who accept of the above
present, that he, she or they purchase not less than two thousand
apple-trees at three shillings, New York currency, each; after which
will be added, as a further present, about one hundred apple, thirty
peach, and fourteen cherry trees, besides wild plums, wild cherries,
English gooseberries, white and red currants, &c. There are forty of the
above apple trees, as also the peach and cherry trees, planted regular,
as an orchard, much of which appeared in blossom last spring, and must
be considered very valuable: also as a kitchen garden, will sufficiently
recommend itself to those who may please to view it.--The above are well
calculated for a professional or independent gentleman; being somewhat
retired--about half-way from the Lake to the late Attorney General's and
opposite the town-farm of the Hon. D. W. Smith [afterwards Mr. Allan's
property.] Payment will be made easy; a good deed; and possession given
at any time from the first of November to the first of May next. For
further particulars enquire of the subscriber on the premises. William
Bond. York, Sep. 4, 1801."--The price expected was, as will be made out,
750 dollars. The property was evidently the northern portion of what
became afterwards the homestead-plot of Mr. Surveyor General Ridout.
It would appear that Mr. Bond's property did not find a purchaser on
this occasion. In 1804 he is advertising it again, but now to be sold by
auction, with his right and title to the lot on Yonge Street. In the
_Gazette_ of August 4, 1804, we read as follows:--"To be sold by
auction, at Cooper's tavern, in York, on Monday, the twentieth day of
August next, at eleven o'clock in the forenoon (if not previously
disposed of by private contract), that highly cultivated lot opposite
the Printing Office [Bennett's] containing one acre, together with a
nursery thereon of about ten thousand apple, three hundred peach, and
twenty pear trees, and an orchard containing forty-one apple trees fit
for bearing, twenty-seven of which are full of fruit; thirty peach and
nine cherry trees full of fruit; besides black and red plums, red and
white currants, English gooseberries, lilacs, rose bushes, &c., &c.,
also a very rich kitchen garden.
"The buildings are a two-and-a-half storey house, a good cellar, stable
and smokehouse. On the lot is a never-failing spring of excellent water,
and fine creek running through one corner most part of the year. The
above premises might be made very commodious for a gentleman at a small
expense; or for a tanner, brewer, or distiller, must be allowed the most
convenient place in York. A view of the premises (by any person or
persons desirous of purchasing the same) will be sufficient
recommendation. The nursery is in such a state of forwardness that if
sold in from two to three years (at which time the apple trees will be
fit to transplant) at the moderate price of one shilling each, would
repay a sum double of that asked for the whole, and leave a further gain
to the purchasers of the lot, buildings, and flourishing orchard
thereon. A good title to the above, and possession given at any time
after the first of October next.
"Also at the same time and place the right as per Register, to one
hundred acres in front of lot 62, east side Yonge Street, for which a
deed can be procured at pleasure, and the remainder of the lot procured
for a small sum. It is an excellent soil for orchard, grain and pasture
land. There is a field of ten acres in fence besides other clearing. It
is a beautiful situation, having part of the Lake commonly called Bond's
Lake, within the said lot, which affords a great supply of Fish and
Fowl. Terms of payment will be made known on the day of sale. For
further particulars enquire of the subscriber on the former premises, or
the printer hereof. William Bond. York, 27th June, 1804."
Thirty years later we meet with an advertisement in which the price is
named at which Lot No. 63 could have been secured. Improvements expected
speedily to be made on Yonge Street are therein referred to. In a
_Gazette_ of 1834 we have: "A delightful situation on Yonge Street,
commonly called Bond's Farm, containing 190 acres, beautifully situated
on Bond's Lake upon Yonge Street, distant about 16 miles from the city
of Toronto: price L350. The picturesque beauty of this lot," the
advertisement says, "and its proximity to the flourishing capital of
Upper Canada, make it a most desirable situation for a gentleman of
taste. The stage-coaches between Toronto and Holland Landing and
Newmarket pass the place daily; and there appears every prospect of
Yonge Street either having a railroad or being macadamized very
shortly. Apply (if by letter, free of postage) to Robert Ferrie, at
Hamilton, the proprietor."
In the advertisement of 1805, given above, Bond's Lake is styled a pond.
The small lakes in these hills seemed, of course, to those who had
become familiarized with the great lakes, simply ponds. The term "lake"
applied to Ontario, Huron, and the rest, has given a very inadequate
idea of the magnitude and appearance of those vast expanses, to externs
who imagine them to be picturesque sheets of water somewhat exceeding in
size, but resembling, Windermere, Loch Lomond, or possibly Lake Leman.
"Sea" would have conveyed a juster notion: not however to the German,
who styles the lakes of Switzerland and the Tyrol, "seas."
Bond's Lake inn, the way-side stopping place in the vale where Yonge
Street skirts the lake, used to be, in an especial degree, of the old
country cast, in its appliances, its fare, its parlours and other
rooms.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
XXVII.
YONGE STREET: FROM BOND'S LAKE TO THE HOLLAND LANDING, WITH DIGRESSIONS
TO NEWMARKET AND SHARON.
We now speedily passed Drynoch, lying off to the left, on elevated land,
the abode of Capt. Martin McLeod, formerly of the Isle of Skye. The
family and domestic group systematized on a large scale at Drynoch here,
was a Canadian reproduction of a chieftain's household.
Capt. McLeod was a Scot of the Norse vikinger type, of robust manly
frame, of noble, frank, and tender spirit; an Ossianist too, and, in the
Scandinavian direction, a philologist. Sir Walter Scott would have made
a study of Capt. McLeod, and may have done so. He was one of eight
brothers who all held commissions in the army. His own military life
extended from 1808 to 1832. As an officer successively of the 27th, the
79th, and the 25th regiments, he saw much active service. He accompanied
the force sent over to this continent in the War of 1812-13. It was then
that he for the first time saw the land which was to be his final home.
He was present, likewise, at the affair of Plattsburg; and also, we
believe, at the attack on New Orleans. He afterwards took part in the
so-called Peninsular war, and received a medal with four clasps for
Toulouse, Orthes, Nive, and Nivelle. He missed Waterloo,
"unfortunately," as he used to say; but he was present with the allied
troops in Paris during the occupation of that city in 1815. Of the 25th
regiment he was for many years adjutant, and then paymaster. Three of
his uncles were general officers.
It is not inappropriate to add that the Major McLeod who received the
honour of a Companionship in the Order of St. Michael and St. George for
distinguished service in the Red River Expedition of 1870, was a son of
Captain McLeod of Drynoch.
That in and about the Canadian Drynoch Gaelic should be familiarly heard
was in keeping with the general character of the place. The ancient
Celtic tongue was in fact a necessity, as among the dependents of the
house there were always some who had never learned the English language.
Drynoch was the name of the old home in Skye. The Skye Drynoch was an
unfenced, hilly pasture farm, of about ten miles in extent, yielding
nutriment to herds of wild cattle and some 8,000 sheep. Within its
limits a lake, Loch Brockadale, is still the haunt of the otter, which
is hunted by the aid of the famous terriers of the island; a mountain
stream abounds with salmon and trout; while the heather and bracken of
the slopes shelter grouse and other game.
Whittaker, in his _History of Whalley_, quoted by Hallam in his _Middle
Ages_, describes the aspect which, as he supposes, a certain portion of
England presented to the eye, as seen from the top of Pendle Hill, in
Yorkshire, in the Saxon times. The picture which he draws we in Canada
can realize with great perfectness. "Could a curious observer of the
present day," he says, "carry himself nine or ten centuries back, and
ranging the summit of Pendle, survey the forked vale of Calder on one
side and the bolder margins of Ribble and Hodder on the other, instead
of populous towns and villages, the castles, the old tower-built house,
the elegant modern mansion, the artificial plantation, the enclosed park
and pleasure-ground, instead of uninterrupted enclosures which have
driven sterility almost to the summit of the fells, how great then must
have been the contrast when, ranging either at a distance or immediately
beneath, his eye must have caught vast tracts of forest-ground,
stagnating with bog or darkened by native woods, where the wild ox, the
roe, the stag and the wolf, had scarcely learned the supremacy of man,
when, directing his view to the intermediate spaces, to the widening of
the valleys, or expanse of plains beneath, he could only have
distinguished a few insulated patches of culture, each encircling a
village of wretched cabins, among which would still be remarked one rude
mansion of wood, scarcely equal in comfort to a modern cottage, yet
there rising proudly eminent above the rest, where the Saxon lord,
surrounded by his faithful cotarii, enjoyed a rude and solitary
independence, having no superior but his sovereign."
This writer asks us to carry ourselves nine or ten centuries back, to
realize the picture which he has conceived. From the upland here in the
vicinity of Drynoch, less than half a century ago, gazing southwards
over the expanse thence to be commanded, we should have beheld a scene
closely resembling that which, as he supposed, was seen from the summit
of Pendle in the Saxon days; while at the present day we see everywhere,
throughout the same expanse, an approximation to the old mother-lands,
England, Ireland, and Scotland, in condition and appearance: in its
style of agriculture, and the character of its towns, villages, hamlets,
farm-houses, and country villas.
We now entered a region once occupied by a number of French military
refugees. During the revolution in France, at the close of the last
century, many of the devotees of the royalist cause passed over into
England, where, as elsewhere, they were known and spoken of as
_emigres_. Amongst them were numerous officers of the regular army, all
of them, of course, of the noblesse order, or else, as the inherited
rule was, no commission in the King's service could have been theirs.
When now the royal cause became desperate, and they had suffered the
loss of all their worldly goods, the British Government of the day, in
its sympathy for the monarchical cause in France, offered them grants of
land in the newly organized province of Upper Canada.