HomeMy WebLinkAbout904Duotang bound, 4 pages, compiled by J. C. Montgomery. A family history of the
James and Agnes Montgomery.
"The James and Agnes Montgomery Family Tree, Etc.
THE NORTH SHORE
It was a lucky day for England on September 23rd in 1787. The Indians met Deputy
Surveyor John Collins acting for the Crown at Carryingplace on the Bay of Quinte to
settle for the purchase of York by Britain. Although nothing was said about the land
between York and the Bay of Quinte, the British were anxious to get a land route along
the north shore to the west end of Lake Ontario where they already had the Niagara
Peninsula, which they purchased from the Indians in 1784. So plans were begun for the
surveying of the land along the north shore between Quinte and York into townships and
farms. At that time there were no roads on either side of the lake.
In 1791, the year Canada was divided into lower and upper Canada, John Graves
Simcoe arrived at Quebec. He was the new Lieutenant Governor who was to take
charge of it. Earlier that year, surveyor Augustus Jones had begun to lay out a row of
eleven townships along the north shore of Lake Ontario from the Bay of Quinte
westwards to York.
That same year an old New England family, the Charles Annis’, crossed the Niagara
River at Niagara into Upper Canada, with his wife and family, his yoke of oxen, mare,
colt and heifer. He passed around the head of the lake to York. Here after a stay of two
weeks, he refused an offer of 100 acres for his heifer, on Yonge Street. (now owned by
T. Eaton Co.). He moved out of muddy York up into the highlands of Scarborough. Here
he took squatters rights to land, part of which Washington Church now stands on at the
junctions of Eglinton Avenue and Kingston Road. After getting his two oldest boys and
his daughter-in-law, Rhoda, settled, he left them to clear a spot, while he and the rest of
the family made their way to Oshawa Creek to visit his friend, Roger Conant and his wife.
For the next fifteen years, Charles Annis’, wife, and younger children spent most of their
time at the mouth of Oshawa Creek with the Conants. In 1808, he made a claim to the
Scarborough Land. (Rhoda Annis was a daughter of Roger Conant wife). A descendant
of Roger Conant, Gordon Conant, and Oshawa lawyer and one-time Premier of Ontario,
left the city quite a chunk of highland near the creek on the lake front in his will for the
enlargement of their park.
In the summer of 1793, surveyor Jones started to mark out the farm lots in the township
east of York. Aikens surveyed the township of York and a new townsite east of the bay.
Three years later there were some 40 houses on the site.
This was the year David Thomson, a carpenter from New York, who had been working
on houses in muddy York, moved his wife and young family up into Scarborough.
They settled on the west banks of Highland Creek to take up land, working also in York
at his trade at times. The creek teemed with salmon then.
In 1794, three white families – the John Burks, Roger Conants and John W. Trulls moved
from New York State to York, and east to what is now Bowmanville. They came in a large
boat by way of Niagara-on-the-lake. They put up at the mouth of the creek, building
shelters for the winter. In the spring, the Burks’ settled on the bank of the creek; the
Connants moved back to Oshawa Creek and the Trulls settled about halfway between
the two. The two creeks are about nine miles apart.
At that time there was standing timber almost to the water’s edge. In the winter,
you could walk either way up the beach to York or Port Hope. In the summer,
you could use a canoe. There were no roads. There was a grist mill at Belleville.
They had Indians and wolves for neighbours.
The first white child born between York and Port Hope was born to the Trulls in 1795.
He was named John Casey Trull, Casey being his mother’s maiden surname.
This same year, Governor Simcoe ordered a horsepath cut through from York to the
Bay of Quinte and survey a road. However, it was 1799 before anything was done
towards the road. Early that year, Danforth contracted to cut a thirty-three foot road
from the Don River to the Bay of Quinte. This was to total one-hundred and twenty
miles. By using teams of oxen, employing forty men, the job could be completed by
the first of July, 1800. Danforth was to receive ninety dollars for every mile of road built.
Surveyor John Stegman began surveying Kingston Road. Early in June he reported
that the distance from York to Duffins Creek had been carefully chained and mile
posts erected. The greater part of said road in on a pine ridge, a favorable situation
for highway, except for a few hills which were impossible to avoid. Danforth was to cut
sixteen feet of the centre of the road down flat with the ground. However, the road was
hard to keep passable at times. Young trees and shrubs grew up and large trees from
adjoining land fell across it.
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"The North Shore
The farmers that used it were busy clearing their own land, etc. It wasn’t much of a
road forty-five years later, then it was planked from York to the Rouge.
In 1802, the District of Newcastle was formed (Bowmanville). The first regular mail
route between York and lower Canada was started over the Kingston Road in 1808.
In summer the boats had carried mail and supplies. By now shipbuilding was quite a
business in Canada.
The war of 1812-14 took farmers as well as their sons away from clearing the land,
putting up buildings and improving the roads, etc. This slowed down everything.
Capt. John W. Trull of Darlington had built a large boat out of timber off his own farm.
The government used it to transport prisoners from York to Kingston. The Captain,
with his son, John Casey Trull, aged 17, fought side by side at Niagara against the
Americans. Another young fellow from the District, Joseph Gerow, aged 18,
also fought under the Captain at the battle of Lundy’s Lane.
The Trulls told of the summerless year of 1816, which was hard for the settlers to take.
The only one to help in case of sickness was the Captain’s wife, Lydia. She brought
her small iron kettle with her from the States where her father was a doctor.
She brewed herbs in it to nurse the sick between York and Port Hope.
She made the trips on horseback with little more than a horsepath to follow.
There were no doctors between York and Napanee.
One thing the early settlers did have was an abundance of wild animals and fowl
for food, and it was easily procured. There were wild pigeons easily trapped, and the
creeks and lakes were full with salmon. The nearest grist mill was at Belleville.
They paddled a canoe with a bag of grain to be ground and brought back as flour or
cereal. In 1878 Captain John Casey Trull told of an incident which occurred at his
father’s house, while he was still a boy. His father had been away at the time to Moyer’s
Hill, Belleville. A squaw with four papooses came to the house. She asked his mother
for Paw-pab-nee (flour). This being extremely scarce at the time, his mother refused
giving her any. Then the squaw searched through the house. She found the flour in a
kneeding trough. She brought it forth and commenced to divide it equally to everyone
in the room. First, giving a double handful to his mother, then herself and the rest to
each in the room. After dividing she then took her share in a bag and traveled off
through the woods.
Early in 1817, the first stage line between Kingston and York was started.
You could make better time in the summer if you travelled by boat.
Shipbuilding by 1820 was thriving. It was carried on at the mouth of Highland Creek
and at the Rouge River.
In 1822, my maternal grandfather, John Van Nest, who was born near Kingston in
1812, came to the District of New Castle with his father and stepmother. T
he following year his wife-to-be was born to Joseph and Pamelia Gerow. This same
year the District changed its name to Bowmanville. Both grandparents died in this town.
My grandmother in 1907 and grandfather in 1910.
I was born in 1887 and had known my grandparents well. The winter of 1909-10 was
spent with grandfather and mother on our farm. My father had passed away early in
1909.
In 1830, Captain John W. Trull died. His son, John Casey Trull, was commissioned a
Lieutenant in the first regiment of the Durham Militia by sir John Colborne.
Then on Sept. 23rd of the same year he was commissioned to Lt. Governor of Upper
Canada. In this same year, Cyrus H. McCormack patented the first horse-drawn self-
rake reaper.
In 1834 York changed its name to Toronto.
In 1837, the portable horse-drawn steam engine for powering grain thresher
appeared. Later it was self-propelled. This same year (1837) was also the year of the
Mackenzie rebellion. Mackenzie and his followers gathered at Montgomery’s
Tavern on North Yonge Street on December 4th for their march on Toronto. In “History
of Scarborough”, by R. Robert Bonis, he tells of the brief battle of Montgomery’s farm,
and how Col. McLean mustered one hundred Scarborough men to join 820 men loyal
to the government. Together helping to disperse the rebels. Also it states that three
days later, 1750 Militia men from Newcastle district marched through Scarborough to
the defence of Toronto. It is told in the John W. Trull family tree book that Captain
John Casey Trull, marched from Oshawa to Toronto together with 1500 men during
the Mackenzie rebellion. But the Bonis book does not tell who the officer in charge
was; it would seem he may have been Captain John Casey Trull.
In 1839, the Kingston Road was in such bad state that farmers were having trouble
getting to market in Toronto. This part of the road had been traveled for forty years,
and this year it was paved with four-inch planks from Toronto to the Rouge Hills.
Farmers now could haul great loads of produce to the market. There were toll
gates at the Rouge and at Washington Church. Through the mud holes previously,
they could make two to three miles per hour; now over the fine plank road they could
make six miles an hour.
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"The Montgomery’s
The year 1839 was the year my grandparents, James and Agnes Montgomery,
purchased a good sized sail boat, gathered their nine children together,
kissed their Glasgow friends good-bye, and set out over the Atlantic from Scotland to
try their luck farming in Canada. After more than two months they had sailed the ocean,
navigated the St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario to Port Whitby. Here they sold their
boat, purchased an ox and cart (although there were horses around) and made ready to
hunt for farmland. All the land between the lake and Kingston Road had been taken up.
Everyone had wanted to buy near the lake or north of the village east and west.
They were told that the Old Indian Trail north of the village had been widened to take
carts and wagons. They could take it east or west till they came to suitable land where
they would like to settle.
Early one bright morning they hitched the ox to the cart, piled in their cooking utensils
and bedding, placed the younger children on top and the older ones walking;
they struck north to the Old Indian Trail north of Whitby. This path had been hacked
out by the Indians maybe hundreds of years before, to connect Frenchman’s Bay
with Rice Lake. Here rice could be picked for food. In the wild state, rice is much better
food than after it has had the outer part of the kernel polished off and discarded. I have
eaten rice at Rice Lake several times, but have not been there since 1940. I think there
would be no rice either place now as practically all pleasure boats are motorized and
would tangle with the rice and it would have to be killed out. When the Montgomery’s
got to the trail, they turned towards the rising sun and traveled about nine miles by
evening. Then they came upon a gravelly knoll at the side of the road where they bedded
down for the night. This was about a mile and a half north of Courtice Village on the
Kingston Road. They spent the night near the beaver valley (a place my father took me
to see as a boy, long after the beaver had gone). The children were up early next
morning and had wandered to the valley and had seen the dam the beavers had made.
The pond was a good place to bathe and they wanted to settle near it. That morning they
only continued a half mile or so and decided to settle there. This is the east side of what
is now Solina Road, some two miles north of Kingston Road, the same distance south
of Solina, and about five miles from Bowmanville. The location being the south half of lot
24 in the fourth concession of Darlington Township.
Any parts about the ox and cart, the gravel knoll, Beaver Valley, and the Indian
Trail are facts, and were told to me by my father as it was told to him. The trail was
closed in a few years as people bought the land.
They had soon bargained for the land and had stayed on the roadside until
they had cleared a spot for a log cabin. It had to be up before winter set in.
Two years later in 1841 my father, David Montgomery, was born in the log cabin.
He was the last and only child born to them in Canada. Although I was not born on
that farm, I had played on it as a boy with a schoolmate. He was the son of the man
that bought the farm from my father. The children of James and Agnes Montgomery
were: Henry, William, John, Robert, James and David (my father). The girls were:
Agnes, Janet, Margaret and Sarah.
The children helped to clear the land and put up the buildings. But it wasn’t long
before they began to leave one by one. Janet married James Heal, Bowmanville;
Sarah married J.A. Sweet Baseline (and later moved to Florida and bought an
orange grove); Margaret married Thomas Peters of Hampton; Agnes and two of the
boys, Henry and William, had settled in Michigan state; John settled in Wyoming,
Western Ontario; Robert went to the Southern States (and was never heard of again);
and James Jr. cut his foot while cutting down trees and bled to death in 1845.
In 1858, with the older boys gone, David, aged 17, was given charge of the
farm and was to pay the other children money and keep his aging parents.
Father said he made fourteen trips to Western Ontario and Michigan in thirty years
while paying debt. He would be away from the farm for up to a couple of weeks.
This, he said, did him a world of good.
Grandma Montgomery passed away in 1869. The next year Father married
Caroline Van Nest, daughter of a prominent farmer west of Solina.
My father had told me how the low end of the farm was wet until late in the
spring, and that he put it into grass for pasture and went into dairying. He grew corn
and cut it green to feed to the cows when the grass got dry in the summer.
However, cows drink a lot of water and it had to be pumped from an 80 foot well by
hand. Some years later they had windmills.
Father wanted a farm with a creek on it. Some years previous, father had
planted six acres of orchard north of the Buildings and around the log cabin, and it
was bearing very well in 1882. This time he sold the farm to Samuel Northcott. Father
had not been able to sell apples well, but after he moved, almost overnight the British
market opened for Canadian apples.
In 1882, the first self-tying binder appeared. Twenty years later the cabin was
still standing in the orchard. The 100 acres was practically level, sloping gradually
from the 200 rods from the north to the south end of the farm.
"
"The log cabin was at the north end, but when they built the house and barn they put them
about 30 rods south of the log cabin and opposite a neighbor’s lane and buildings.
This was so they would be able to see and be near someone, as was the custom in the
country at that time.
I have taken pictures of Grandfather’s house and barn lately. Although the
buildings are 125 years old, they are still standing and in good condition.
Williamd Elford had a farm a half a mile north and a half a mile east (known as
“Square Field Farm”) with a creek in it. It was 145 acres of good dark, level loam.
This cost him three times what he sold his for. There was a tenant on the place with a
four year lease to run. Father offered him $400.00 to give possession, but he wouldn’t.
So father had to get a place to stay in the interval. He was able to get 25 acres across
the west creek at Solina, and across the corner from Edad Church. I was born on this
place in 1887. The Village is between two creeks. On the other place five children were
born: William, Lydia, Aldon, Agnes and Ella. There were six years difference between
Ella and me. They called me a start of a second family. Later came two pairs of twins.
The 25 acres had a lovely creek on it with a swimming hole. It acted for the village
and for the farmers’ hired men as a place to bathe after a hard day’s work.
The school children went every day at noon as soon as we ate. I swam the little frog
pond hundreds of times while going to school in Solina. So father was able to keep his
milk route and keep quite a number of cows as well. When he moved on the Elford farm
he continued drawing milk to the cheese factory and kept two hired men.
He did really well on the place despite some bad luck. He had too much stock on
his birthplace for the small farm and had sold much of his stock and implements.
He put the money in God’s Bank, Bowmanville. A couple of years later the bank failed
and he lost the $1400, plus interest. Over the four years the tenant on the Elford farm
went broke.
While this was happening, Mr. Northcott was putting easy money in the back
from the sale of apples to Britain. In fifteen years he had saved 14,000 and paid cash
for a farm for his eldest son.
When Mr. Elford Sr. sold, he moved into the village of Hampton and his son with
his family moved to Morden, Manitoba, and took up land. Great crops of wheat could be
grown on the virgin soil and since 1876, they were shipping wheat to the world’s markets
by way of Duluth and the Great Lakes. Mr. Russel, the tenant who had failed, went out to
Morden and took up land and later paid he debts down east.
The above covers history of about 100 years, and I hope to bring it up to date by the
winter of 1970-1971.
By J. C. Montgomery, 91 Galloway Road, West Hill, Ontario.
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