HomeMy WebLinkAbout293"Article copied from the News Advertiser, March 24, 1993, page 17.
The following is one in a series of articles by the Pickering Local Architectural Conservation
Advisory Committee.
By HENRY M. GAWMAN
PICKERING - Post Manor stands at the northwest corner of Brock Rd. and Kingston Rd. in the
Town of Pickering.
The dignified home was built in 1841 by Jordan Post and his wife Matilda. Such is the enduring
nature of fieldstone that the passage of 152 years has left the building virtually unchanged.
Jordan was the youngest son of George Washington Post, who held important positions in the
Township of Pickering from its very earliest days. George was the brother of an earlier
Jordan Post, a clockmaker from Connecticut, who settled in what is now the City of Toronto in
1786. He married Melinda Woodruff of Pickering. Jordan and Melinda Streets in Toronto are
named after them.
Young Jordan Post of Pickering married a woman named Matilda in 1841, when he was 27 and
she 21. The newlyweds perhaps dreamed the manor into existence. Jordan was wealthy enough
to fulfill that dream. He owned a sawmill where Brock Rd. crosses
Duffins Creek just north of Finch Ave. and a thriving export business to the U.S. Being prosperous,
he ordered the construction of Post Manor.
The materials for its construction came from the land. Stone was drawn from the earth,
wood from the forest. Carpenters came in winter from the sailing ships frozen in Frenchman's Bay,
to trim the interior with walnut and pine growing nearby. The fine marble of the fireplaces was
installed. And one happy day, Jordan and Matilda saw the last of the builders, and turned to each
other in a house that we today would call ""environmentally-friendly.""
Jordan and Matilda did not build for themselves alone. They made the house a lively place with a
family of five sons and three daughters. As much as the father may have loved his Pickering home,
his sons, as history records, all headed for the United States, where Jordan Post the clockmaker
had come from so many years before.
Opposite the manor, on the south side of Kingston Rd., is Post cemetery. There, on March 1,
1860 Jordan Post was interred within sight of his home. Matilda may have spent long hours at an
upper window, watching with sad eyes, as the white light of day or the pale light of the moon
illuminated her husband's grave.
She was destined to live many more years in the manor. We know not how she spent her days,
whether in solitude, or with friends and grandchildren. We know that she died on April 9, 1886.
She rests in the same grave with her husband, under a red stone obelisk that points from a
changing world to the changeless heavens.
Royal LePage Real Estate Services Ltd. now occupies Post Manor. That a real estate firm
should be on the premises does not seem out of place, considering that raw real estate drew
the first settlers to Pickering.
Whether Jordan and Matilda rest in peace is another question. The manor and the small
cemetery in which they lie are surrounded by commercial and residential development.
The rushing sound of traffic is endless. The forest is gone; the farms are gone;
the quiet is gone. And yet there is a feeling of serenity beside the grave.
And in the manor, if one stands at the foot of the 17 steps of the curving stair,
one could imagine the children scampering up to bed after Jordan and Matilda kissed them
one by one goodnight.
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