Brantford Takes Shape - Post 2

The arrival of the Haudenosaunee hastened settlement in the Grand River Valley of Upper Canada. Joseph Brant, travelling along the Detroit path, led his people to the Grand River Valley in the fall of 1784. Not only did Brant encourage his non-Native friends to the area, other non-Natives were attracted by the prospect of trade and barter with the sizeable Native population.

The first settlers that arrived found a land covered in a thick forest. The first order of business was to clear the land and build homesteads. The homes were small and simple, round logs caulked with woodchips and clay. There were no glass windows, rather openings covered with oiled paper to make them translucent. The earliest settler’s settled beside rivers and creeks and worked their way inland over time. The land was rich, providing an excellent yield for crops. This was a land where settlers could prosper. A productive farm could be established within six or seven years.

In 1793 Benaijah Mallory and his father-in-law Abraham Dayton claimed land in the Burford area. Dayton built the first house in what became Burford. Thomas Horner also arrived in 1793 and built the area’s first saw and grist mills. Whiteman’s (white man) Creek was named after him.

Of note, Joseph Brant moved to Burlington in 1798, building a fine home overlooking Lake Ontario on land granted to him for his loyal service to the King during the American Revolution. Brant passed away in Burlington in 1807. His remains are interred at the Mohawk Chapel.

The Ellis and Sturgis families accepted Brant’s offer of land in the Mount Pleasant area in 1799. The village of Mount Pleasant was the first trading centre in the area. It was named by Henry Ellis in 1800 because it reminded him of his home in Wales. There is no mount or high ground in Mount Pleasant, it is located on an unbroken plain.

The Mohawk Village that Brant started was still the principal and largest settlement in this area. The first inhabitant in what would become Brantford was John Statts. (Published histories of the area identify him as John Stalts but recent research suggests that the spelling of his last name may have been misinterpreted, the double t at the end of his name interpreted as l t because only one t was crossed. Reviewing settlement records indicates that the surname Stalts was unique whereas there is evidence of the Statts surname in Upper Canada.) John built a log hut in 1805 where the Boar War Memorial now stands in front of the Armoury. This location was near the ford, a shallow spot on the Grand River used as a crossing. Enos Bunnell built a cabin nears Statts’ two years later. This site was called Mississauga Hill, because it was a favourite camping ground of the Mississaugas.

The exact location of the ford has been debated for decades. Local historian, the late Robert Deboer, researched this extensively and through his efforts, the location was determined to be between the Lorne Bridge and the TH & B railway bridge connecting Brant’s Crossing with Fordview Park. A plaque in Lorne Park identifies the location of the crossing.

Jacob Langs settled in what would become Langford in Brantford Township in the earliest days of the 19th century. In 1806 John Oles Sr. and Issac Whiting settled along Fairchild’s Creek.

The opening of the London Road to the Grand River crossing from Hamilton in 1810 made the countryside more accessible The road was rough, little better than a path. By 1812 it became a corduroy road (logs laid side by side) to facilitate troop movements. In 1815 the road was planked, graded and levelled, but by no means was travel on this road quick or comfortable; a trip from the Grand River crossing to Hamilton, a distance of 23 miles, took seven hours.

Non-Native settlement at the Grand River crossing was slow. Thirteen years after Statts built his log hut, 1818, the population at the crossing consisted of 12 people. However things were about to soon change. Marshal Lewis arrived from New York in 1821 and built a grist mill. Lewis reportedly constructed the first bridge across the Grand River at the crossing. Consider H. Crandon, a carpenter from Massachusetts, arrived about the same time.

By 1823 the London Road was completed to London and the population at the crossing was about 100. The completion of the road and the potential of trade with the Natives attracted business and tradesmen to the crossing. Three trading stores were operating owned by John Aston Wilkes, S.V.R. Douglas, and Nathan Gage; two shoe shops owned by William Dutton and Arunah Huntington; and a blacksmith shop established by William Qua.

Wilkes store was opened and run by his sons, John and James. Wilkes Sr. joined them in 1825. Wilkes became a large landowner in the area. Huntington, who came here from Vermont, possessed keen business instincts and amassed a small fortune with his business and money lending enterprises.

Up until 1820 mail had to be collected in Ancaster, when a post office was established in Burford. A post office was opened at the crossing in 1825.

The community continued to grow slowly. A school was opened on what is now Market Square in 1826. By 1827 between two and three hundred non-Natives lived in the vicinity of the crossing. The settlement needed a name. Marshal Lewis suggested Lewisville; Robert Biggar of Mount Pleasant, who owned land at the crossing and built the second bridge across the Grand River, lobbied for Biggar’s Town; John Wilkes wanted Birmingham, his home town. Since the place was at the location were Joseph Brant forded the river, Brant’s ford, this name gained unanimous approval. The ‘s was quickly dropped and Brantford was born.

Since the settlement was located on Native territory the settlers were concerned with the legalities of their land transactions; they did not have clear title to the lands they acquired. This situation resulted in the slow growth of the settlement during the 1820‘s. In 1830 the Natives surrendered 807 acres to the Crown, for 5 shillings, as a town plot. The settlers could then obtain formal titles to their properties. The site of the village was the farm of Chief John Hill. Lewis Burwell, the deputy surveyor to Peter Robinson, Commissioner of Crown Lands, was tasked with preparing a survey of the area and a plan for the village. Lewis’ village plan consisted of eight streets running east / west and thirteen streets running north / south.

Brantford, the Earliest Occupations - Post 1

When I travel I often wonder why and how the places I visit were created out of the wilderness. What were the attributes of locations and the circumstances of the time that saw certain areas develop? Why did some communities prosper and thrive while others stagnate or disappear? Who were the early characters and what were their dreams? I will be writing about local history. Let me begin with settlement in the Brantford area.

During the last ice age most of Canada was covered by the Laurentide Ice Sheet. This glacier advanced and retreated a number of times. It was the advance and retreat of the glacier that altered the geography of southern Ontario. When the ice finally retreated, about 12,000 years ago, Glacial Lake Warren was formed in the Lake Erie basin. Brantford / Brant was under this lake, but near the shore line. Notice how the topography of Brantford rises from south to north; the rise to Terrace Hill from the downtown. The glaciers shaped the land and created the Grand River Valley which was left with rich deposits of fertile soil and gravel.

The earliest human occupation of this area after the retreat of the ice can be traced back about 12,000 years ago. These people were nomadic leading a subsistence lifestyle. Between 10,000 and 3,000 years ago, the climate warmed, and the population became less nomadic settling into particular geographical areas. The period that followed saw cultural and horticulture development and communities established.

The early European records suggest that the people living in this area were the Attawandarons or Neutrals. The French called them Neutrals because they remained neutral during the continuing conflicts between the Iroquois to the south and east and the Huron to the north. Recollet missionary Father La Roche Daillon was the first European to record his visit with the Attawandarons in 1626. He found 28 villages in his travels in the Neutral’s territory, with the principal village, Kandoucho, located near present day Brantford, although the interpretation of this record is in dispute.

Father Daillon described the Grand River Valley as the most beautiful place he had seen in all his wanderings; a luxuriant valley featuring great stands of trees of all types, nut trees, fruit trees and bushes and plants, and ample variety of game, fish, and birds. Notwithstanding Father Daillon’s description of abundance, the Neutrals experienced periods of feast and famine which kept the population in check. They numbered between 12,000 and 40,000 over their period of occupation. European infectious diseases and periods of famine led to their declining numbers. The Neutrals were driven from the area in 1651 after being annihilated by the Iroquois in their conflict with the Huron over the fur trade. Of those that remained some were assimilated by the Iroquois and the others migrated west to Michigan and beyond.

The area was used by the Iroquois as an extended hunting ground and remained largely permanently uninhabited until 1690 when the Mississaugas moved into the Grand River Valley.

The Haudenosaunee, also known as the Iroquois, are a First Nations confederacy comprising the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora nations. They are also known as the Six Nations.

Meanwhile in the American colonies, discontent was fomenting between the settlers and the crown after the Proclamation of 1763, which closed off the western frontier to colonial expansion. As unrest in the American colonies increased, it became clear to the British that a rebellion against the Crown was forming so the British enlisted the support of Joseph Brant, a Mohawk, and a man of influence with both the British and the Iroquois, to help them fight the rebellion and keep the American colonies under British rule. When the British lost the war and the Americans gained independence, many of the Iroquois loyal to the British, based in the Mohawk Valley and Finger Lakes region of New York State, migrated north of the Great Lakes along with their loyalist neighbours and friends. 

Brant lobbied Frederick Haldimand, the Governor of the Province of Quebec (which at the time included what is now Ontario) for compensation for their support of the Crown and the subsequent loss of their land in America. On 25-October-1784 Haldimand granted “to the Mohawks and all those that followed”, “a tract of land, six miles in depth, on each side of the Grand River” from its mouth to its source. This land was purchased by the Crown from the Mississaugas.

At the time of the land grant, south western Ontario was identified by the British as ‘Indian’ lands, as per the Proclamation of 1763. European settlement was focused in what is now southern Quebec, eastern Ontario and the north eastern and mid-Atlantic United States.

In the fall of 1784 Joseph Brant, encouraged many of the Haudenosaunee to follow him and settle in Grand River Valley. They forded the Grand River at a shallow spot south of the present day Lorne Bridge and stopped at a site that was to become known as the Mohawk Village, where the Mohawk Chapel is located. The Mohawk Village was located on an oxbow-shape bend of the Grand River, situated on a high gravel ridge above the flood plain where corn could be easily grown. The geography and climate around Brantford was similar to the Finger Lakes region. Brant and his followers were able to transfer their crops to this area of the land grant tract.

John Smith, a loyalist, and his son-in-law John Thomas, friends of Brant, were persuaded by Brant to come to the Grand River Valley with the Mohawks. Early white settlers included the Nelles, Dochsteders, Youngs, and Huffs, all military veterans. In 1788 Alexander Westbrook and Benjamin Fairchild (Fairchild’s Creek is named after him) moved to the district.

Brant eventually began to lease and sell certain sections of the land grant planning tocreate a fund for the long term benefit and support of the Haudenosaunee in this area.

Brant realised that the Six Nations people alone could not utilise all the land granted so he encouraged his non Native friends to the area. Blacksmithing, schools and other European trades and services integrated well in their traditional homeland therefore would also work well in this area.