first task was to buy a piece of property. The property had to be within easy walking distance of the centre of the village. It had to be on an existing road with at least two hundred feet of frontage. In short order, he found a perfect lot just beyond the developed area of the village, the southernmost end of a larger farm property. The one-acre fallow lot was being promoted as an ideal mansion property. Jesse walked back and forth along the road fronting the property, picturing the eight homes he could build on it when he collided with another man similarly absorbed. Their collision, mild physically, was cataclysmic from a business and community perspective.
The Duke—as the other distracted walker was known—was a native of Wales, about twenty years Jesse’s senior. He had come to Brampton in the hope of assisting in the development of a sustainable, productive, prosperous community that would be home to his children (of which he then had seven), grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Though entirely unpretentious in his bearing, his genteel background quickly garnered him his nickname, and he eventually stopped objecting to the regal mantle he would wear for the rest of his life.
Soon the Duke knew of Jesse’s plans and vision. It was a vision for a developed community that the Duke shared. The men quickly formed a partnership. There were only two matters on which the men disagreed. The Duke thought no man—even a man of modest means—having travelled to North America would ever agree to live on a piece of land with less than fifty feet of frontage. Further, he dismissed the notion that a working man would ever have the leisure time to sit on a verandah. Thus, on the condition that Jesse reduce the number of houses to be built from eight to four and on the further condition that he eliminate the verandahs and for a fee equal to thirty percent of Jesse’s profits, the Duke agreed to act as Jesse’s financier.
As part of the arrangement, it was determined that the Duke would buy the land from the selling farmer. After it had been acquired, it would be subdivided into five lots. Four of the lots would be equally sized and front onto the road on which the Duke and Jesse had collided. The fifth lot would be the remainder of the land acquired behind the first four lots, backing onto a less travelled road. That fifth lot would either be developed later or sold. The Duke approached the farmer and offered him an amount twenty-five percent less than he was willing to pay. The farmer feigned great shock over the offer.
Over a month that Jesse could only describe as agonizing, the Duke and the farmer negotiated a price that in the end was ten percent more than what the Duke had originally offered. They resolved to complete the transaction in a further month’s time. The Duke was delighted at the low price he had negotiated, since it would make Jesse’s homes even more affordable to the intended purchasers. The farmer too was overjoyed at the price, boasting to all who would listen how much more he had realized selling his land for use as a mansion than in using it himself for farming.
Having arranged the financing and the acquisition of the land, Jesse’s next task was to organize the labour. To develop the first four lots, he required a workforce that could build four houses at once. It was as Jesse began to enlist that workforce that he and the Duke encountered their first real obstacle. For in recruiting the work force, word spread about the project.
It was at that time, in 1859, that Jesse and the Duke learned what many Brampton developers would later discover, namely, a farmer is willing to sell a man a piece of land for one price if he thinks the man is going to use it for his own pleasure, but he will only sell it for a much higher price if he knows the man is going to develop it for use by others. Upon learning that the land he had committed to sell was to be further severed and resold, the indolent farmer became incensed. He railed at the Duke and Jesse about the history of the land: how it had been provisionally acquired by his parents from the Crown; how they had cleared the primeval forests from it within the mandatory period, thereby earning full title to it; how it had been plowed, seeded, and harvested every year since then, with back-breaking effort; how he could not part with it for less than its full worth; how embarrassing it would be to do so.
He threatened to walk away from his agreement to sell the land. Jesse and the Duke tried to reason with him. The farmer’s parents had not paid anything for the land, and neither had he. Over most of the past three decades, the land, when combined with the other lots acquired by his parents, had been highly productive and had garnered a good income for his family. He and the Duke had previously agreed on the price; surely that represented its worth. The Duke would sell it for more than the cost of the land and its improvement, but that was to compensate him and Jesse for the risk in undertaking those improvements.
No amount of reasoning on the part of Jesse and the Duke could convince the obstinate farmer. In the end, Jesse and the Duke agreed to pay him five percent of the profits from the resold houses rather than sue him to enforce the original bargain. Jesse revised his budget. Another five percent would have to be added to the ultimate sale price for the finished lots—for this “anti-embarrassment” tax, like many other taxes that would apply in the future, was certainly not going to be borne by the developer.
With the land acquired, the labourers assembled, and the supplies being delivered, the next challenge for Jesse was to actually sell the houses, which he was building entirely on speculation. He wanted the houses to be purchased long before the construction was complete; early enough in the process to reduce the financial risk but late enough to prevent demands for customization of the houses. He knew from his work with Nelson and his father before him that customization drove up the costs and slowed down completion. He had no competition for the sale of houses of this nature, and so he did not need to meet that kind of customer demand.
Jesse need not have been concerned that the houses would be purchased too early in the process. Though many people expressed interest in the houses while they were being built, people were not willing to complete a purchase at that early stage, despite Jesse’s detailed drawings. It was only as the houses were nearly framed on the outside that Jesse received his first offer. He thought the offer marked the turning point in the project. That was not the case, however, as the buyer’s wife took one look at the closely situated homes and decided then and there to return to England. Reluctantly, the man reneged on the contract, and leaving Jesse with the deposit, he returned to England with his wife and family. The experience behind him, Jesse put the lot back on the market with the others and mentally jacked up the price of each by a further five percent. More than ever, Jesse realized the risk for which he needed to be compensated.
A third setback occurred just as the lath on the inside walls was about to be applied. This was a setback of a different sort. It was a personal circumstance that necessitated a two-month leave of absence. Each day the Duke walked to the building site to view Jesse’s progress. One day, while the Duke was conducting his daily inspection, Jesse’s landlady, the tanner’s wife, came to the site bearing an envelope. Jesse did not demand or expect any such personal delivery, but his landlady was a curious woman who took any opportunity she could to see if the project of her favourite tenant really was as outlandish as her husband’s customers said it was.
Even if she had not been in the habit of regularly visiting the site on the pretence of delivering correspondence, she would have done so on this occasion, for though the letter she was carrying had been mailed from England and was written in a feminine script, it was not written by the hand that wrote monthly to Jesse. She feared that this letter, which was light in weight, was written by Jesse’s sister, because their mother had been rendered unable to write it herself. Indeed, Jesse’s thoughts were likewise when he took the flimsy correspondence from her. Turning away from the Duke and the tanner’s wife, Jesse opened the letter and silently read the ten words written on it.
He took a deep breath before turning back to the Duke and the landlady. With tears in his eyes, he slowly explained the situation. Although Jesse thought he should defer the trip until the project was complete, the Duke and the tanner’s wife—both staunch family people—felt he needed to leave immediately. In a short time, their view prevailed. Jesse searched the four houses, found Cowan, his best man on the site, deputized him to oversee the completion
