points when he joined Jacob Cummer’s Wesleyan Methodist Church, doing his part to erase the memory of that little dust-up between his parents and Jacob that had occurred around the time he was born.
Two of John’s sons also figure prominently in our history. Son Charles, born in 1832, clearly inherited his father’s business acumen. In 1858, he bought the second Montgomery’s Tavern, near today’s Yonge and Eglinton. The first tavern on this site, built by John Montgomery in the early 1830s, had been the site of the skirmish that ended the Upper Canada Rebellion, and was burned to the ground by government troops on the night of December 7, 1837. When John Montgomery was pardoned some years later, he returned to the site and built a new tavern in 1843. After a while, John rented the tavern to his son William and opened two more taverns in the city of Toronto to the south.
When Charles McBride bought the rebuilt tavern, he renamed it Prospect House. Other than one year, from 1863–64, when the tavern was rented to a John MiIler, Charles was the proprietor until 1870. In addition to functioning as a tavern and hotel, the structure also housed the York Township Council until 1871. In 1870, Charles sold the tavern to Thomas Beatty of Leslieville, who then sold it to one William Smith in 1873. It was William’s misfortune to still be the owner when the tavern was destroyed by fire on November 20, 1881.
It seems that Charles still had the hospitality business in his veins. In 1873, he bought the Finch Hotel from John Finch who had built his inn on the northeast corner of present-day Yonge and Finch in 1847. Charles dismantled the hotel and rebuilt it on his fifty-acre farm on the west side of Yonge Street, just south of today’s Fairlawn Avenue. The Bedford Park Hotel, as Charles renamed it, stood behind later storefront additions until the 1980s. In addition to his farming and inn-keeping, Charles also held the unpopular position of gate keeper at the Hogg’s Hollow toll gate from 1878–80.
In 1860, Charles McBride’s brother, David, built the house that stands today at 3167 Bayview Avenue. He was married to Angeline Mulholland, whose parents, Henry and Jane, had originally settled at today’s Leslie and Sheppard, before moving to the Bathurst and Lawrence area where they were neighbours of John and Hannah McBride. David McBride met one of the saddest and most bizarre ends imaginable. It seems that David and Angeline were walking along the shore of the East Don River on July 14, 1877, on their way to visit her brother William on his farm at present-day Leslie and Sheppard, when David lost his footing. He slipped, hit his head, and fell, unconscious, into the water where, despite Angeline’s best efforts to save him, he died.
The house that David built would continue to be home to subsequent generations of McBrides for nearly one hundred years after David’s untimely death — a commendable legacy. The fate of the other McBride houses is not something that would inspire pride.
Open farmland and towering elm trees stretch all the way to Bayview Avenue from behind Sarah and Robert McBride’s house at 5043 Yonge Street.
Photo by A.W. Galbraith, dated 1912, Toronto Public Library, TC 5004.
John McBride III’s house was demolished around 1970 for a rather non-descript cluster of townhouses. John McBride II’s second house, which had replaced the family’s original log cabin on Lot 17-1E around 1875, was moved from its original location at Yonge and Empress to 43 Spring Garden Road in the 1920s. It remained there as a single-family dwelling until the early 1980s when all of the houses on this part of Spring Garden were purchased by developers Bramalea Limited, who intended to build a twenty-three-storey condominium on the property.
Plans that Bramalea submitted to the North York Planning Department in September 1981 called for the demolition of the house. The house was abandoned and the main floor was boarded up to deter local vandals, who retaliated by smashing the second-floor windows. In spite of such indignities, the house remained in fine overall condition and serious attempts were made to save it. Even the developers came on board and offered to pay the estimated cost of $45,000 of moving the house to another location. Bickering local politicians seemed unable to agree on any type of rescue plan, however, and another irreplaceable piece of Upper Canada’s history was lost. A recent visit to the site, 43 Spring Garden Road, all commercial and industrial now, only served to re-emphasize the depressing result — not recommended for a viewing excursion.
Another McBride house, built on the same lot at a slightly later date, was the first brick house on this part of Yonge Street. In the early 1900s, it was the residence of Robert and Sarah McBride. By the early 1960s it was the residence and office of Dr. Ralph Johns. The house stood at 5043 Yonge Street, on the east side, just south of Hillcrest Avenue. Today, the site is occupied by the now-shuttered De Boers furniture store, sitting there awaiting redevelopment.
{Chapter Three}
Elihu and Katherine Pease
Strangely enough, Elihu Pease’s farmhouse wasn’t the only one from the early farms of Willowdale that got cut in half. It is, however, the only one that was then transported to three different locations.
Elihu’s ancestors emigrated from England aboard the Puritan ship Francis, landing in Boston in 1634. Elihu was born and educated in the United States. When he came to York in the early 1800s, he was a civil engineer and a land surveyor, so naturally he took a job as a schoolteacher. This may not be as bizarre as it seems, as in the early days it was mostly men who were schoolteachers, and teachers needed no real qualifications. In fact, they were often from the ranks of those who had already failed at numerous other pursuits, or suffered some physical impairment preventing them from taking on more rigorous work. Educated non-failures like Elihu were therefore highly prized. When he began teaching in the community of Langstaff in 1811, he was employed at the first school in York Township. His career as a teacher would be brief, however, and he was soon obliged to turn his back on the great pay — twenty-five cents per pupil, per month — and the glamorous living arrangements — billeted with a different student’s family every two or three days.
As an American, Elihu refused to take the oath of allegiance to the British Crown when the War of 1812 was declared. Instead, he moved to Buffalo where he worked in the customs house and post office as well as running a tannery there for Jesse Ketchum, a tanner, and ultimately an astute businessman and politician with land just south of Yonge Street and Lawrence Avenue.[1] After the war, Elihu returned to York, swore his allegiance, and assisted in the rebuilding of the post-war town.
In 1819, Elihu married Jacob Cummer’s daughter, Katherine, and moved to the hamlet of Newtonbrook on Yonge Street, between Finch and Steeles Avenues. He began farming Lot 23-1E, on the north side of today’s Cummer Avenue, between Yonge Street and Bayview, and was once again teaching school. The family lived in the house on Yonge Street during this time, before selling their farm to Jacob Cummer and returning to Buffalo in 1821. Four years later, in 1825, they came home to North York for good and bought the southern half of their farm back from Jacob. At this point, Elihu once again returned to teaching as well as running his own farm and helping with his father-in-law’s farm.
Elihu Pease and his wife, the former Katherine Cummer, lived for a time in this massive house that would later be home to other members of the Cummer family. It was built by a previous owner in 1819, the year the Peases were married, and stood at 6059 Yonge Street, across from today’s Patricia Avenue until it was dismantled in 1964, the year this photograph was taken by Ted Chirnside.
Courtesy of Toronto Public Library, TC 115.
In 1834, the Peases would make their final move to the southeast corner of present-day Yonge and Sheppard, where they bought the northwest eighty-six acres of the 190-acre farm on Lot 15-1E that
