style="font-size:15px;"> George Crookshank was elected to the Legislative Council in 1821, where he would serve for twenty years. He built a town house on Peter Street and established a farm in the wilderness near Bloor and Bathurst. The road he cut through the forest in front of his farm was called Crookshank’s Lane, until after George’s death when it was renamed Bathurst Street in recognition of Lord Bathurst, secretary of state for war and the colonies from 1812–27. During the War of 1812, George’s farmhouse was looted and commandeered by American troops, and, though he reclaimed his farm after the Americans were finally defeated, he began to shop around for a more peaceful piece of property.
In 1817, George bought Lot 32-1E in Thornhill for £750. Here he built one of the finest homes in the Greater Toronto Area. Known today as Heintzman House, named after a subsequent owner, the thirteen-room clay-and-straw-brick house is still a landmark in the community and frequently hosts a variety of functions.
Local history buffs could find few more rewarding outings than a trip to the Heinztman House, seen here in 2011. The ongoing restoration has won several awards, and though a small entrance fee is sometimes charged for the times when the house is open to the public, it is comforting to know that all funds collected go to the upkeep of the house.
Photo by Scott Kennedy.
This lot had originally been granted to Anthony Hollingshead in 1798. Anthony was another Loyalist who had served as an officer in the American Revolutionary War. Unlike many other Loyalist grantees, Anthony actually cleared part of his land and built a log house on the property as the Crown required, receiving his deed in 1802. His house survives to this day, although it will never be seen again. It seems that George Crookshank incorporated the two large rooms of the Hollingshead house into the much larger house that he built around it. When completed, the Crookshank house had no peers. For starters, the rooms were huge, with several measuring sixteen feet by twenty-five feet. A winding staircase led from the main floor to the second floor. The interior trim was custom-made from imported English walnut — at considerable expense. The massive front door was also made from English walnut and featured a twelve-inch wrought-iron lock that was opened by a seven-inch iron key. The straw-brick walls were nearly two feet thick and can be seen today through a little trap door in the parlour that affords the modern-day visitor a tell-tale glimpse of this sadly neglected method of construction, which kept the house warm in winter and cool in summer. In 1817, the same year George built his new house, he also bought a farm in North York described as Lot 25-1W, on the south side of today’s Steeles, between Yonge and Bathurst.
In 1821, the Honourable George Crookshank, as he was known after his ascension to the Legislative Council, married Sarah Lambert of New York. George and Sarah, who had inherited property in the United States from her family, had three children — two sons and one daughter. In 1837, the Crookshanks bought the west half of Lot 25-1E, directly across Yonge Street from their farm on Lot 25-1W, and in 1852 they completed their North York holdings when they bought the west half of Lot 24-1E that had previously been owned, albeit briefly, by George Munshaw and Benjamin Thorne. George Crookshank was known for his kindness and his generous donations to a variety of charities. The family enjoyed a comfortable life on their Thornhill farm until George’s health began to fade around 1850. He sold the family properties in town in 1851, which were subsequently subdivided and developed until all traces of the family in Toronto had disappeared.
George died in 1859. He left his entire estate to his only surviving child, daughter Catherine Crookshank Heward. Excluding the farms in Thornhill and North York, George’s estate was valued at the rather staggering amount of £49,986. After Catherine sold the Thornhill farm, it passed through a number of hands before being purchased in 1881 by John Francis, who was also farming in Newtonbrook at the time.
The Francises named their new property “Sunnyside Manor Farm” and owned the farm for nearly fifty years, with Samuel Francis taking over from his father in 1882. They raised sheep and cattle and fished in the spring-fed stream that ran through the property behind their house. Their fields were full of wheat, oats, and barley and, lest it be thought that people who lived in such a grand house were somehow above their neighbours, it is known that Samuel’s wife, Mary, sold her hand-churned butter for ten cents a pound and fresh eggs for ten cents a dozen. Harvest time saw an additional fourteen or fifteen hired hands sitting down at mealtime. William Francis, one of Samuel’s brothers, manufactured Francis Ready-Mixed Paints at Queen and Sherbourne Streets. The company’s name would eventually be changed to Benjamin Moore and Company.
In 1894, the Francises rented Sunnyside Manor Farm to another farmer and moved to a smaller farm they owned on the northeast corner of Yonge and Steeles. They returned to Thornhill in 1904 and retired to a new house they had built at the end of their lane on Yonge Street in 1916. A Mr. Royston and his son Arthur ran Sunnyside Manor Farm for the Francises until the farm was sold to Charles Theodore Heintzman in October of 1929 for $100,000. Charles was the grandson of Theodore August Heintzman, who had established the family’s piano-manufacturing business in Toronto in 1860. Samuel Francis died in 1937 and his wife Mary followed him in 1944. They had been married since 1882.
Charles Heintzman was also a dedicated farmer and wasted little time putting his own stamp on the place. He made the farmhouse even more grand with the addition of a new main entrance that includes the columned porte-cochere and covered second-floor balcony that still enchant the visitor to this day. He also added garages, servants’ quarters, a bar, a billiards room, and the lovely glass conservatory to the south of the house with its radiators hidden beneath the planting areas. Charles even installed an intercom system to connect the main house with the barns and other outbuildings. The farm remained a serious working farm for the next three decades, its claim to fame being the Heintzman’s herd of prize-winning Jersey cattle. Charles died at home in 1954. His wife Marion followed a few years later, and, in 1959, their beautiful farm was sold to developers for $880,000.
The farm was then covered in new houses by the Costain Development Company and Wycliffe Homes. The old farmhouse stood forlorn and abandoned, while the land surrounding it was ploughed under. By the mid-1960s, the rest of Sunnyside Manor Farm had been converted to housing, and the developers turned their attention to the farmhouse and its remaining acreage where they wanted to build a high-rise apartment building. Thankfully, concerned local residents managed to convince Markham Township Council to step in and save the house as a centennial project in 1967. Markham bought the property from the developers and adapted it to fill a new role as a community centre.
The Thornhill Lions Club aided the project by working hard to find and donate suitable period furnishings to complete the project. Thanks to a dedicated team of volunteers, Heintzman House is still very much in demand for weddings, parties, meetings, fundraisers, and other events. The house was designated as a historic site under the Ontario Heritage Act in 1984 and has recently won numerous awards from the Town of Markham for the accuracy and quality of its ongoing restoration. Though not open to the public on a daily basis, Heintzman House holds many events that are open to all, such as the Christmas craft show in mid-November. The house still stands at 135 Bay Thorn Drive over two hundred years after Anthony Hollingshead started it all by proudly carving his log cabin out of the foreboding wilderness.
That leaves John Brumwell, whose exploits are also detailed in the chapter on the Risebrough family. His contribution was so seminal to North York, however, that it bears repeating. In 1894, John Brumwell, also spelled “Brummel” in some records, bought the east half of Lot 24-1E that had been farmed by the Munshaws since 1811. While he farmed his land, he watched with dismay as fewer and fewer farmers were being elected to the council of York Township, as the population of the city of Toronto grew larger and larger. In 1919, there were no farmers elected at all, even though they were paying nearly 25 percent of the township’s taxes. As noted earlier, in 1921, John and fellow disgruntled farmers, W.C. Snider, Roy Risebrough, James Muirhead, and W.J. Buchanan, climbed into Roy’s Model-T Ford and
