it’s true that the headwaters of Wilket Creek rose on the Kummers’ Yonge Street property, the flow was insufficient to power any significant sort of mill and in pioneer Upper Canada, a mill could shift a man from being a “mere” farmer to the more exalted realm of merchant, for now he would be able to process his own goods for sale, as well as his neighbours’ goods for profit. The East Don River ran right through the middle of the Kummers’ more easterly holdings and had more than enough water flow to power any sort of mill. It was here on the banks of the Don River that the Kummers made their stand and left one of the only traces of their built history that survives to the present day. In 1819, the family opened a sawmill on the East Don River, where Cummer Avenue crosses the river today, west of Leslie Street. The sawmill was operated by Jacob’s son John, but the mill site would soon have value far beyond its commercial activities.
Jacob Kummer was a devout Lutheran. It has been said that his courage was rooted in his faith. Sadly for him, Lutherans were uncommon in early Upper Canada. There was a strong Methodist presence, however, and this is where Jacob elected to shift his loyalties, joining a number of his children who had already become Episcopal Methodists. The Kummer property on the Don River soon became known far and wide for the church services and camp meetings that were held there. Such was the influence of these activities that First Nations tribes from as far away as Lake Simcoe were regular participants. At the time, early settlers and Natives got along well, to the point of inter-marrying without any apparent stigma on either side.
The product of one such union was the Reverend Peter Jones, a Wesleyan missionary who was also part Native. He was the second son of the deputy provincial surveyor, Augustus Jones, who had helped Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe in the construction of Yonge Street in the 1790s, and Tuhbenahneequay, daughter of Mississauga Chief Wahbanosay of Burlington Bay, where the city of Hamilton stands today. Reverend Jones presided at one particular camp meeting on the Cummer property in the summer of 1826 where he noted that “a number of both whites and Indians professed to experience a change of heart, at the close, several Indians received the solemn ordinance of baptism.”[1]
It was not uncommon for several hundred First Nations people from the areas around Lake Simcoe and Lake Scugog to attend the meetings. At such times, the campground was ringed with board tents, including one massive tent that measured 240 feet by 15 feet and was built to simulate a Native longhouse, so that the visitors could arrange themselves in family groups within the tent and feel more comfortable while away from home. Other smaller tents were provided for other visitors. The tents featured board roofs, not surprising at a sawmill site, and sides made of boards and brush. Meetings typically lasted several days and continued well into the mid-1800s, by which time they featured upwards of thirty tents and up to half-a-dozen ministers. So popular and well-known were the meetings that the area came to be known as “Scripture Town” and later as “Angel Valley.”
The area where the campground once stood is still visible in a relatively un-altered state where Cummer Avenue crosses the East Don River, halfway between Bayview and Leslie. Cummer Avenue was originally the wagon trail that the family laid out to connect their Yonge Street farms to the mill property in the Don Valley. The Don River itself is sadly diminished from pioneer days. An article on the Cummers in The Willowdale Enterprise of June 18, 1953, describes the river at that time as “an insignificant stream.” Look to the current size of the valley to get a rough idea of how large and powerful the river must have been when it was young.
As the Kummer children grew up, they also began to acquire land in the area. John Kummer, who had been the lucky recipient of the hand-made cradle, was the most acquisitive. In 1819, the same year he began to run his father’s sawmill, John bought the two-hundred-and-ten acre Lot 21-1W, the first farm north of Finch, between Yonge Street and Bathurst Street. In 1831 he bought the northern one-hundred-and-five acres of Lot 18-1W, adjoining David Gibson’s farm on the south half of the same lot. Between 1835 and 1840, John bought the two-hundred-acre Lot 24-2E and the western one hundred acres of Lot 23-2E, directly north of the campgrounds on the East Don River, bringing the family’s holdings in the Don Valley to four-hundred-and-fifty acres and their Yonge Street properties to seven-hundred-and-ninety acres. John’s brother, Jacob II, would expand the family’s holdings to over 1,300 acres when he bought the northern eighty acres of Lot 21-2E near the northeast corner of Yonge and Finch in 1854. The family’s activities on their Yonge Street farms would prove every bit as influential as what they accomplished at the mill site and campground.
Jacob Kummer was a well-informed man who was accomplished in a dizzying array of disciplines. He was a blacksmith, a carpenter, a stonemason, tool-maker, shingle-maker, wagon- maker, inventor, and insurance agent. Not only did he make his own tools, he opened a shop where he made the tools available to his neighbours. The shop on Yonge Street became such a focal point of local activity that Willowdale was originally known as Kummer’s Settlement, and Jacob was thought of as a politician without an office.[2] He became known as the area’s unofficial peacemaker. The other early farmers were grateful to have such a skilled individual from whom to obtain their ploughs, scythes, cradles, sleighs, and wagons. One implement in particular, the Kummer Plough, was so popular that Jacob patented it and struggled to manufacture enough to keep up with the demand. Jacob employed peddlers to carry the store’s wares to those who were unable to come to the store and he would often work for his neighbours without compensation. He also served as the local veterinarian and in a pinch would treat human patients as well, this at a time when bleeding was still an accepted treatment for a number of ailments.
The Kummers’ farms were as perfect as any farm could be — clean, organized, and strict. Barns, stables, yards, and houses were exceedingly well kept. Jacob’s grain bags were made at home from flax and stamped with the initials “JK,” as was the wood from his sawmill. Jacob had a good constitution and a strong faith. He was temperate and never idle. No portrait of Jacob exists, as he lived in a time before photography and was probably too busy or just not interested in sitting still for a portrait.
At home, Elizabeth and Jacob spoke German to each other as well as English. The children spoke mostly English and eventually the use of the German language faded away. The when and why of the family’s name change is unclear. It seems likely it had a practical purpose since the family was already so well-respected in the community that they wouldn’t have had to Anglicize their name just to fit in. One family remembrance suggests that it was much easier to stamp “JC” than “JK” on the grain bags and wooden boards from the sawmill, and this is why Jacob made the change. Jacob’s daughter-in-law, Angelina, said the name was changed when her husband Joshua was a boy. As Joshua and Angelina were married in 1835, and Joshua was born in 1810, the family became the Cummers, sometime around 1820.
The Cummers’ religious involvement extended to Yonge Street as well. In 1834, Jacob donated half an acre on Yonge Street for the construction of a new church on what would one day be the north-east corner of Yonge Street and Church Avenue. Lawrence Johnson, one of the few people to settle in North York before Jacob Cummer, donated an adjoining parcel for a cemetery. Jacob, not content with merely donating the land, built the new log Episcopal Methodist meeting house virtually by himself. In 1856, some years after Jacob’s death, when the congregation had outgrown the meeting house, the Cummer and Johnson families got together again to build a new brick church.
Jacob’s son Samuel built the impressive spire, which became a landmark visible for miles around. It stood for three-quarters of a century before being toppled by a violent wind storm in the mid-1920s. The church itself suffered the indignity of having its “face” cut off to allow for the widening of Yonge Street in 1931. A number of graves were expropriated at this time as well, with some of the interred being personally reburied elsewhere by disgruntled family members.
John Cummer’s house, on the northwest corner of Yonge and Finch, had more than enough to recommend it for preservation when it was dismantled in 1959 — four years
