Toronto of Old: Collections and recollections illustrative of the early settlement and social life of the capital of OntarioScadding, Henry
History
Toronto of Old: Collections and recollections illustrative of the early settlement and social life of the capital of Ontario
Scadding, Henry
Toronto (Ont.) -- Description and travel; Toronto (Ont.) -- History
really cannot tell, for it is altogether too farcical to last long: but
Mr. David seems to understand clearly, as far as the temporal concerns
of his infatuated followers go, that the old-fashioned signification of
_meum_ and _tuum_ are religiously centered in his own _sanctum_. It was
natural that such a field should produce tares in abundance."
The following notice of the "Children of Peace" occurs in Patrick
Swift's Almanac for 1834, penned, probably, with an eye to votes in the
neighbourhood of Sharon, or Hope, as the place is here called. "This
society," the Almanac reports, "numbers about 280 members in Hope, east
of Newmarket. They have also stated places of preaching, at the Old
Court House, York, on Yonge Street, and at Markham. Their principal
speaker is David Willson, assisted by Murdoch McLeod, Samuel Hughes, and
others. Their music, vocal and instrumental, is excellent, and their
preachers seek no pay from the Governor out of the taxes."
On week-days, Willson was often to be seen, like any other industrious
yeoman, driving into town his own waggon, loaded with the produce of his
farm; dressed in home-spun, as the "borel folk" of Yonge Street
generally were: in the axis of one eye there was a slight
divergency.--The expression "Family Compact" occurring above, borrowed
from French and Spanish History, appears also in the General Report of
Grievances, in 1835, where this sentence is to be read: "The whole
system [of conducting Government without a responsible Executive] has so
long continued virtually in the same hands, that it is little better
than a family compact." p. 43. (In our proposed perambulation of Yonge
Street we shall have occasion to speak again of David Willson.)
After the Court House Square came the large area attached to St. James'
Church, to the memories connected with which we shall presently devote
some space; as also to those connected with the region to the north,
formerly the play-ground of the District Grammar School, and afterwards
transformed into March Street and its purlieus.
At the corner on the south side of King Street, just opposite the Court
House, was the clock-and-watch-repairing establishment of Mr. Charles
Clinkenbroomer. To our youthful fancy, the general click and tick
usually to be heard in an old-fashioned watchmaker's place of business,
was in some sort expressed by the name Clinkunbroomer. But in old local
lists we observe the orthography of this name to have been
Klinkenbrunner, which conveys another idea. Mr. Clinkenbroomer's
father, we believe, was attached to the army of General Wolfe, at the
taking of Quebec.
In the early annals of York numerous Teutonic names are observable.
Among jurymen and others, at an early period, we meet with Nicholas
Klinkenbrunner, Gerhard Kuch, John Vanzantee, Barnabas Vanderburgh,
Lodowick Weidemann, Francis Freder, Peter Hultz, Jacob Wintersteen, John
Shunk, Leonard Klink, and so on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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