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
It was where Dr. Stuart taught, afterwards Archdeacon of Kingston. The
building was on his property, which became afterwards that of Mr. George
Duggan, once before referred to. (In connection with St. James' Church,
it should have been recorded that Mr. Duggan was the donor and planter
of the row of Lombardy poplars which formerly stood in front of that
edifice, and which figured conspicuously in the old engravings of King
Street. He was an Irishman of strong opinions. He once stood for the
town against Mr. Attorney-General Robinson, but without success. When
the exigencies of later times required the uprooting of the poplar
trees, now become overgrown, he warmly resented the removal and it was
at the risk of grievous bodily harm that the Church-warden of the day,
Mr. T. D. Harris, carried into effect the resolution of the Vestry.)
Dr. Stuart's was the Home District School. From a contemporary record,
now before us, we learn that it opened on June the first, 1807, and that
the first names entered on its books were those of John Ridout, William
A. Hamilton, Thomas G. Hamilton, George H. Detlor, George S. Boulton,
Robert Stanton, William Stanton, Angus McDonell, Alexander Hamilton,
Wilson Hamilton, Robert Ross, Allan McNab. To this list, from time to
time, were added many other old Toronto or Upper Canadian names: as, for
example, the following: John Moore, Charles Ruggles, Edward Hartney,
Charles Boulton, Alexander Chewett, Donald McDonell, James Edward Small,
Charles Small, John Hayes, George and William Jarvis, William Bowkett,
Peter McDonell, Philemon Squires, James McIntosh, Bernard, Henry and
Marshall Glennon, Richard Brooke, Daniel Brooke, Charles Reade, William
Robinson, Gilbert Hamilton, Henry Ernst, John Gray, Robert Gray, William
Cawthra, William Smith, Harvey Woodruff, Robert Anderson, Benjamin
Anderson, James Givins, Thomas Playter, William Pilkington. The French
names Belcour, Hammeil and Marian occur. (There were bakers or
confectioners of these names in York at an early period.)
From the same record it appears that female pupils were not excluded
from the primitive Home District School. On the roll are names which
surviving contemporaries would recognize as belonging to the _beau
monde_ of Upper Canada, distinguished and admired in later years.
A building-lot, eighty-six feet in front and one hundred and seventeen
in depth, next to the site of the school, is offered for sale in the
_Gazette_ of the 18th of March, 1822; and in the advertisement it is
stated to be "one of the most eligible lots in the Town of York, and
situated in King Street, in the centre of the Town."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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