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
When Jarvis Street was opened up through the Secretary's park-lot, the
family residence of his son Mr. Samuel Peters Jarvis, a handsome
structure of the early brick era of York, in the line of the proposed
thoroughfare, was taken down. Its interior fittings of solid black
walnut were bought by Captain Carthew and transferred by him without
much alteration to a house which he put up on part of the Deer-park
property on Yonge Street.
A large fragment of the offices attached to Mr. Jarvis's house was
utilized and absorbed in a private residence on the west side of Jarvis
Street, and the gravel drive to the door is yet to be traced in the less
luxuriant vegetation of certain portions of the adjoining flower
gardens. Mr. Secretary Jarvis died in 1818. He is described by those who
remember him, as possessing a handsome, portly presence. Col. Jarvis,
the first military commandant in Manitoba, is a grandson of the
Secretary.
Of Mr. McGill, first owner of the next park-lot, and of his personal
aspect, we have had occasion to speak in connection with the interior of
St. James' Church. Situated in fields at the southern extremity of a
stretch of forest, the comfortable and pleasantly-situated residence
erected by him for many years seemed a place of abode quite remote from
the town. It was still to be seen in 1870 in the heart of McGill Square,
and was long occupied by Mr. McCutcheon, a brother of the inheritor of
the bulk of Mr. McGill's property, who in accordance with his uncle's
will, and by authority of an Act of Parliament, assumed the name of
McGill, and became subsequently well known throughout Canada as the Hon.
Peter McGill.
(The founder of McGill College in Montreal was of a different family.
The late Capt. James McGill Strachan derived his name from the
marriage-connection of his father with the latter.)
In the _Gazette and Oracle_ of Nov. 13th, 1803, we observe Mr. McGill,
of York, advertising as "agent for purchases" for pork and beef to be
supplied to the troops stationed "at Kingston, York, Fort George, Fort
Chippewa, Fort Erie, and Amherstburg." In 1818 he is Receiver-General,
and Auditor-General of land patents. He had formerly been an officer in
the Queen's Rangers, and his name repeatedly occurs in "Simcoe's
History" of the operations of that corps during the war of the American
Revolution.
From that work we learn that in 1779 he, with the commander himself of
the corps, then Lieut.-Col. Simcoe, fell into the hands of the
revolutionary authorities, and was treated with great harshness in the
common jail of Burlington, New Jersey; and when a plan was devised for
the Colonel's escape, Mr. McGill volunteered, in order to further its
success, to personate his commanding officer in bed, and to take the
consequences, while the latter was to make his way out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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