Newmarket: The Heart of York Region

By Robert Terence Carter

In the early 1800s, Timothy Robers, a Quaker millwright from Vermont, drew a flourishing community of fellow Quakers to the area which became the new-market for settles and traders.

It soon became the commercial hub of a rich farming area. By the mid-1800s it was a central point on the Ontario, Simcoe, and Huron Railway. Over the following decades, gas deposits were confirmed there and a barge canal was built along with a street railway. In the early 20th century Newmarket languished through a long period of slow growth — wars and the Depression took a terrible toll on the small town. Yet in the 1940s it was another war that brought thousands of soldiers to Newmarket’s training camp on their way to battlefields in Europe.

It took the 1960s to bring real prosperity — builders began developing the inexpensive land, industries came, and the town flourished. The pace of construction continued through the 1980s as Newmarket prepared for its busy life of today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Release date: Jul 26, 1996
• ISBN: 9781459713451

Robert Terence Carter

Robert Carter grew up in Newmarket and was editor of the newspaper The Newmarket Era from 1968-1985. For many years he wrote a weekly local history column for the Era. In 1974 he founded the Newmarket Historical Society. Mr. Carter has been awarded many honours in recognition of his significant contribution to the history of his community and Canada.

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NEWMARKET

The Heart of York Region

First high school built on the corner of Prospect and Pearson streets was constructed in 1877 and burned in 1893. In 1894 a second school was opened on the site. It burned in 1927 and a third was built to replace it.

NEWMARKET

The Heart of York Region

An Illustrated History

by

Robert Terence Carter

Copyright © Robert Terence Carter, 1994

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except brief passages for purposes of review), without the prior permission of Dundurn Press Limited. Permission to photocopy should be requested from the Canadian Reprography Collective.

Design by Ron & Ron Design & Photography

Printed and bound in Canada by Metrolitho

The publisher wishes to acknowledge the generous assistance and ongoing support of the Canada Council, the Book Publishing Industry Development Program of the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Ontario Arts Council, the Ontario Publishing Centre of the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation, and the Ontario Heritage Foundation.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in the text. The author and publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any reference or credit in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, Publisher

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Carter, Robert Terence

Newmarket

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-55002-222-9

1. Newmarket (Ont.) - History. 2. Newmarket (Ont.) - Economic conditions

I. Title.

Dundurn Press Limited

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Contents

Foreword

1. The Settlers’ Trail

The story opens on the ancient trail that was to become Main Street: travelled by the Indians for thousands of years, it was used in the early 1800s by Timothy Rogers, a Quaker colonizer from Vermont. Rogers soon drew a flourishing community of fellow settlers to the area, which became the new market for settlers.

2. Heart of the Rebellion

This chapter chronicles the Rebellion of 1837, when mounting frustration with the slow moving colonial government erupted in Newmarket. Although the self-styled Patriots lost the battle, they won the war for responsible government. With many of the settlers’ grievances redressed, the town prospered.

3. The Growth Years

Already the commercial hum of a rich farming area, in 1853 Newmarket entered a new era when the tracks of the Ontario, Simcoe and Huron Railway reached the town. Then the Crimean War pushed commodity prices up, and in the general prosperity, Newmarket acquired a weekly newspaper, department stores, a Mechanics’ Institute, and a farmers’ market.

4. The Late Victorians

Transportation and energy were in high gear in the late 1800s, promising to drive Newmarket into a prosperous new century. Gas deposits beneath the community were confirmed in 1875 and triggered visions of a boom. Electricity arrived. Escalating rail rates led to the creations of a barge canal and a street railway.

5. Wars, Depression and an Uncertain Future

The Boer War and World War I took a terrible toll on the small town’s young men. Then followed the Great Depression and World War II, which also took a heavy toll and saw thousands of soldiers pass through Newmarket’s training camp on their way to the battlefields of Europe.

6. Boom Times Return

Like a great steam engine pulling slowly out of Newmarket’s station, the town’s economy gathered momentum during the 1960s. Builders began developing the inexpensive land, industries came, and the town grew. The pace of construction quickened in the 1980s as Newmarket prepared for the twenty-first century.

Bibliography

Index

Foreword

Newmarket always strives to live up to its name.

Founded by the Quakers around the first mill and store in the district, its early citizens expanded that market to include the always profitable fur trade, built distilleries, breweries, made soap and started sawmills and a tannery.

The new market quickly established itself as the commercial hub of a large area, and from the opening of the first store and fur trading post to construction of Upper Canada Mall almost 175 years later, its business people have striven successfully to maintain that position.

As the leading town of the area, Newmarket has always been the political centre too — a fact reinforced in mid-twentieth century when it became the county seat and more recently with construction of York Region’s latest administration centre.

Few provincial or federal elections have been won here without strong support from Newmarket’s voters. William Lyon Mackenzie counted on his supporters here in the 1830s; Robert Baldwin was so confident of the district’s support for responsible government that he ran Hippolyte LaFontaine against one of Newmarket’s first citizens, William Roe, and the francophone Quebec politician was elected; and William Lyon Mackenzie King learned to his dismay when voters turfed him out that even prime ministers can’t trifle with the affections of voters here.

It was to honour this long and illustrious connection of Newmarket and central York Region to Canada’s past that the Ontario Legislature renamed our provincial riding York-Mackenzie.

Perhaps I’m a little partial to Newmarket and its colourful past, for I am a native son, but I believe few towns in Ontario — dare I say even in Canada — can match Newmarket’s nearly 200 years of history or the role this community has played in the life of our great nation.

Terry Carter, who founded the historical society 20 years ago, has long been active in the study of our town’s rich history. In this book he has caught both the spirit of the early pioneers who shaped our community and the drive and determination of those today who continue to make it such a fine place in which to live.

This book is not only a tribute to Newmarket, the Heart of York Region, but a reminder that we must preserve and record our past before it is lost forever, for without a knowledge of where we’ve been, how can we know where we’re going?

Terry Carter has set out in an eminently readable fashion an excellent portrayal of the growth and development of our town.

Charles Beer,

Member of Provincial Parliament,

York-Mackenzie Riding

August, 1994

The Trading Tree stood on Timothy Street east of Main Street. Fur trader William Roe is said to have met Indian trappers from the north under the shade of its branches in Newmarket’s early days. (Author’s collection)

1

The Settlers’ Trail

Timothy Rogers splashed through the river ford late one June evening in 1800, climbed the hill on the ancient Indian trail he had been following all day and decided to make camp under some tall maples. His decision to sleep on the hill over-looking the Holland River made him the first white man to spend the night on the future site of Newmarket. What he saw next morning was to change the course of his whole life. Rogers chose his campsite because there was marsh nearby where he could gather juicy reeds for his mare. In the not-too-distant future, that trail from the ford to the campsite would become Newmarket’s Main Street. The York County Registry Office would be built where Rogers camped.

A Quaker millwright from Vermont, Rogers was exploring alone — looking for good land to which he could bring Quaker settlers anxious to improve their lot on a new frontier. In part his journey was a response to Governor John Graves Simcoe’s offer of free land in York County, but it was also because Quakers in the new United States often found their pacifist ways made life difficult in a republic only recently born of violence. Rogers also had a personal goal: to found a third and central Quaker settlement in Upper Canada linking the earlier ones in Prince Edward County and the Niagara Peninsula.

When he awoke that June morning, he pushed on up the trail as far as Lake Simcoe before deciding the rich farmland he had come hundreds of miles through the virgin forests to find, lay back where he started the day, on the west side of the Holland River valley. He especially prized the land along the trail Governor Simcoe had ordered blazed in 1793 and named Yonge Street for his friend, Sir George Yonge, the British secretary of war. Although it was still a muddy and often impassable forest trail, Rogers must also have known the governor’s intention was to see Yonge Street developed into a major settlement and military road linking his capital at York with the upper Great Lakes.

Heavily forested with hardwood and pine, the northern reaches of York County that Rogers was seeing for the first time had gently rolling hills with the promise of well-drained, fertile soil under the forest bed. There was a small rapids near the ford where he had crossed the river which gave promise for a mill site. Half a mile to the north, a substantial tributary from the east joined the river, offering more development potential. This combination of factors must have made the future site of Newmarket irresistible to the American Quaker.

Main Street by 1856 consisted of frame businesses and homes. This view of the west side between Timothy and Botsford Streets shows

(1) the Botsford home,

(2) B. Joy’s barbershop,

(3) Botsford’s shop,

(4) Betsy Barber’s dressmaking shop,

(5) the bar at the North American Hotel,

(6) the hotel,

(7) Smith & Emprey general store,

(8) Dr. Orin Ford’s sanitarium (later the Royal Hotel).

(Author’s collection)

Rogers’ journal recounts of how he raced back to the colonial capital to stake his claim and beat a company which had viewed the same land:

And then it seemed as if I must go to York in this province, and by a great deal of hard travel, got to York and then went 30 or 40 miles back, and following my concern made way to apply to Governor General Hunter; and John Elmsley, Chief Justice, became my friend.

And all the land was viewed by a company before me. I got back and got a grant for 40 farms, of 200 acres each.

The journal doesn’t tell us at what point in his journey from Vermont Rogers found the Rouge trail, one of a network of ancient