From the front page of the Huron Expositor
Friday, 9 October 1931
Reprinted with the permission of the Huron Expositor
Copyright: the Huron Expositor
“Your Community Newspaper Since 1860”
P. O. Box 69
11 Main Street
Seaforth, Ontario N0K 1W0
Chapter 3 The Pioneer of Huron
When the two town sites of Guelph and Goderich had been laid out, Galt proceeded with a plan that was for those times almost unique. It was the general opinion that roads were needed only when there were people to use them and that in consequence road building ought to be postponed until its value had been assured by the presence of large numbers of settlers. Galt, however, held the opposite theory that a properly built road would attract intending settlers and that the construction of such a highway ought to precede rather than follow settlement. Accordingly he made plans for a road through the breadth of the Huron Tract from Guelph to Goderich; and at once sought contractors who would perform the task in return for such pay as the Canada Company could afford. He fell in with Van Egmond, probably during his period of business in Guelph, and found a man from his point of view ideal, who was wealthy enough to carry through the undertaking out of his own pocket and content to accept remuneration in the form of land, the only currency in which the Company could pay for services on such a large scale. Van Egmond and the Company, as represented by Galt, entered into an agreement by which the Colonel undertook to construct or rather cut forty-five miles of road, four rods wide, and to erect three houses for the accommodation of parties moving in to settle on Canada Company land, one in South Easthope, one in ElIice and one three miles northwest of the present town of Seaforth. For its part the Company granted him some thousands of acres on both sides of the road in the present counties of Perth and Huron, and made him a cash bonus for each of his inns, forty, fifty and sixty pounds respectively, on condition that he entertain travellers at prices prevailing in the older settlements. In this way the veteran of the Battle of Waterloo became interested in the Huron Tract.
The contract seems to have been concluded in the summer of 1827, and apparently the work was commenced almost at once. The Company furnished the surveyors, Macdonald and Strickland, and a supervising officer, Prior. Van Egmond provided the labourers, Dutch and Irish, and probably the supplies. According to Galt’s account, an “explorer of the line” went ahead, next the two surveyors with compasses, after them a band of blazers or men to mark the trees in the line”, then the woodmen to fell trees while the rear was brought up by wagons with provisions and other necessaries. At night, according to the Misses Lizars, “a fusion of inharmonious sounds” arose from the Dutchmen and Irishmen around the campfires, who no doubt found a modus vivendi in spite of national differences. The work, which must have been interrupted to some extent by the winter, was nevertheless completed within a year, an achievement that does credit to the performers. “Of one thing I was proud,” said Galt later, “I caused a road to be opened through the forest of the Huron Tract nearly one hundred miles in length by which overland communication was established for the first time between the two great lakes, Huron and Ontario.” In this way there came in existence the great Huron Road which has so well served a considerable part of Western Ontario for more than a century and which is now an important part of the King’s Highway number 8.
At the same time Van Egmond was fulfilling the other part of his contract, the erection of inns for the accommodation of settlers and travellers. No doubt these were far from pretentious. A visitor of 1828 describes them as “three shanties.” Nevertheless, inferior though they were to the hotels of civilized centres, they were much better than nothing and they provided shelter while better houses were being built. “We may remark that visitors from older communities ought to train themselves not to expect too much in pioneer settlements.” The Colonel engaged men to act as innkeepers, Helmer, Fryfogle, Seebach and others, who are now remembered as pioneers and commemorated in tablets and cairn’s set up along the Huron Road, which played such an important part in their lives. At this time the first settlers arrived, some from Detroit by water and some from the older communities of the province, like Alexander MacGregor who drove an ox team from Zorra over the Huron Road and set up a store close to Dunlop’s cabin, facetiously named the Castle. The establishment of a population had commenced.
Van Egmond probably received favourable impressions of the possibilities of the Tract from the earliest days of his contract. At any rate he soon resolved to move his goods and chattels from Waterloo County to his new holding in the land of the Canada Company, and he carried out the resolution probably by degrees during the whole of 1828 as seems clear from Strickland’s account quoted below. He settled on The Hullett side a short distance southeast of Clinton, erected a combined house and tavern, and proceeded to clear the land. He was not, to be exact, the first settler in Huron, since some people had arrived in the Goderich area by water in 1827; but he was the first bona fide farmer; he owned the first horses brought into the Tract and the only wagons at the time. His personal appearance is sketched by our chief authorities, the Misses Lizars. “A tall, fine, soldierly-looking man; age gave him a stoop. His features were good, his nose large. He always wore a close cap even under his hat,” a habit which gave rise to a story that he was concealing mutilated ears. “He spoke English fairly well and was considered eccentric. A pushing clever man.” From this account one might surmise that Van Egmond did not care to discuss his personal affairs too intimately with his acquaintances in Huron. But that he lacked nothing of the sociable seems proved by an event of great importance for the Huron of 1829.
In his evidence before the Committee on Grievances, cited below, he stated that he had been settled in the Tract “six years this Christmas, 1834,” i.e., since Christmas, 1828. The removal, however, may have occupied some months.
By the middle of that summer, twenty months after his settlement in the Tract (according to Strickland), the Colonel had cleared nearly one hundred acres of land, fifty of which were bearing a crop of wheat, the first crop of respectable size in the Tract. The coming of age of his wheat therefore furnished the Colonel excuse for a celebration. In honour of this important event he invited four of the leading inhabitants of Goderich to be his guests at the tavern and to witness the cutting of his first sheaf.
Accordingly one summer day of July, Dr Dunlop; Thomas M Jones, commissioner of the Company; Messrs Prior and Strickland, the last of whom is the narrator of events, set out from Goderich at 11 a.m. The temperature, 90 degrees in the shade, impelled the walkers to carry coats and neck cloths over their arms, an informal procedure which provoked Strickland to wonder what his English friends would think if they could see him thus. But there were two factors to render the heat bearable: first, the shade of the trees; second, the “particular civility” of the mosquitoes, a condition which must have induced no small relief. The journey, some eighteen miles in all, was shortened, at least relatively, by the genial doctor’s stories and anecdotes. When the travellers had covered almost half of the distance they reached a small rich rill which crossed the road, and there they stopped for a rest and for refreshments of beef sandwiches, brandy and water. Close to the stream they noticed a long shanty erected by the contractors to house the men who had worked on the road. After an hour the four resumed their journey, and about five o’clock they reached their destination, Van Egmond’s Tavern. The Colonel received them with “every mark of respect and hospitality,” showed them upstairs into a newly furnished room, the only apartment at that time completed in the yet unfinished tavern, and provided them an excellent supper to which they did ample justice. The Colonel’s hospitality apparently left nothing to be desired; his reputation as tavern-keeper seems to have been well deserved.
In the morning the visitors walked over the farm with their host; they observed the condition of the land, the result of twenty months’ struggle with the forest, and found themselves “much gratified” at the prosperous state of the crops. “I think I never saw a finer crop of oats or better promise for turnips in my life,” says Strickland, adding, “the wheat also looked extremely well.” It is clear that Van Egmond was as successful a farmer as he was a contractor or tavern keeper. About noon the party proceeded to the harvest field, following their host, Madame Van Egmond, and the “fair daughters” of the family, to perform the rites of the little ceremony. When all had arrived on the scene of action, a sickle was placed in the hands of Madame Van Egmond that she might cut and bind “the first sheaf of wheat ever harvested” in the Tract. The good lady took the sickle, wielded it with skill better than a mere amateur’s and duly bound her sheaf, the first in Huron at least outside the Goderich area. This important work performed, the men gave three hearty cheers for the Canada Company. Lastly, a horn of whisky was served around, with which the guests pledged their host, their hostess and the success of the settlement. So was inaugurated the harvesting of wheat on a respectable scale in the Huron Tract.
The ceremony over, the party returned to the Tavern to a dinner for which the old soldier had spared “neither pains nor expense.” After the cloth had been removed, the dessert appeared: almonds, raisins, oranges, red and black raspberries, the two last of which Strickland found “a delicious fruit, particularly grateful on a hot day to the weary traveller.” Without questioning the delicacy of the raspberries, however, we of the present day may be more inclined to wonder at the presence of the almonds, raisins and oranges, commodities which must have been exceedingly scarce and dear in the Upper Canada of 1829. For this occasion the Colonel must have drawn on his best stores.
There followed an evening’s entertainment which Strickland says he need hardly describe “save that we ate, drank and were merry; it was difficult to be otherwise with Dr. Dunlop as one of our companions.” So closed an episode that throws a happy light on the work and hospitality of the Dutch Colonel who had made Upper Canada his home.
To Strickland’s account, the Misses Lizars add another detail - that after the ceremony the guests viewed a field of potatoes among the stumps, one acre of which measured by MacDonald was found to have yielded 724 bushels 3 pecks. Among these potatoes, continue our authorities, were some seven pounders that were placed on exhibit at all the ten-mile inns. These first crops gave excellent promise for the fertility of the soil in Huron, a promise that has been abundantly fulfilled in the succeeding century.
The Colonel soon made his home a place where travellers were sure of welcome and comfort, his farm probably as good as any of its size in the province. Dunlop continued to visit him frequently, drank “vast quantities of milk” and exclaimed, “The pigs, Madame Van Egmond, will be glad when I’m away to the Castle.” Besides establishing himself in his new estate, Van Egmond made every effort to assist incoming settlers, doubtless as a result of an arrangement with the Company. In 1831 he laid in a stock of 500 barrels of flour, and after 1832 he had twenty-four horse teams on the road, bringing in settlers and their goods. His ox teams continued to bring provisions to the new settlements as regularly as distance and difficulties permitted. At Helmer’s Inn there was a bark-bottomed chair for the use of the Colonel, who went there frequently as agent of the Company to look after incoming settlers and take them where they would by means of his two or three teams of oxen and wagons. One of his sons carried the first mail from Galt to Goderich, a “fleet-footed boy” who made good time over logs and through swamps with the mail bag on his back, and this lad too drove the first load of provisions from the line to Goderich. Thus Van Egmond assisted the settlers, having first himself shown them the way, and thus he earned first place among the pioneers of Huron County.
The Dutch Colonel had come to the Huron Tract as contractor for the Canada Company, and had fulfilled his contract faithfully and well. In the summer of 1829, as we see from Strickland’s account, he was certainly on good terms with the officials of the Company in Goderich. For three years thereafter he continued to perform services to the incoming settlers on behalf of the Company and doubtless secured his remuneration, at least in part. Until 1832 then, it seems that his relations with that organization remained as harmonious as is to be expected in business. Yet in 1832 or 1833 a change came about which proved a turning point in Van Egmond’s life in the Huron Tract. Of the condition of the Tract in the latter year we have an account, which may perhaps shed a little light on the Colonel’s alteration of attitudes toward the Company for which he had laboured.