In my continuing series on the historic hamlets in our area, we travel to East Gwillimbury.
I'll begin with a brief history of East Gwillimbury. There are three townships bearing the name of Gwillimbury: East and North Gwillimbury in the County of York, and West Gwillimbury in Simcoe County. These townships take their name from the family of Elizabeth Simcoe, née Gwillim, wife of Sir John Graves Simcoe, the first lieutenant governor of Ontario.
East Gwillimbury comprises about 58,000 acres and is bounded on the north by the township of North Gwillimbury, to the east by Scott Township, on the south by Whitchurch Township, and on the west by King Township. It has nine concessions east of Yonge Street and one west of it, the latter originally forming part of West Gwillimbury.
East Gwillimbury can trace its origins back to the early development of Upper Canada, which was orchestrated by Simcoe. He was given the mandate to construct a major transportation artery (Yonge) from Lake Ontario north to what is now the village of Holland Landing in East Gwillimbury. As the Township of East Gwillimbury grew, several small communities developed, communities such as the villages or hamlets of Brown Hill, Franklin, Holland Landing, Holt (formerly Eastville), Mount Albert, Queensville (colloquially known as the Four Corners), Ravenshoe, River Drive, and Sharon (formerly Hope).
The current Town of East Gwillimbury was formed through the amalgamation of what was then the original Township of East Gwillimbury with all the previously incorporated villages and hamlets.
I will begin with the hamlet of Hope (Sharon), just to the north of Newmarket along Leslie Street. Sharon, like Newmarket, has its roots in the influx of United Empire Loyalist and Pennsylvania Quakers who arrived around 1800. Approximately 40 farms were secured by Timothy Rogers alone from the colonial government about 1801. The volume of incoming settlers was so numerous that they would quickly spread across our area from Schomberg to Newmarket, Sharon, Pine Orchard, Uxbridge and Pickering, my Lundy family being one of them.
Among this influx of settlers, we find David Willson and his small group of followers, known as the Children of Peace. It has been said that the village of Sharon grew around the farm of David Willson, located at Lot 10, Second Concession in East Gwillimbury. He arrived around 1803 and patented the land two years later.
The establishment of Willson’s sect provided the bedrock upon which the hamlet of Hope was established.
Initially Willson joined the local Quaker meeting house on Yonge, however he soon moved away from the Quakers as his ideas proved a little too unorthodox. He decided to establish his own sect on his farm between 1809 and 1812, a group that was to be known as the Davidites. The hamlet of Hope drew its early inhabitants primarily from these followers of Willson.
In 1814, the Davidites built a small, two-story log meeting house on the west side just south of the current Sharon Temple, placing music at the heart of their services. They began to draw more and more followers and by 1825 they had outgrown their meeting house and they proceeded to build the Temple, which still stands proudly in the same spot today.
While most of the building materials were obtained locally, they did find it necessary to import 2,952 panes of glass from England, which still astound visitors today This temple was such a unique building, incorporating both Christian and Jewish elements that it became a magnet, drawing an ever increasing population to the area.
Many do not realize that the temple was only used for a total of 15 days a year; the last Saturday of every month, at Christmas, a Friday in June celebrating Passover, and for Illumination, the feast of the first fruits in September. The master builder was Ebenezer Doan, whose Doan Homestead currently serves as a hospice in Newmarket.
While the Davidite Meeting House was removed in the late 1950s, the Sharon Temple still stands tall as a monument to this community and its humble beginnings.
The community has held a few names over the years. In the 1830s, the hamlet was identified as Davidtown and then as Hope. When the community wanted to establish a post office in 1841, it had to provide a unique name and since there was already a Hope in existence, they decided to change the name to Sharon.
I am not aware of a definitive answer as to why it was called Sharon. We know that the name Sharon (in Hebrew ‘Šārôn’’) simply means ‘plain’, however in the Hebrew Bible, it is the name specifically given to the fertile plain between the Samarian Hills and the coast, known as Sharon Plain, in English. Given Willson’s interest in Judaism, perhaps that is a valid clue.
From Ethel Trewhella’s Story of Sharon, we learn that area was blessed with a magnificent forest of timber to the west and a well-established Indigenous trail running through its centre. The local road system was not well developed otherwise, with existing roads primarily running from ‘homestead to homestead’. The old Indigenous trail constituted the only road in and out of the community. This ‘trail’ was once named ‘Queen Street’ by the Selby family in honour of Queens County, Ireland from where they had originated.
When the pioneers first began to arrive, the forests were quicky cut down and very primitive cabins (shacks) were erected, utilizing local mosses and wood chips to insulate the homes from winter’s cold. An important figure in the community was the blacksmith, who along with shoeing the livestock, also produced all the necessities of life, from furniture, nails, hinges and candelabras to tools and farm implements. The early Sharon settlers became renowned for their skills as exceptional crafts people.
Land around Sharon was reputed to be the least expensive of any within the county. It was said that for the cost of a good oxen, one could obtain a decent size plot of land to work. Sharon, like most of York County, was plagued with a series of epidemics early in its history. In 1832, cholera made its appearance, and then in 1847, 1852 and 1854, typhoid fever visited the community. In 1833 and 1858, they were consumed with diphtheria with whole families being lost.
Everyone locally was aware of the various historic families that had built Sharon and, in many cases, still resided there. To end this first edition of the story of Sharon, I want to provide you with a listing of the first settlers to the Sharon area and their date of arrival. I think that this list provides a multitude of familiar names, many of whom are still prominent within the area today.
According to the records, the first settlements in the township were assigned in 1798:
- 1800— Elijah Welch.
- 1801—John Weddle, Ebenezer Weller, Elijah Robinson.
- 1802—Reuben Richardson, Joseph Hill, Samuel Ilaight, A. Howard, Daniel Travis, Joel Bigelow, William Anderson.
- 1803—Josiah Coolige, George Cutter, Edward Taylor Collins, John Eves, George Hollingshead, Levy Vanbleck, Thomas Young, Abijah Mack, Esther Frisbee, Jeremiah Moore, Junior, Jacob Reer, Junior.
- 1804 —Nehemiah Hide, Theodore Wine, Nathan Parr, Joseph Pearson, Timothy Rogers, Frederick Harr ck, Jacob Johnson. Adam Lepard, William Luft, Jacob Lepard, Jesse Bennett, Zebulon Ketchum, Ephraim Talbut.
- 1805—Obadiah Griffin, Bela Clark, Obadiah Hutt, Elisha Mitchell. Bernard Velie, John Dunham, Henry Proctor, Isaac Kitly, David Willson, Joseph Sutherland, John Hodgson, Peter H. Vanderburgh, Jeremiah Traviss, Philip Chinger, Job Cogsele, Jesse Ketchum, Peter Emery, Richard Banks, Thomas Price, Christian Hershev, Junior, Henry Huber, Frederick Asbbough, Joseph Dobinger, Aveng Stiles, Augustus House, George Buck, Philip Buck, Anna Connor, Catharine Rouset, Le Chevalier de Marseul, Nathaniel Gager, Bethnel Huntley, William Phillips, Daniel Wilson, Stephen Howard.
- 1806—Catherine Smith, Mary Parry, Elizabeth Eaughlan, Andrew McGlasham, Mary Adams, Catherine Pallit, Mary Kaeen, Catherine Rood, Elsy Sherrard, Nancy Barnum, Rebecca Chysdale, Ann Hoiks, Elizabeth Hariiss, Sarah Storer, Jane Huffman, Elizabeth Beech, Rachel Woolc.utal, Nancy Black, Samuel Pickel, Catherine Elsworth, Phoebe Cornwall, D. Cox, Mary Robben, James McCaul, Robert Nichol, James Pettibon, Charles Hill, Benjamin Mosley, Elijah Howley.
- 1807—Peter Anderson, Conrad Gostman, Calvin Washburne, Henry Lepard, John Johnson, William Coldwell, Hermanus House, Lewis House, John Hall, James Kinsey, Peter Anderson.
- 1808—Sarah Grant, Ann Tiffany, John Secord, Junior, Benjamin Dunham, Henry Zufelt, J. Osburne, Mary Brown, Rachel Brown, George Bond, Nathaniel Dermis, Catherine Bisenbery, John Benedick.
- 1809—Samuel Dean, Humphrey Finch, Jean Louis Vicomte de Chains.
- 1811—Amos West.
- 1812—Nathaniel Sherrard, Gideon Veron, Eunice Scorils, Thomas Selby.
- 1813—John Titus.
- 1816—Peter Robinson.
- 1817—Joseph Robinson, Edward Foreman.
- 1822—Daniel Cox.
- 1828—R. McCarthy, George McCarthy.
- 1829—Moses Knight.
- 1831—-John Doan, Senior, Ebenezer Doan.
- 1833—John Weddel, Samuel Hughes, Samuel Johnson.
- 1835—John McKay, Obadiah Rogers.
- 1840--J. B. Spragge, Benjamin O. N. Lyster.
- 1842—Texty Weller.
- 1843—Thomas Leighton, William II. Wilson.
- 1845—John Bromer.
- 1846—Charles Kinsey, William Langton, George Heron.
- 1847—William Pegg.
- 1848—William Elmer.
- 1849—William Hutall, Henry Shuttle worth, John Snarr.
- 1850—William Hawkins, Robert Culverwell.
- 1855—H. Proctor, T. J. O'Neill.
I am sure that many of these names will ring a bell for most of us.
In my next instalment on the hamlet of Sharon, I will look at the growth that took place over the years and the heritage properties that lined Leslie Street from the original Willson farm north to the Mount Albert sideroad.
Sources: East Gwillimbury in the Nineteenth Century by Gladys M. Rolling; The Township of East Gwillimbury Website; The Story of Sharon by Ethel Trewhella (published in the Newmarket Era); The History of Newmarket by Ethel Trewhella; Stories of Newmarket – An Old Ontario Town by Robert Terence Carter; History of Toronto and County of York in Ontario - Part III: Township of East Gwillimbury
Newmarket resident Richard MacLeod — the History Hound — has been a local historian for more than 40 years. He writes a weekly feature about our town's history in partnership with Newmarket Today, conducts heritage lectures and walking tours of local interest, and leads local oral history interviews.
