When trees grew on Charlotte John Harper’s memoir of Peterborough in the 1840s to 1920s fills in some gaps
(First of two parts)
There have been many opportunities to talk about trees lately. A wind storm in May blew over a 60-foot tall basswood tree missing my car by some 10 feet or so. The basswood was mature when I moved to the street over 30 years ago, and I admired the tree for its unusual conic shape, a shape unusual to our block. As well, Drew Monkman asked me if I had ever thought of writing a column on Harper Park, the city’s largest park. There is an initiative to write a history of trees in Peterborough, and I had to admit that trees had been important in my teaching and writing.
John Harper (1843-1934), then living at 558 Romaine St., related his memories, “When Trees Grew on Charlotte Street” in a February 1928 Peterborough
Examiner article, reprinted in the very first issue of the Heritage Gazette of the
Trent Valley, February 1997 Harper, then 84, considered himself Peterborough’s second oldest person; he knew George Kingdon was a year older. His parents were Robert Harper and Margaret (nee Milburn). His mother was only four when she arrived with the Colony settlers from the Alston area of Cumberland in 1818, the oldest European settlement in the county. His father was a tailor who had competed with William Lundy to make uniforms for the soldiers fighting in the Mackenzie rebellion of 1837. According to family tradition, Robert Harper came to Canada as part of a circus act; he retained the ability to thread a needle behind his back. He lived in Cobourg before moving to Peterborough in 1836.
Around 1846, John was playing around the yard of their Charlotte St. home when a brick fell off some scaffolding and permanently dented his head. Contractors were bricking what is reputed to be the first brick house in Peterborough. The building is still standing on the west side of the laneway that enters Charlotte Mews; the Charlbond Building is on the east side of the laneway. The late Martha Ann Kidd described the building as being built as the Globe Hotel in 1842 or 1843, and that may be so.
TREES WERE THREAT
Robert Harper “had to cut down trees on the street to make sure they would not fall on the house.” Farmers until at least the 1870s cut down trees in order to increase farmlands. It seemed reasonable that the same logic could be extended to town trees, but protecting houses is an interesting twist. The idea that trees could be beneficial belonged to later generations.
John Harper’s memories suggest that there were several roughhewn hotels in the area, and that were stuffed to the rafters in some periods of the year. He also notes that the “1849” stone building on the south side of Simcoe St., although used continuously for a hotel, was in the first instance built by Joseph Spencely as a private house for the senior Richard Winch, who used a $4,000 legacy from England to do so. John also remembered playing around this construction site with all the stones from Jackson Park.
Harper’s memories seem very reliable. One big surprise was his discussion of early schools in Peterborough. It has been very difficult to identify, for example, the locations of teachers who taught privately. There is general agreement that the first government school was Samuel Armour’s log school on McDonnel St. near College, but that school was demolished by 1850. Its successor was the former British Wesleyan Methodist Episcopal Church at the corner of Sheridan and Hunter, which was the Union School from 1854 to 1860 when the new Union School, which most people know as Central School, came on stream. We know that Mrs. Dorothea Flavelle, who sometimes taught in the Union School, had a private school on Water St. across from the Market Square, although I have not been able to confirm exactly where. Parson Taylor, who succeeded the Rev. Samuel Armour at the log school, apparently after becoming the Rector at St. John’s Anglican Church returned to teaching, some sources suggesting that he was at the old Methodist Church.
Harper attended none of these schools. He says he attended the Weatherhead school that was situated on Aylmer, just south of Charlotte; this is the site of a former Methodist Church, and currently of Bud Monahan’s Music Centre. He said that part of that school, being used as an old shed, was still standing in 1926. As John Harper notes, “There were about ninety scholars, among them the late J. J. Lundy, Bob Lundy, Ned Wilson, a young fellow named Connors who became a priest and claimed to be the first white child born in Peterboro, and others I have forgotten.”
Robert Harper and William Lundy were trustees of this school, and both dug the pit and built the outhouse for the school in order to save expenses. Someone named Tanner, who lived between the school and Charlotte St., arranged for a gravel sidewalk to be built from the school to Charlotte. Ratepayers claimed that Tanner was more interested in helping himself than the school.
CHARCOAL PRODUCTION
John English, who was the father of the later owners of the English Canoe Company, owned a blacksmith shop that was built over the creek. He also owned a charcoal shed, located on the site of the Charlbond Building. In the 1850s, people depended on charcoal, and Harper says there was quite an industry making charcoal.
As John Harper described it, “They used to cut down pine trees, pile them up and start a fire under them, and then cover the pile with clay, so that the logs would char but not burn. The people bought the charcoal by the bushel.” He noted that there was a charcoal pit on the property that became Little Lake Cemetery. The sites had to be guarded day and night to ensure the logs did not go ablaze. J. H. “Ham” Burnham had a charcoal pit on the Webber farm, now Kawartha Golf and Country Club.
SADDLE SHOP ON GEORGE
Harper mentions a Might who ran a saddler’s shop on George near Hunter, where McDermid’s Drug Store was in 1926, and now the building next to the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. This was likely John Might (b. 1797) who ran a saddler’s shop in Port Hope in 1861. He noted a bootmaker named Leonard lived on Charlotte, just east of the creek next to the English house.
Next to Leonard’s, John Davey ran a bake shop and then turned his house into a school, which John Harper attended for a while. He said there was another school at the corner of George and Hunter, now the site of Kruz radio. He placed Parson Taylor’s school in Victoria Park; this is a surprise, although this site was considered as an option for the site chosen for Central School. Harper believed the first separate school was on the north-west corner of Simcoe and Aylmer.
Moving east from John Davey’s there were two houses, which he says “Little Paddy McNamera” who was a carpenter based in Asphodel in 1851. built for Harper’s brother, but he does not say when or which brother. By 1926, Patrick Boyle’s store was one of three where the two houses had stood.
The bridge over the creek on Charlotte St. was described as “a rough
John Harper’s memories suggest that there were several roughhewn hotels in the area, and that were stuffed to the rafters in some periods of the year.
one, built on logs, stringers laid over them then logs placed close together and earth spread over them for the surface.”
Moving west from the Harper house, an old barn stood where the curling club was later built. In 1870, Robert Harper threshed his wheat on this site and stored the grain in the barn. The straw was left on the street and the young Dick Winch, newly married, gathered it for the bed in his new
Charlotte St. ended at Park St., and John Harper only remembered three houses along the stretch west of Bethune. Harry Best’s place was at the corner of Stewart and was later donated to be a Children’s Shelter.”
household. Louis Laplante lived near the Harpers and was a rival of Jim English; Jim English never won but on one occasion took both of them into the creek for a “ducking.” The Laplantes came in 1851, and Louis’ father worked for Charles Perry at Nassau Mills.
Charlotte St. ended at Park St., and John Harper only remembered three houses along the stretch west of Bethune. Harry Best’s place was at the corner of Stewart and was later donated to be a Children’s Shelter. Dunbar’s house was at 348 Charlotte, midway between Reid and Stewart. The third house, 290 Charlotte St., was one that Dr. Richard King bought when he moved back from Bailieboro in 1870. This house is best known to our generation as Cavanagh’s Appliance Store and was only recently demolished. Dr. King’s sons, both of whom became doctors, were the key players on Peterborough’s winning hockey teams of the 1890s.
NOTE: Trent Valley Archives is running a bus tour to mark the centennial of Robertson Davies, the esteemed Canadian writer who was with The
Peterborough Examiner for over 20 years. The tour will run on Wednesday, Aug. 28, Davies’s birthday. For details, contact Elwood at ejones55@cogeco.ca or phone Trent Valley Archives at 705745-4404.
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