Where my genealogy searches take me, following the Gray roots

I find the hunt for information, and the facts I dig up about our Gray family and connections fascinating, plus what they had to go through.  They had to have patience, perseverence, optimism, be resourceful, be thrifty, and not be afraid of hard work.  There is no doubt they worked hard to achieve all they did. It wasn't all hard work though, the work bees always ended in a competition and a party.  The competition might have been seeing who could get the most beams or boards in place, or who could cut the most trees, or haul the most logs.  It's a guy thing.

One of the things I've always been interested in finding out was where James, Alexander, William, George and John found their wives.  After all they are in the middle of dense forest, with small clearings of farms in their infancy stages, with muddy tracks for roads, working hard trying to clear more land to plant more crops, striving to become self sufficient.

William Gray married Phoebe Street who was born in Prescott, Ontario.  I always wondered, until a recent discovery, how William and Phoebe would have ever met.  Phoebe's parents, Timothy Street and Betty Scott, were both the children of United Empire Loyalists and as such, though they'd already had a land grant near Prescott, which was being farmed by a son; they were entitled to a second land grant, and by 1837 Timothy and Betty were located in Toronto, on Yonge Street.  In order for William to get his flour to market he had to drive his wagon right by her parents farm.  One possibility is that they attended the same church in York Mills.  Or they might have brought grain to Grays Mills to have it made into flour.

Alexander Gray married Marion McLean of Islay, Scotland, and I scoured the census records and land grants for York trying to find a McLean, with no luck, but by chance when reading "Don Mills, From Forests and Farms to Forces of Change" by Scott Kennedy, which has lots of interesting items of information about the Grays in it, I came across another McLean and I had a light bulb moment

...boing!  This McLean was Christina McLean and she met her husband John Coulson in York Mills, and they ended up buying a farm right across the road from Alexander Gray and Marion McLean. I wondered if she might have been a sister.  It might have just been a coincidence to have two women with the last maiden name the same across the road from each other, but they might be cousins.  Another book "Full text History of Toronto and the County of York" gave me the answer I needed, Marion McLean was the daughter of John McLean and Mary McLachlan of Wellington County, Ontario.  It's a bit of a trek from Wellington to Don Mills to get your wheat ground to flour, but I imagine that is how they met.  I'm thinking Grays Mills was a bit like a matchmaking service.

John Gray married Anne Gravely Carley of Wexford, Ireland who's parents I believe to be Joseph Carley and Elizabeth Free who settled near Elizabethtown, Leeds and Grenville.  How they met will probably continue to be a mystery.  John was a wagon maker and his shop was in Milneford Mills, on the Don River, where there was a well known woolen mill. Maybe he had a wagon to deliver, maybe her father brought wool to the mill.  John and Anne named their first daughter after her, their second daughter after John's mother Janet, the third daughter was Elizabeth (after her mother?).  Their first son was after John's father Thomas, and the second son was Joseph, so the naming of the children is a possible clue that I might be on the right track, as that was a common system of naming children back then.

James Gray married Margaret Craig of Glasgow, Scotland who has proved to be a road block for me, but I will persevere.  In the 1861 census, James Jr. has relatives staying with him named John and Ann Craig, but so far, I haven't been able to work out the connection.  I'm assuming that John is a nephew of Margaret but there I'm stuck, for now anyway.  And yes, I'm assuming that James met Margaret at Grays Mills. 

That leaves us with George Gray, that last of the brothers to arrive, and he married in Scotland Mary McMillan also from Renfrewshire, Scotland.

In finding marriage licences for the Gray brothers and some of the nieces and nephews, I found a witness named Christopher Sylvester, and another William Sylvester shows up repeatedly as a witness to Gray family marriages, so I started to wonder, just who are these Sylvesters.  I started a search through Ancestry and in my search I discovered that William Sylvester of Wexford, Ireland, was married to Janet Ellen Gray! Eyebrows go up, but it could be a coincidence, then I see that the place of the birth of one of their sons is Grays Mills, York.  Boing! Bells going off.  That cannot be a  coincidence! 

I'd always assumed that there were Gray sisters and had gone through all the names of their daughters to see which names kept showing up, Janet was one, after their mother, Ellen was another.  I always thought it strange that William Grays sons had a group portrait taken, but there wasn't one of the daughters, so it didn't surprise me that there was no mention of sisters, not even one that came to Canada.

The Sylvester farm was the next concession over from the Grays Mills.  Janet arrived in 1820 with Alexander and married William in 1822.  William Sylvester had also been a soldier in the British Army, so he and James Gray would have had that in common.

Hmmm. Little lightbulb. William Sylvester was from Wexford Ireland.  Anne Gravely Carley was from Wexford.  Another thread to pull to see if it leads anywhere.

The Don River & Grays Mill...according to Harold

According to Harold:  (my grandfather, who started writing down memories in the 1960s)

"In the early days the little stream (the east branch of the Don) that trickles down the Don Valley was a fair sized river that supplied power to run 21 mills from the head waters up in King Township to Todmorden.  These mills were mostly small sawmills which disappeared from the scene once the local timber was cut.  As far as I know there were only 2 flour and chopping mills on the river; one was Schmidt's Mill where Bayview Ave and Steeles Ave meet, which was later converted into an artists studio, the other was our mill (Grays)"  Schmidt's Mill was later torn down when the intersection was widened in 1965.

Grays Mill was built by James Gray and William Gray who started building the mill in 1819.  This was a 4 story building made of hand hewn log beams with wooden pegs and thick wide plank floors and the exterior was clad in yellow brick.  William was 17, James was 28.  

Before the mill would be operational, they'd have to dam the river to create a mill pond, and dig a mill race to carry the water to the water wheels.  The dam was not far from the mill and William and Alex and the rest of the family would use the top edge of the dam as a bridge to cross the river.

 James deeded the land with the mills to William and brother Alex in 1825.  Alex operated a  Saw Mill on the opposite side of the river until the lumber ran out about 1880.

"Grays Mill was operated by water power, with turbine water wheels.  There were two sets of mill stones, one set for grinding feed for cattle and one for flour only. In that period all flour was whole wheat flour, there was no separation of bran and shorts."  

Harold wrote that they had a long reel system for separating the bran and shorts to make white flour, but it was never used.

"The roller mill and steel plate chopper were used for grinding feed for cattle."

"Our mill was rated as a 40 barrel mill, that is, it could produce 40 barrels of flour in 24 hours.  A barrel of flour consists of 196 pounds, which was packed into 24 1/2 pound and 49 pound paper bags.  Flour for bakeries was packed in 98 pound jute sacks."

"In my grandfathers time there was not much money around, and a lot of the grinding was done by toll, that is, the miller took a share of 1/12th of the flour milled for his toll."  The 1/12th was set by law.  

"The Grays Mill flour, packaged under the name 'Wee MacGregor' was so popular that people from King township used to bring their grain for grinding at Gray's Mill.  It was a long journey by horse and the wheat was usually strapped to logs on a sled for hauling.  The trip was so long that people from far away places always spent the night at Gray's before returning home."  

This possibly explains how some of the daughters and nieces of William Gray ended up marrying farmers from King township, and Osprey township.    

"In the early days the only way for the Don people to get to Toronto (to the St. Lawrence Market) was by what is now Lawrence Avenue to Yonge St. and down Yonge.  The farmers got together and gave sufficient land to open the Don Road to what was then the Plains Road, now called O'Connor Drive.  The property given extended from O'Connor Drive to York Mills Road and was an independent road. I believe the road was built in 1835."

The original Gray's Mill (1819) is still standing, but was altered considerably after the property was sold to the Dunlops in 1917, to make Don Alda Farms, with huge additions and new exterior cladding to make the cattle barn and storage barn.  In 1966, Harold Gray, received a letter from Lorna Gardner, a historian from Willowdale, who received permission from the manager of the Donalda Club to explore; that letter indicates that it is still 3 stories plus the attic, so most of the original structure is still there, hidden inside the newer structure.  

I have to think that James Gray was a man with a plan.  I'm not sure how much land James was initially granted; Harold's notes indicated that he thought James grant gave him about 1/2 the land in Don Mills, that seems a bit far fetched but they did eventually own about 860 acres and lease other land. Some day I'll have to make the trip to Ottawa to go to Library and Archives Canada to get more details.  

Harold also said that James encouraged the brothers to emigrate and join him.  The fact that James arrived in 1816 and got established enough to support William (age 15) who arrived in 1817; and Alex (age 15) and Janet (age 20) who arrived in 1819, and started construction on the mill by 1819 certainly indicates that he was a man with a mission.  You don't just decide, let's build a flour mill. a sawmill and a distillery.  He had to have done research to know what was required, and that had to be a factor in his choice of land on the Don.  Not to mention that he's a new settler, living in a single room log cabin or shanty (not much difference except for the roof), with land to clear and crops to grow.  From a practical viewpoint, I imagine that he built the sawmill first, because they were going to need a lot of planks.  

Clearing the Land and Getting Self Sufficient

Getting the land cleared and starting crops and working towards self sufficiency was a process, a long and arduous process, from sun up to sun down, work, toil, labor, not for the weak or lazy, and it would be several years before there would be such a thing as leisure time.  For the determined settler though, if they followed the recommended plan, and stuck to it, success was assured.  At least meals would be fairly easy.  More on that later.

Year 1, clear an acre for the basic shelter, then clear 2 more acres before the end of May and plant potatoes. 

In clearing the land, the straight lengths of timber is cut into lengths to be used in log construction, for heating and cooking, or set aside to take to a sawmill to make into planks for home use, but all the brush and useless wood is burned for making potash.  Once the potash is ready it can be delivered to  the trader to go on account for food and tools.

Once you've cleared the land there are a lot of stumps and you can't remove the stumps until five or more years have passed, and the roots are rotted enough that a team of oxen can pull them out, so the hand plow has to be maneuvered around the stumps, then the crops are planted around the stumps. 

After the potatoes are planted, the settler should spend the rest of the summer and fall trimming out and undercutting 6 to 8 more acres for clearing the following year.  Plus cut up lots and lots of wood for heating and cooking, and harvest the potatoes and store them away.

When winter starts to set in, in the early years, before having animals to take care of, one could go to work at one of the many nearby lumber camps.  Work at the camps was hard work and rough, but it provided food, shelter and income.  After spring thaw and the run off once the logs have gone down the rivers, head back home to start working the land again.

Year 2, plant your 2 acres again, and get some helpers in for a work bee to clear the 6 to 8 acres that you've prepared the previous year.  With a good work bee, the clearing can be done in a day, leaving a lot of wood to burn.  A married man would have his wife and maybe children to help with the burning and potash making, a single man will have a lot of small fires to tend to get the brush all burned.  Once the fires were burned out, the ash was collected to boil down for the potash.  Now the 6 to 8 acres can be planted in wheat for bread, and maybe some corn.  Next on the list is a barn, using your own lumber, round up the neighbors for a barn raising.  With a barn, even though there are no animals yet, you'll have a place for threshing your grain on the barn floor.  Undercut and prepare 6 to 8 more acres for clearing in year 3. Get the potatoes, wheat and corn harvested, store the potatoes, trading excess to the trader, bin the corn for grinding for porridge, thresh the wheat, and take it to the mill for flour.  No animals means the single settler can head off to the lumber camps for the winter again.  After year 2 the settler now has gone beyond potatoes, to potatoes, wheat and corn, so they don't have to get as much from the trader.  Next year it'll be time to start getting animals, a cow for milk and butter, sheep for wool, pigs for pork, some chickens for eggs, and maybe an ox or two to help with the heavy work, hauling goods to market, wood to the sawmill, wheat to the flour mill, excess to the trader.

Year 3, start crop rotation so you don't wear out the soil, clear more land and set some aside for pasture and get it seeded for the animals to graze.   Now the workload increases even more with a cow to milk and the other animals to tend on top of everything else.  Maybe this is the year you build the log house and upgrade from the shanty, then the shanty can be used for storage, or any of many different uses needed on a farm.  The workload has increased and with animals to tend and wheat to thresh and other jobs that can be done in the winter months there is no more time to go to the lumber camps to work for the winter. 

Repeat and repeat and repeat.  This is why farmers needed such big families, to help with all the workload.

In a few years time, the land is producing wheat, rye, oat, peas, potatoes, corn, hay, wool, maple syrup, butter, cheese, turnips, and pork, lots and lots of pork, plus vegetables from the vegetable garden, and maybe some apples from apple trees. The typical diet in the early days is salted pork, pork for breakfast, pork for lunch and pork for dinner and maybe some porridge made from ground up corn.  Cut a piece of pork and throw it into the frying pan, boil a few potatoes, that with a little bread, baked in the dutch oven over the fire, is breakfast, lunch and dinner for several years.  This is what I meant about meals being easy, there was nothing to decide, it's always the same. Hey honey, what's for lunch...pork!  What do you want for dinner...we have pork!  Any variation, fresh berries, fresh vegetables, fresh fish from the river, a little venison, are a wonderful addition and a welcome change from salted pork.  Establishing a vegetable garden was crucial, and once you had a cow, then you had the addition of milk and butter.  The workload has also increased, with having to sugar off the maple syrup, churning butter, salting the pork, spinning wool, maybe even weaving the wool, making clothes, making moccasins, coring and stringing apples to dry, knitting socks and mittens, repairing tools, making furniture, and more.

For our James who arrived in 1816, his brother William has arrived the year later in 1817, so James has help with all the chores; Alexander arrived the year after that in 1818, and many hands make light work.  From my research it seems like William and Alex stayed with James in his log cabin at least until James married  in 1822, and maybe even after that.   I imagine Alex would have gotten his sawmill up and running pretty quickly, as they'd have needed lumber, plus milling lumber for others would be a source of income.  The early sawmills were pretty basic and as soon as the lumber ran out in the area, the mill would be dismantled.  The grist and flour mill though was another story altogether, it was built to last (and still stands today in 2020, though it's been altered quite a bit).  The mill was 4 stories tall, made of hand hewn, massive log beams with wooden pegs, and clad with yellow brick.  Williams grist and flour mill was across the river from Alexanders sawmill, and when one of the brothers needed more power they'd yell across the river and the other brother would cooperate and shut down his water wheel for a greater surge of water across the river.
James ran a distillery about which we know nothing, but it would have been small scale and possibly in the building that was across the road from his farm just up the hill from William and Alex.  Running a distillery made good practical sense, as wheat and other grains that were inferior for grinding for flour, could make good whiskey. According to my grandfather, Harold Gray's notes, the brothers all worked together building their homes and their businesses.  They were hard working men and got a lot accomplished in just a few years.

John would arrive in 1819 along with a sister Janet Ellen.  There is a record of a birth of a son for sister Janet Ellen and her husband William Sylvester at Grays Mills in York in 1824, so the mill was in operation at that time.  William Sylvester joined the fold and worked at the mill as well as his own farm nearby.

George would be the last come in 1823 with a wife and child, and their mother Janet.

In time, the brothers would own 860 acres on what is now the Don Mills Road, and their mills and a few other mills near by, including the nearby woolen mill owned by the Milne family, and the hub that developed around them with a school, post office, a store and an inn would give the area it's name.

By 1825, they along with neighbors started building the Don Independent Road which would make it easier for them to get their goods to market.