James Gray 1791-1834: The plot thickens, more answers lead to more questions, another 'fact' of family lore is proven wrong.

I made a happy discovery a few days ago.  The Upper Canada Land Grants were digitized in 2019, which makes it possible to locate the actual written applications.  It's a bit of a challenge, but once you search the name and find the search information, microfilm reel, petition number, etc. then you can slowly scroll through.  They offer two options PDF and JPEG, it's easier to search using the PDF, but once you locate the right application, use the JPEG to enlarge and read the document.  You might still go partially blind trying to read it, and struggle to understand the old fashioned writing, but it's a good source of info.  It certainly taught me a few things I didn't know before.

James submitted his application for a grant of land on July 14th, 1816, which was approved by order of Governor Gore on July 16th, 1816.  This grant was for 200 acres, being Lot 9, Concession 3, East of Yonge Street.

https://heritage.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.lac_reel_c4547/618?r=0&s=4

https://heritage.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.lac_reel_c4547/619?r=0&s=4

The application reads (forgive me for any mistranslations or omissions)

James Gray, late Corporal in His Majesty's 90th Regiment of Foot, humbly showeth that your excellencies Memorialist is a native of Scotland and having availed himself of the merits of His Majesty's benevolent Proclamation and good will for the discharging of certain meritorious soldiers in this colony in order to become useful subjects and settlers therein he subsequently took his discharge in April 1815 at Niagara, that having joined the service when a lad and having an idea of the culture of wild lands he thought it proper to engage himself to be a gentleman farmer in order to be made  acquainted with the exercise of the plough and axe which in a short time became as natural to him as the duties of the field to which he has served a long and toilsome apprenticeship at foreign nations. That your excellencies memorialist having an ardent desire to become a settler amongst a few relations and friends which he has found in the neighborhood of York which are willing to bestow on him all the appurtenance in their power, therefore he humbly requests that your excellency in council may be generously pleased to allow him to make his location on a certain crown lot of land at the east side of Yonge St in the 3rd Concession, Lot #9.  This token of your excellencies wisdom.....ample remuneration for his service towards his King and country for his 9 years for which we are duty bound.

At the bottom it reads, 'He will again fight if required.'

James Gray, was the first of our Gray family to emigrate to Canada and we had always been told that he'd emigrated in 1816, possibly because that was when he got his land grant; however, it turns out that he never returned to Scotland after finishing up his military service when he took his discharge on April 27th, 1815 in Niagara!   His discharge papers are so faded and creased that I suppose we never gave any thought to where they were actually signed if indeed it even mentions where they were signed.

The 90th arrived in Canada in June of 1814 and had been guarding the American fort, Fort Niagara from October 1814.  After the war was over in Feb 1815, the soldiers stayed on until the fort was ceded back to the Americans in May of 1815.  

After discharge James made his way from Niagara to York, and found relatives and friends in York who were willing to help him get settled, and it sounds like in the meantime he must have been working learning the ins and outs of farming, and learning to use an axe and a plough, after his discharge.  

There must have been several letters back to the family in Paisley from him as he convinced some of the family that there was a good life to be had in Upper Canada.  William and Alexander didn't need much convincing as they came out quickly, with John not far behind, and George a few years later.  

In 1819, James renewed his application having fulfilled his settlement duties thus far, clearing a minimum of 5 acres which are being farmed, a dwelling house built 18 feet by 16 feet , and cleared the one half of the breadth of the road, within the first 18 months of his land lease.  James' log cabin was one of the first dwellings built in what is now Don Mills.  This was quite a good amount of work to have done in 18 months, though he did have his then teenage brothers William and Alexander to help and possibly the 'friends and relations' mentioned in the grant application.

In July 1823, James applied for the completion of his grant, now having 20 acres cleared, fenced and improved, with a barn.

What the land grant applications don't mention is that, James' brothers, William and Alexander, are living with James in the log cabin, and together they've built the mill dam, the saw mill and the grist mill (1819) which are both in operation, plus a mill lane to access the mills entering off of the 3rd Concession Line.  

Janet Gray, either a sister or a cousin, also emigrated along with William or Alexander, and probably lived with them for a short period, before she married a neighbor, William Sylvester in 1822.  John Gray emigrated in 1820 and presumably he moved in as well. James himself married in 1822, so that little log cabin is getting pretty crowded.  Not only that, but their mother Janet Salmond Gray arrived in 1825 with brother George and his wife and a son and another child on the way.  Could 10 people really have all lived together in a log cabin 18 x 16.

This is a photo of the Grays Mill Dam, from the Donalda Club collection

According to Harold Grays notes, the family were always back and forth, from one side of the river to the other on the cart road across the top of the dam.  The saw mill was on the east side of the river and the grist mill on the west side.  When one of the brothers needed a surge of power, he'd call across the river. 

As well as farming, James also had a distillery close by the grist mill, where he would make use of excess grain and trailings from the milling process to make whisky.

James very generously deeded the land and the mills to his brothers in 1825 with William getting total ownership of the grist mill and the 12 acres on the south and west side of the river, and Alexander getting the ownership of the saw mill and about the same amount of land on the east side of the river and south of the access lane.  

Alex would eventually buy the balance of the east half of Lot 9 Conc. 3, from James' estate, plus a small section of Lot 10, Conc. 4, giving him 100 acres to farm by the time of the 1851 census, and William would buy the E 1/2 of Lot 8 Conc 3 in 1847.  At some point John would buy a small section of about 15 acres from William on the E side of Lot 10, Conc 2 (Victoria Park Rd). The Mill Cart Road ran from James acreage through the mill lands, past the grist mill, across the dam, past the saw mill and across Woodbine right through to Victoria Park to where John, a wagon and carriage maker, had his small homestead and wagon shop pt of Lot 10, Conc 4.  John had a 2nd wagon shop at Milneford Mills, Milnes Hollow by Lawrence Ave and Don Mills Rd.

The brothers ran their homes, farms and businesses like a co-operative, working well together so that there was no duplication and they would all help each other out, even as to what they grew on their farms.  They didn't all have to be self sufficient because they took care of each other and were sufficient to themselves as a group.

Tragically, James died in 1834 at the age of 43, and his wife Margaret nee Craig died in 1837, leaving their son James an orphan at the age of 12.  Fortunately he had his uncles to take care of him, and he would eventually take over the running of his fathers farm.  From the census records, it looks like his Uncle John took over running the farm until James was old enough to run it himself.

According to Harold, James is interred at Mount Pleasant Cemetery, with his tombstone having the ominous inscription:  As you are now, so once was I. As I am now, so you will be. Prepare yourself to follow me.  

Both William and Alexander built their own homes in 1839.  Can they really have been living in James log cabin all this time? That will be one of the many mysteries lost to time.  Alex built his home on the east side of the Don, just across from William's on the west bank.  James' house was on the hill above William.  William built a second house for his miller in 1849.

By the 1851 census, William and his wife and a four young children are sharing their log home at the mill with George and his wife and one child.  George's daughter, Euphemia, married the miller and is living in the newly built frame house at the mill.  In the 1861 census, William and his growing family (8 children) are now in a plank house, along with 3 of Alexanders children.  Later there would be 2 bricked homes.  Harold believed that the two homes were bricked in the 1880s.

The Grays Mills Complex, with the two William Gray houses, the old Mill lane, the Donalda Barn which incorporated the original Grays Grist Mill are all protected under the City of Toronto Heritage Act.

Mary Grays painting of her memories of the mill and the cart road.  

  

George Gray was a builder and a farmer.  Not a lot is known about George.  He relocated to Whitechurch, before 1861 and farmed there.   

Even though, I now have more questions:  Who were these relations that helped James?  Who was the family member who's ship took 16 weeks to cross the ocean?  Why did George move away?  I'm still left amazed at James and his generosity and realize that if it weren't for James there would be no story of the Grays on the Don.

 

School Days on the Don with information gleaned from the notes of Harold Gray

The 1st school on the Don, built on the corner of John Hogg's farm.  John Hogg donated land for the construction of the 1st school in Don Mills.  It was just a log cabin, but it filled a need for the community, with it's growing families.  It was on the corner of his farm on Lot 7, Conc. 3, where it adjoined William Grays farm, with it's Grist Mill.  This school was built in 1837 and was used until 1853, when a new one room brick school was built to replace it, at which time the log school became a storage shed.  As well as all the Hogg children, the children of all the Gray brothers, James, George, John, William and Alexander would attend school here.

The New (2nd) Don School was built in 1853, with builder Thomas Gray, son of William Gray, laying the cornerstone and directing construction.  This was your typical early Ontario one room schoolhouse.  It was built on the southeast corner of Lawrence Ave and the Don Mills Road. This school was used until 1924-25.  When the students left the log school for the opening of the new schoolhouse, they paraded south from the old school to the new school with Timothy Gray and his cousin Robert Alexander carrying a flag at the head of the procession. The new school also had a library in it.  People that went to school there recall being distracted in class by the horses in the field next to the school.

Class of 1902/1903 with Edward Diefenbaker, Harold Gray is one of the students, though the picture quality isn't great, I'm fairly certain, from his posture and another photo I have of him from the same year, that Harold is the 4th boy in from the right.  I'm sure that some of the other children are his 1st cousins, but I have not way of identifying them, at least not yet; but there were several children of the right age in the expanding Gray family to have been at the school at the time.  Gladys Gray, granddaughter of William through his son George was one of the teachers in later years; she might well be in this photo as a young girl.

Aggie Hogg's Store, Post Office and Library

Aggie's store was next to the old log schoolhouse and the children had to pass it on the way to the new schoolhouse.  Grampa (Harold) Gray had some fun memories of Aggies store, writing that he spent many a copper and dime there when he was a boy.  You could get a couple of Bull's Eyes or a colored sugar stick for a penny, or when he or his friends Gordon Duncan and Milton Johnson had a dime, that meant a large bottle of pop for the 3 of us.  He also wrote that Aggie openly displayed her goods, one of which was a big box of icing sugar that sat on the counter.  A favorite trick of the local boys would be to have one of them distract Aggie, which another would grab a handful of the sugar and hightail it out of the store.  Aggie finally had enough of that nonsense though and got even with the boys by replacing the icing sugar with epsom salts.  What a shock the boys would have gotten on tasting the epsom salts. In later life, Harold would run his own store for a while in Malvern, I wonder what tricks would have been played on him in turn.

In 1896 Aggie rearranged her store to make room for a public library with books provided by the local literacy society that did various fundraisers to make money to buy books.  The library would remain here until the new postmaster decided he wasn't interested in having the books in the store in 1918.  At this point James Muirhead, on an adjoining lot offered an abandoned WW1 communications hut on his farm for use for the library and so the library lived on.

Aggie's store was also used as a meeting place and sometimes even a dance hall, with the Hogg's all being talented musicians, sometimes the music would go on all night.