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.

 

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.

Getting the Land Grant and getting possession

The settlement of York, as everywhere in Upper Canada, were very welcoming to new arrivals, and would help them with accommodations and food to help them get settled.  If a settler had family already in Upper Canada they would  often go and stay with them, and settle nearby, otherwise they'd get help from any other settler in the area where they wanted to settle.  At times the military barracks in York would offer shelter to new arrivals especially if they arrived too late in the year to start clearing their land and building a shelter.  If the weather was fine, the new arrival might just put up a lean to and roll out their pallet, after all, having just spent 12 nights on a Durham boat sleeping in the open, either on the boat or on the shore at night, then walking from Kingston camping along the way, what's a little more camping until you can get a basic shanty built.

Not only were the other settlers helpful, the Crown was also helpful.  The Crown wanted Upper Canada built up with settlers, especially those with military experience.  After the fiasco of the War of 1812, England wanted to make sure. We don't know if James came on his own, or if William came with him to help him get started.  We don't know where he would have stayed until he got his land grant, but to get his land grant and find out where it was, he had to go through some red tape.  As a soldier his land grant was assured, but he still had to deal with some bureaucracy first.

All land claims for Upper Canada in 1816, had to be registered in person in the town of York, which made for difficulties if you didn't plan on settling near York, especially since it meant another trip to York to finalize the claim 5 years later.  The petition had to be made in writing and delivered personally.  From all the research I've done, I haven't discovered yet, if this was a one day chore, or if it took several days, because the applicant had to visit 12 offices to get the paperwork finalized. The petition had to be accompanied with proof of age (had to be 18), a character reference, or in the case of a soldier his discharge papers, as well as a certificate of oath taking, obtained either from the Land District Board, or a local magistrate, proving having made an oath of loyalty to the Crown.  The petition has to first be taken to the Receiver General and  3 pound 10 sterling is paid for the patent and survey fee.  With receipt in hand then the paperwork needs to be taken to the Clerk of the Council, who submits the order and receipt to the Attorney General who issues a warrant for the lot to be assigned.  Then back to the Clerk for a license of occupation; then to the Surveyor General who assigns a lot, or agrees to the lot you've chosen, and issues a location certificate.  Then the certificate, the AGs warrant, the license now go to the Secretary of the Province to draw up the patent.  After that, it all goes back to the Attorney General for examination, and if all is in order it goes to the Lieutenant General for signature.  Once signed it's returned to the Civil Secretary for the seal of the province, and to the Auditor of Land Patents to be entered on the books,  and the Auditor transmits the patent to the Provincial Registrars office, so it could be entered into the provincial register.  Then and only then would the patent for the land be issued with a list of settlement duties to be done over the next 5 years, after which time having completed the duties, the registrant would come back and with proofs of settlement and development pay another 2 pound 10 sterling for completion of the patent at which point ownership of the land was secure.  From what I understand the patent could be received in 3 years, provided all the conditions were met, and the surveyor had come back out and approved everything.

Now the settler had to find the lot through what was dense forest.  Forest so thick that in daylight under the trees was like twilight.  The lots and concessions had been laid out, but there were no roads.  A surveyor would show the way to the lot as there had to be a precise survey with the boundaries clearly established as part of the settlement agreement, and without a guide it's doubtful the settler would ever find the lot.  

I imagine that on the way to the lot, the surveyor would point out where the nearest neighbors were, but if not, he'd want to find them quick.  Knowing the neighbors and working with the neighbors was key to survival.  The neighbors would provide shelter until the settler had shelter of his own, and would provide advice and help of every sort.  In turn, the new settler would do the same for others.

James Gray did have some neighbors within a mile or two, so he wasn't completely isolated, though I'm sure it felt like it from time to time, though that would not last long; if brother William wasn't with him already, he would be soon enough, as would Alexander, with George and John not far behind.

The order in which the settlement agreement was fulfilled was up to the settler, but suggestions were laid out that were quite practical and if followed would ensure success.   Suggestions were made complete down to all the recommended tools the settler would need to purchase, what crops to grow, and how many acres of each crop to plant.   

Getting your tools and other goods required was all done by the barter system.  The settler would get what was needed on account  with a trader and in turn would pay in crops and potash.  Wood was so plentiful that other than what a settler needed for their own use for heating, cooking and construction, it would be burned.  The ash would be boiled down for potash, which was taken to the trader and shipped off to England for use in fertilizer.   It was a good system for the settlers.  There was so much wood that there was not enough use for it.   It's hard to imagine today that there was so much wood that unless it could be floated down the rivers and out the St Lawrence that it had no value.  The forests started at the lake and went on endlessly.  The logging companies had already scouted through and selected their areas for logging where there was a river nearby that would allow them to get the logs out in spring flood, and that was the lumber that was of value.

Step one in survival, the first priority was to clear an acre, get it burnt off, and build a shanty.  Think of it as the settler starter home.  The shanty was a very basic log cabin, a log box with a door, 18 feet by 20 feet with a log roof.  The roof logs were hollowed out and a row placed hollow sided up, and then another row on top hollow side down overlapping the upper edges of the log below, which kept out the weather.   Later a proper log house would be built, but this was basic shelter with a fire place at one end.   A work bee made up of the closest neighbors would have the shanty built by 8 men in 1 day.  Nobody ever refused going to a work bee, whether it was for clearing land, building a log cabin, raising a barn, bringing in crops, because doing it for your neighbor was like doing it for yourself.  The offer of food and whisky after the work was done, never hurt either.

Part of the settlement agreement was the development of the settlers half of the road along the front of the lot.  There were few roads at this time, just Yonge Street, Kingston Road and a few others, plus some town roads in the town of York, which was about 10 square blocks.   Road development depended on the settlers.  The settler had to remove all the timber and underbrush making a 10 foot wide swath as mapped out by the surveyors, cut the stumps low enough that a wagon could pass over, then sow with grass seed.  If the area was marshy, then planks or logs would be laid over the wet areas to build a level surface.  As you can imagine though, if you didn't have any neighbors your length of road will not be attached to anything until somebody settles the lot next to you.

Across the Pond: The Adventure Begins

The story passed down in the Gray family was that the first of the brothers, James, came to Upper Canada in 1816, with the others following over the next few years.   James Gray, the veteran soldier of the West Indies and War of 1812, after being honorably discharged from his 7 years of military service in Scotland in April of 1815, received his grant of land free and clear in 1816, and you had to show up in person to register your claim.  As a soldier there were none of the grant requirements that other settlers had, that had to be obliged over 5 years before getting clear title.  Whether he came alone or whether one of his brothers came with him, we don’t know, as there are no records of when some of the brothers arrived, but James did convince 4 of his brothers and his mother to make the journey later, with the last of them crossing in 1825.

Greenock, Scotland, where the Grays would most likely have sailed from…17 miles from Paisley

Another family story was the ‘the voyage took 16 weeks by sailing vessel, the boat drifted back, yet persisted and came on.’  The family lore didn’t elaborate on who’s trip that was, whether it was James or one of his brothers.   There was however, the ship ‘The Good Intent’ that took 2 to 3 months to make the journey in 1816; perhaps that was the ship that James was on.

From some reports of journeys from captains and passengers, the passage could be delayed by uncertain winds sending the ship the wrong direction, doldrums, storms, damage to the ship, fog, and fields of ice that held the ship fast for weeks with no forward momentum.  Weather was particularly bad in 1816. It was the ‘year with no summer’ due to heavy atmospheric dust from a volcanic eruption in Indonesia blocking the sunlight.  There was snow in Upper Canada in June and frost every month.  It must have been a nasty, damp, cold trip in 1816.

Ships records for this time period are sketchy, with most ships with steerage passengers simply listing ‘and 16 settlers’ or ‘and 29 passengers’ so we don’t know which ship James would have sailed on, but it would have been a brig, a 2 masted square rigged sailing ship used for the lumber trade coming from Canada, and rigged out by the ships carpenter with bunks two high on each side of the boat below decks for settlers for the return trip to Canada.  The bunks were 6 1/2 feet long and 18 inches wide.  Passengers provided their own straw filled mattress covered in cotton ticking, sheet and blanket.  They also prepared their own meals on board so they had to provision themselves for the journey, which under normal circumstances took 7 weeks.  The steerage was only 5 1/2 feet high so bumping ones head would have been a common event.  I imagine James, at 5’11” when he couldn’t be on deck, spent much of his time in steerage sitting, or lying down. Passage in steerage was 3 pounds 10 shillings and that got you your berth and 3 quarts of fresh water a day.  For another 3 pounds you could have your meals prepared.   As a veteran though, James sailed for free.

a two masted brig

As a soldier who’d already been to Canada, James would have had some idea of what food to take for the journey, but perhaps as a bachelor he opted for the meal plan/ships provisions!  Some letters I’ve found from settlers in Upper Canada to family in Scotland talk about the difficulty of cooking on board, as you had to fight to take your turn in the ships cookhouse.  One letter from a man to his brother suggested bringing enough salt pork and salt fish, oatmeal, potatoes, hard baked bread, and a little whiskey for provisions; whereas a letter from a woman had a much longer list with suggested amounts for each week and all the pots, pans, kettle, plate and cutlery.  5 pounds of oatmeal for a week seems extreme to me, but apparently it was common in Scotland for people to make enough oatmeal for a week, let it set up in a kitchen drawer, then slice it for their mid day meal, and they’d cook up fresh oatmeal for breakfast each day.  So perhaps 5 pounds of oatmeal for a week wasn’t overly much.

Both suggested just rough clothes for the journey, nothing fancy, as anything nice would be ruined by the salt water; and to take plenty of sturdy woolen clothes and practical boots for Canada.  Many Scottish emigrants to Upper Canada would come with nothing other than some clothes, their bed roll, an ax and a bible.

And so, across to Canada, up the St Lawrence to Quebec City.  It must have been fascinating sailing up the river, the beauty of the shores with the thick forests, pretty farms along the shores. At Quebec City, where they must have been amazed and impressed by majesty of the citadel up on the cliff, the passengers disembarked and took a steamship to Montreal which was as far as the boats could go, this was a relatively quick trip done in 36 hours.  Going back to Quebec only took 24 hours if you ever wanted to go the other way.

steamboat from Montreal to Kingston

After that came the Durham boat journey.  The Durham boat is an open boat, 8 feet wide by 40 to 60 feet long, with a sail and a crew of 10 voyageurs to pole the boat up the river, and in some sections of the river, the passengers would have to get out and walk along the shore, while the voyageurs pulled the boat through the rapids, the pace was very slow and it took 12 days.  The boat would be pulled ashore at night and those that didn’t want to sleep on the boat could sleep on the shore.  When going up river, the boat would have to stop every 1 1/2 hours for the crew to rest, and the boat would stop for meals with everybody out to cook their meals on the shore.  If you ever wanted to reverse the trip, going downstream took 3 to 4 days, a dangerous trip shooting the rapids.

St Lawrence Durham boat

Finally arriving at Kingston, Ontario, now with a walk of 166 miles to go!  There would be steamboats from Kingston to Toronto in just a few years, as well as a stage along the Kingston Road, but the stage was very rough on what was in many sections a corduroy (log) road, so most people would prefer the steamboat. At this point in time, there was no flour mill in York, and the nearest flour mill was in Kingston, so if you wanted flour, you had to bring your wheat to Kingston and then your flour back to York, so this track was well used by the settlers from York.  James brother William would see this opportunity and build a flour mill on the Don River.

Most of the Gray brothers would make this same journey and walk the same trail.  Another bit of family lore is that when Alexander Gray, James younger brother, would walk this trail, he came across a clearing with a half dozen log cabins and approaching a lady milking her cow, he asked, “Hou far is it tae Muddy York?”  She replied, ‘Ye’re standin i the middle o’t. laddie.”

The Kington Road, little more than a muddy path

The population of York (which would eventually become Toronto) in 1816 was 720 people.