REMEMBER THIS: How Georgina came to be

Newmarkettoday.ca
July 24, 2023

Georgina, although incorporated as a town, also operates as a township with the various communities in the area sharing a common administration. Located in the south-central area of Ontario, it is the northernmost municipality in the Regional Municipality of York and is bound to the north by Lake Simcoe.

The town/township was created with the merger of the Village of Sutton, the Township of Georgina and the Township of North Gwillimbury in 1971 and was incorporated in 1986.

North Gwillimbury had previously been part of Georgina, having become its own township in 1826. You may remember that Gwillimbury took its name from the family of Elizabeth Simcoe, née Gwillim.

This article shall examine the communities of Keswick, Roches Point, Sutton, Pefferlaw, Udora, Baldwin, Brownhill, Belhaven, Virginia, Port Bolster, the three Indigenous islands, and Sibbald’s Point.

There are also a variety of beach communities on the shores of Lake Simcoe, such as Island Grove, Elm Grove, Virginia Beach McRae Beach, Duclos Point, Balfour Beach, Brighton Beach, and Willow Beach. I will be doing a separate article on these beach communities.

Let us begin with Keswick. The community was originally named Medina and was founded by Chris Armstrong.  It was initially part of the Township of North Gwillimbury before becoming part of the Township of Georgina. Some sources indicate it was renamed after Keswick, Cumbria in England.  When I was a child, Keswick was considered part of cottage country, serving the vacation needs of those who lived in the Toronto area. Today it is a thriving community with major development taking place, and its population has boomed.

Roches Point was named after the Irish settler James O’Dell Roche, a relative of author Mazo de la Roche. He obtained the land in the area sometime before 1812 and sold it after being forced to retreat during the War of 1812. It had become a Government Reserve by 1822, and the name soon disappeared, becoming part of the new community of Keswick, beginning in 1824. After the War of 1812, the Roches Point area was considered a possible alternative capital to replace York (Toronto), given its location farther from the American border.

Sutton is about two kilometres south of Lake Simcoe and was amalgamated with North Gwillimbury in 1971 to form Georgina. Like most of this area, the first inhabitants were the Indigenous peoples, as Sutton historically was a rich area for hunting, fishing and gathering.

James O’Brien Bourchier was the first settler in 1821 and built a saw and grist mill. The community was originally named Bourchier’s Mills but was renamed Sutton West in 1885, chosen possibly for Sutton-on-Hull in East Yorkshire. Today it is usually called just Sutton.

The hamlet of Pefferlaw was founded in the late 1820s by Capt. William Johnson, who was a British naval officer who served at the Battle of Waterloo. Pefferlaw was first called Johnson’s Mills. In 1851, when the post office opened, he renamed the area Pefferlaw, a Gaelic word meaning “a beautiful greensward,” a field among the heather, part of his old homestead.

By 1832, Johnson had established a sawmill, woollen mill, and gristmill. The first store in the village of Pefferlaw was built in August 1833. Robert Johnson, brother of William, would take over the store and build a large, two-story red brick house on the edge of the bank beside the store, which still stands today. The second store in Pefferlaw was built by George Johnson, son of Capt.William, in 1856.

The C.N.R. Railway arrived in Pefferlaw in 1906.  Pefferlaw had its share of hotels, literally one at every crossroad. The Morning Glory Hotel was built in the 1860s and stood for many years on the site of the Morning Glory Public School. The tavern was well patronized by river drivers, lumber workers, and stagecoach passengers and drivers. The Mansion House Hotel was built in 1884. When it changed owners in 1906 the establishment was renamed Hotel Belvedere.

The hamlet of Udora was originally known as Snoddon Corners, taken from the location of the Snoddon Hotel. William Snodden laid out village lots in 1854 and built a hotel. In 1862, the community was renamed Udora after settler Udora Bret-hour Webster, sometimes misspelled as ‘Eudora’.

In the 1950s, the Independent Toronto Estonian Women’s Association purchased a parcel of land on the northwest side of Udora, divided the land into 150 subdivided lots for summer cottages serving the Estonian population from Toronto and named the grounds Jõekääru, River Bend in English, named for the Pefferlaw River that runs through the grounds. Local street names within the grounds tend to be Estonian.

The cottages brought the Estonian Children’s Camp, still present to this day teaching Estonian language immersion. In the centre of Udora (or downtown), there sits a general store that still doubles as a functioning post office.

Baldwin emerged as a hamlet in the early 1800s, thanks to the arrival of a prosperous mill on the banks of the Black River. The first two Baldwin Mills were destroyed by fire. The third mill was relocated from Keswick in 1879 by its owner William Heise. This mill would cease operations in 1968 but is still intact today. Baldwin reached its zenith in the late 1800s when it was a stop on the Lake Simcoe Junction Railway.

Brown Hill got its start around 1860 when the first settlers arrived. The first general store was opened in 1875 by Paul Chappelle. The big push came in 1878 when the Grand Trunk Railway built a line through the settlement and named the ensuing station Blake Station. That was followed in 1886 with the establishment of the post office. It is believed that Brown Hill took its name from John Brown, the settlement’s first postmaster.

Jackson’s Point was part of a naval land grant made to Capt. William Bourchier, commander of the Provincial Marine’s Lake Huron establishment out of Penetanguishene Naval Yard in 1819, and was initially known as Bourchier’s Point. It was later renamed for John Mills Jackson, who settled there in 1812.

Jackson would settle the land, which was first used as a wharf facility for schooners travelling Lake Simcoe. Jackson acquired the land from James O’Brien Bourchier, brother of William and father of William’s wife, Amelia Jackson. As transportation improved by steamers and with the arrival of railroads by 1877, seasonal residents began to settle in the area.

Before good roads began to provide means to transport of goods and people to the village, the railway was the best means to get to Jackson’s Point. From 1907 to 1930, the Metropolitan Street Railway Lake Simcoe Line provided radial passenger rail service to Toronto. A second freight rail service operated from 1877 to 1929 under the Lake Simcoe Junction Railway, which terminated at a shed near the northern end of Lorne Park.

The hamlet of Virginia was established in 1874 and was named originally called Frenchtown. When the post office was opened it became Virginia.

The hamlet of Port Bolster takes its name from an early settler Thomas Bolster, who arrived in the area around 1860.

Roaches Point was the first part of Keswick because the Keswick post office was established here in 1836. However, in 1870 it was renamed Roach’s Point after settler James Roche and the spelling error was only corrected 36 years later in 1906. In 1950, the apostrophe was officially dropped from the name.

In any history of an area, it is essential to document the Indigenous peoples who were the original inhabitants long. The Chippewas of Georgina Island, an Anishinaabe Nation on the southern shores of Lake Simcoe have inhabited the Lake Simcoe region (Georgina Township) long before the arrival of the
settlers mentioned above.

In previous articles, I highlighted the treaties initiated in the time of John Graves Simcoe that put in motion the theft of these lands, so I will not go over it here, but you can check out the story at newmarkettoday.ca/remember-this.

After the War of 1812, Snake Island, along with Fox Island and Georgina Island, was purchased by Chief Joseph Snake, a member of the Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation, from the British. In 1830, in response to our government's attempts to colonize the Chippewa people, Chief Snake would move his people back to Snake Island and then to Georgina Island in 1860 as the community grew. The islands had once been the headquarters of his father, Chief Renatus Snake.

Georgina Island, Fox Island, and Snake Island are inhabited by band members with homes along the shores. There are no roads and old dirt trails connect the residents. The only way to reach the island is by private boats to docks in front of their homes. Winter travel is by snowmobile and ATV, as the lake generally freezes over. The interior of the island is covered by trees.

Before the completion of the Trent Severn Waterway, the water level on Lake Simcoe was quite low, enabling the island residents to cross in wagons or walk in ankle-deep water to the mainland. However, once it was completed, the water table increased by several feet.

The hamlet of Sibbald’s Point owes its existence to the Sibbald Family, in particular Susan Mein Sibbald. Having followed her two sons to Canada in 1835, Susan fell in love with the beauty of William Kingdom Rains’ land near Jackson’s Point. She would purchase about 600 acres, which included several cottages. Sibbald moved into the largest cottage, renamed it Eildon Hall after their Scottish estate, and gave her sons the task of turning the area into a comfortable British estate.

In 1836, upon the death of her husband, Sibbald settled her affairs in Scotland and returned with her three youngest sons to the new Eildon Hall in Upper Canada. She would join other area landowners and petition the government for a school, church and burial ground. The school became a reality in 1837.

She donated 66 acres along the Lake Simcoe shore for a church and cemetery. In 1838, work began on St. George's Church, a wooden log church, while holding services in Eildon Hall. In August 1839, the first St. George’s church was dedicated, a fine log building with stained glass windows. No images of that church seem to remain, but one of the stained glass windows has survived, designed by Elizabeth Gwillim Simcoe, wife of John Graves Simcoe, the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada and her daughters. In 1845, that window was installed in St George's Church.

After her death in 1866, her sons built a more substantial church in tribute. They moved the original church closer to the Lake Simcoe shore to continue the services while they worked on the new stone one. The stones were shipped on a scow from a quarry near Barrie to Jackson’s Point, then transported by wagon along the lakeshore road to the building site.

The stained glass window was removed from the old church and set above the communion table of the stone church when the church was opened in 1877.

Susan Sibbald’s descendants held the land until 1951 when they sold part of the estate to the County of York to be opened as a park. In 1956, the county handed it over to the province, and the next year, Sibbald Point Provincial Park was opened to the public. Eildon Hall remains within the park designated as the Sibbald Memorial Museum with an Ontario Historical plaque in commemoration.

Sources: Susan Sibbald Upper Canada Pioneer by Anita Mae Draper, The Toronto Star and Newmarket Era, Town of Georgina website, St. George's Church brochure, Previous Articles on NewmarketToday, Oral History Interviews Conducted by Richard MacLeod

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 NewmarketToday, conducts heritage lectures and walking tours of local interest, and leads local oral history interviews.