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Lake of Bays Heritage Foundation RUTH MARTIN PAPERS BOOK #1: General Muskoka History PART I --- 1879 ATLAS / NORTHERN LAKES --- 1886 / FREE GRANT LANDS 1868 1. Overview 1879 Atlas …………………………………….. Ruth Martin ………………………………. 1 2. Muskoka & Parry Districts …………………………….. W.E. Hamilton (Atlas) ……………..... 2 3. Muskoka and Northern Lakes (part) ………………. 1886 …………………………………………. 27 4. Free Grant Lands of Canada 1871 ………………….. Thomas McMurray …………….... …. 31 PART II --- General History – published (extracts) 1, Muskoka Memories……………………………………... Ann Hathaway (1849-) ……………. 36 2. Algonquin Story ………………………………………….. Audrey Saunders ……………………… 37 3. English Bloods …………………………………………….. Roger Vardon …………………………… 39 4. History of Muskoka …………………………………….. Capt. L. R. Fraser ……………………… 43 PART III --- Homestead Books & Township Papers Free Grants and Homestead ……………………………….. Ontario Archives ……………………….. 51 PART IV --- Haliburton/Baysville/Local Government 1. Early Days in Haliburton (excerpts) ………………. by H. R. Cummings 1963 ……………. 75 2. Northern Exposure (excerpts) ……………………….. by Rev. Richard Warder …… ………. 76 3. The Light of Other Years (excerpts) ………………. Gravenhurst History …………………….80 4. Muskoka District Local Government Review – 1968 a research report…………………. 86 Guide Book and Atlas of Muskoka and Parry Sound Districts Guide Book and Atlas of Muskoka and Parry Sound Districts Maps by John Rogers Sketches by S. Penson Toronto, H. R. Page and Company Around this are various sketches of the Northern Districts Entered according to the Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year 1879, by H. R. Page and Company, in the office of the Minister of Agriculture Large map of Lake Couchiching and the Lakes of Muskoka, and route via the Northern Railway of Canada, to accompany the Northern Lakes Guide. 1 MUSKOKA AND PARRY SOUND DISTRICTS By W. E. Hamilton Introductory The Free Grant Districts of Muskoka and Parry Sound are of deep interest to older settlers of Ontario, the provinces, the United States and Europe. In addition to what may be called the emigrating class, an increasing multitude of tourists make Muskoka their temporary home. There are hunters, trappers and anglers, and many other travellers who visit Muskoka in ever increasing numbers. Visitors have asked for descriptive maps of Muskoka to guide us, before we start for the north and to retain as a souvenir of our journey”. Mr. W. E. Hamilton, an emigration agent in Bracebridge reports a continual stream of such applicants for maps, and descriptive matter in Muskoka, while the Crown Lands Agent, Mr. A. White, is similarly besieged. The publication of the present Atlas is designed to satisfy the demands of land seekers, immigrants and tourists for a trustworthy series of maps which embrace the whole Free Grant territory. The maps have been lithographed from original drawings made by Mr. John Rogers and his assistants, who personally traversed the land and revised and corrected the Government surveys and topographical detail. The Government township maps were useless to settlers because the roads were not plotted on them. Land hunters can now map out their journey before leaving for Bracebridge, Rosseau or Parry Sound. Maps drawn by S. P. Penson documents places of interest in the district of Muskoka. The maps were prepared with minute scrutiny in a descriptive matter, and were considered a subsidiary to the Atlas proper. One should not expect an elaborate treatise on Muskoka, which would have enormously increased the cost of the Atlas, without any proportionate boon to the public. It is hoped that the maps will interest the reader’s attention, and peak interest in the sort of a country he is about to visit. All available sources of information, including the “Undeveloped Portions of Ontario”, published by Kirkwood and Murphy of Toronto, have been utilized. In the composition of the work, the difficulty has been altogether out of proportion to its bulk when printed. When the author traversed ground outside his own personal knowledge, he was obliged to go over huge piles of printed matter. Muskoka has for its principal boundaries the Bobcageon Road on the east, Georgian Bay on the west, Lake Nipissing and the French River on the north, and the Severn River on the south. Our neighbours therefore are the older settled portions of the Counties of Simcoe and Victoria, a portion of the County of Peterborough and Algoma. On the north, there seems to be no bar to our ultimate advancement, till we reach a climate too cold and in too high latitude for agriculture. It is well known that most excellent land lies on the north of Lake Nipissing. The extent, as computed from the areas of the various surveyed townships in Muskoka and Parry Sound, given in “The Undeveloped Lands of Ontario”, is 5500 square miles. But, taking in unsurveyed townships and considering the ultimate territorial heritage of our people, the area of Muskoka is approximately 10,000 square miles. Mr. J. C. Miller, compared Muskoka’s territorial settlement with some of the ancient kingdoms of Europe and American states, or provinces. Aiding ourselves by a table kindly furnished by his son, (Upper Canada Collage) we see that the Free Grant Districts are, in round numbers, five times as large as either the Province of Prince Edward Island, Delaware in the United States, five times the size of Connecticut, one fifth larger than New Jersey or Massachusetts, one eleventh the size of Belgium, one sixth of the size of Holland, and one third of Denmark or Switzerland. 2 The comparative statistics of these old, settled countries cannot be dismissed without a glance at their respective populations, as forecasting the future of the vital density of Muskoka, and the numerical limit to which we may aspire within the sober bounds of reasonable hope taking the limiting extremes of density of population among the nations, states and provinces above cited. We find that our Free Grant Districts could sustain 460,000 people, judged by the standard of Prince Edward Island, or 4,400,000 by that of Belgium. The immediate returns from Switzerland and Denmark would suggest populations of 1,670,000 and 1,200,000 respectively. My estimate therefore, published two years ago, in the “Undeveloped Lands of Ontario” of 100,000 souls whereof 80,000 should live by agriculture and 20,000 by manufacturing, commerce and other pursuits, as the population which we might ultimately reach, is within a safe margin of sober forecast. We are reaching that limit by gigantic strides. Fourteen years ago, a small church would have held all the people from the Severn to the Georgian Bay. Seven years later we could have filled Spurgeon’s Tabernacle. Now, we outnumber the white population of British Columbia. The quotations of experts, place the present population of these Free Grant Districts between 26,000 and 30,000. The writer leans more to the latter than the former figure. In his published estimate, two years ago, he called the population, “over 20,000”. Remembering the large intervening immigration and guided by the returns of the number of electors at the recent general election, he rather leans to the number 30,000 as our present limit. The district is so rapidly filling up as to necessitate a quinquennial census. We shall not however, have long to wait for the next decennial enumeration, and in 1881 will show the Free Grant System to have been a pronounced success. Among the minor curiosities of our census may be mentioned the possession of pagan Indians, real bonafide and tolerably picturesque pagans in the Parry Sound District. As to the distribution of our people by nationalities, we are thoroughly mixed. We have pioneers from almost every country in Europe except Turkey, the British Isles, Germany and Scandinavia. It is also hoped a fair share of Mennonites will emigrate to Muskoka. In addition, we have of course, large numbers of native Canadians, the average of five. Looking at a voters’ list at random, it would now be an even bet, whether the name of a given man is Canadian or from the British Isles. We have also a sprinkling of intelligent Americans and we would like more. Within the last three years, the immigration has shown a preponderating Canadian element. Do you want to know what sort of country Muskoka looks like? If you get a bird’s eye view of the region from a balloon, soaring over the centre, you would see between the Severn River and the Georgian Bay and stretching northward to Lake Nipissing, a land of forests seamed with open spaces where the axe had let in the light of day, with large clearings, free from stumps, in its older parts and increasing inroads even in the forests of its northern fringes. From that towering height the rock would not obtrude itself strongly on the view; a peculiarity of Muskoka rock, as compared for instance with that of the three kingdoms, being the facility with which trees find a foothold in the most tiny crevices, and the rapidity with which they clothe the naked crag. But, till you soar above the region of cloudland, one great “thing of beauty” and joy to the husbandman, a countless chain of lakes would gleam here and there and everywhere, pitting the surface of the land with liquid mirrors of every conceivable shape and contortion of outline. Muskoka is primarily lake land, more than the clear sky land, now immortalized in the pages of “all the Year Round”. Some of these lakes are connected chains of navigable waters and others are isolated; while some few seem to have no outlet, nor any supply from rivers, being fed no doubt, mainly by underground springs. They vary in size, from a tiny pond, which is only a lake by courtesy, to the huge proportions of Lake Nipissing. Some, resembling Muskoka Lake, are dark from some unexplained cause, while Lake of Bays and Lake Joseph are clear and limpid.

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