Early Post Offices of the Hamilton Area

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Sent in by David;

In 1793 Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe of Upper Canada ordered Dimdas Street to be built along Lake Ontario, but "several miles inland beyond cannon shot from the shore, to the head of hiiltemix navigation at Coote's Paradise, and from the latter to the Forks of the Thames (London), A town plot was reserved at Coote's Paradise.
The town of Dundas nestles In a valley cut in the Niagara Escarpment. One of the earliest white visitors, Captain Coote, spent all of his spare moments hunting in the marshlands near Ihe mouth of this valley. The marsh acquired the name Coote's Paradise, a name also given to the first settlement in Ihe valley. Its earliest settlers came in 1787.
Between 1786 and 1790 the first settlers in Ancaster Township in Wentworth County as are the other townships in this article, located west of Fifty Mile Creek, between the mountain and the Jake, In 1791 Richard Rtnsley, the original settler in what was to become west end Hamilton, and James Wilson built a saw and grist mill, the beginning of Ancaster village. St. Jean Baptiste Rousseau moved to Ancaster in 1796 ami bought out Beasley's interest in the mill. Richard and Samuel Halt built more mills there in 1798.
By 1803, the mills of Ancaster, just named after a parish in Lincolnshire, England, and a general store then began, were attracting farmers and lumbermen from miles around.
The town of Dundas, in the southeast corner of West Flamborough Township, was laid out in 1801. Captain John Hall was its first permanent settler. About 1797 the Mordens, United Empire Loyalists, had settled in its vicinity, and along Crook's Hollow. Between 1801 and 1S08 Richard Hatt bought 1,0000 acres in the valley, becoming the owner of all the waler power on Morden's Creek. He began the usual pioneer industries, and Dundns began to grow,
In 1814 the government organized weekly mail trips from Montreal to Niagara, and selected Dundas as a distributing point for mail to the country farther west. The fortnightly excursions lo Amherstburg were effected by sleighs or on foot, depending on the season, For the first two years the post master at Dundas was J. Second. From 1816 to 1819 the head of industry himself, Richard Hatl, was postmaster.
W. H. Coulson was Dundas postmaster to 1825, when E. Leslie and Sons took over. The future rebel leader William Lyon Mackenzie had been a partner with Edward Leslie in his store from 1820 to 1S22.
In 1813 James Crooks built a grist mill with four run of stone on Morden's Creek between the future Greensville and West Flamborough Village. In the next five years Crook's Hollow received a sawmill, general store, cooperage, and blacksmith shop. In 1826 Crooks established the first paper mill in Upper Canada there. The year before, on April 29, he sent a letter, now in the Ontario Archives, to Surveyor - General Thomas Ridout, York. It was postmarked Dundas UC, AP 29, in two straight lines, using very small type.
A letter from E. Leslie & Sons to A. M. Chisholm, Burlington (Smith - Chisholm Papers, Ontario Archives), written February 3, 1835, is postmarked with a small double circle broken by DUNDAS, with "4 Feb." written in. When Crooks wrole to Samuel Slree!, Niagara Falls, on March 25, 1840, his letter was postmarked by a large double circle broken by DUNDAS. U.C., with the Jute set in typo.
The first white man to sellle on Ihe site of Hamilton was Robert Land, early in 1778, having fled the American colonies for taking sides with the Rritish. He took up land in Barton Township from the bay to the mountain, cunt of what was lo bceome the centre of Hamilton.
Olher immigrants shunned the swampy margin of Burlington Bay, preferring the higher land in Ancaster ;md Barton. Some went east lo Sfiltfleet Township, where they built up Stoney Creek. The creek itself, after falling over the mountain, dashes over rocky ledges, hence the name. A crooked road ran below the mountain from Queens-ton through this village, and around Ihe lake to York. In 1913, when the Battle of Sioney Creek was fought, there were already two taverns on this road, on the creek bank a sawmill.
Still, the site of Hamilton seems to have been a kind of center for these places. A lodge of Freemasons from Ancaster, Barton and Saltfleet, organized in 1795, held their meetings at Smith's Tavern, the first on the site of the future city.
James Durand purchased 100 acres in Barton Township, the heart of present day Hamilton.
In 1813 a fugitive from the war along the Niagara frontier, George Hamilton, fled to the head of the lake and bought Durand's farm. He laid it out in lots for a village. Some of the inhabitants wished it to be named Burlington, but the majority determined that it should be called Hamilton, after the man with the greatest interest in it. In 1816 the government chose it as the county town of the new Gore district.
The next impulse which the progress of Hamilton received was the beginning of work, in 1823 on a canal between Burlington Bay and Lake Ontario. Its construction required a large number of men and horses, who made their headquarters at Hamilton. A large number of houses were built, and warehouses and wharves for the lake trade. A post office was opened at Hamilton in 1825, with W. B. Sheldon as the first postmaster.
Richard Halt's main clerk was Pierre Desjardins. In 1826 he organized the Desjardins Canal Company, to build a ship channel from Dundas through Coote's Paradise to Burlington Bay, completed in 1837. As the canal neared completion Dundas grew rapidly, but, since the other canal across the Burlington sandbar had been completed in 1832, Hamilton had become the head of navigation, and, while Dundas reached over 700 population in 1835, its rival Hamilton was already over1 2,000 that year.
Hamilton changed postmasters quickly at first, A. R. Smith taking over in 1827, and J. McA. Cameron in 1828, but in 1831 Edmund Ritchie took over for what was to be a long regime. A letter from Ritchie on mercantile business to Messrs. Smith & Chisholm, Wellington Square (Burlington), written in 1833, is postmarked with a small double circle broken by HAMILTON, in red, with "Sep 25" written in. When Gunn & Brown, Port Hamilton, wrote to Smith & Chisholm on January 24, 1843, their letter was postmarked by a large single circle HAMILTON U.C., JAN 24, large type being used, in red. This kind of postmark was only used in the largest centers.

To be continued
 

scotto

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Ancaster post office was also established in 1825, when a mail route to Brantford came into being. John Burwell was postmaster, replaced in 1831 by James Chep. Job Lodor had settled in Ancaster early in 1820. Securing control of the water power rights in the hills, he founded an empire of grist and sawmills. A letter from him to H. Smith, Post Master, Wellington Square, written December 29, 1836, is postmarked with a small double circle broken by ANCASTER, in black, with "29th Decem, 36" written in.
Stoney Creek post office was opened in 1826. In the late ]860's its spelling was changed to Stony Creek.
After the opening of the Desjardins Canal the road from Dundas to Waterloo became very busy, and villages sprang up along it, such as Bullock's Corners and Flamborough Village. The latter, west of sideroad 5, was first settled in 1828 by Frank McElroy, who opened a tavern there. Its post office was opened in 1840 as West Flamboro. A letter from James Crooks sent that year to Samuel Street, Niagara Falls, has a manuscript postmark from the new post office: "West Flamboro, I0th June 1840" written in two lines, joined by a bracket. When he wrote on November 7, 1842 that letter was already postmarked with a medium-sized double circle broken WEST FLAMBORO, U.C., with the date written in. In the 1880's the postal spelling was lengthened to West Flamborough.
In West Flamborough Township from 1840 on the Brock Road, now the county road between lots 6 and 7, was an important thoroughfare. Matthew Peebles settled on it north of the 7th concession road in 1842. He began a store in which in 1851 Strabane post office was established. It was named by residents who had come from Ireland. It had also been called Nairn by Scottish inhabitants, but there was another place with the same name, and it had to be dropped for postal reasons.
Mill Grove post office was opened in West Flamborough in 1852, at the corner of the 5th concession road and the 18th sideroad. The next year Greensville came into being postally on the Brock Road a half mile north of its beginning at Bullock's Corners, named after John Green, who had come in 1797, and built a grist mill midway between the two future hamlets, the naming taking place at a meeting in the school in 1846.
In Ancaster Township Albert Town post office existed from 1852 to 1854. It reopened in 1857 as Alberton, at the 4th concession road and 24th sideroad. The same township got Jerseyville in 1852, at the 3rd concession road and 18th sideroad.
It was settled about 1800 by the Howells, who, with other immigrants of the time came from New Jersey, hence its name. The first store was opened in 1852 by Henry F. Young, who became postmaster.
Saltfleet Township saw Tapleytown post office opened in 1852, at the 7th concession road and 16th sideroad.
Where the Brock Road ended at the Hamilton to Guelph Road, in West Flamborough, general merchant Patrick Freel laid out Freelton in 1S53. A post office was opened next year, the Reid Brothers delivering the mail, one bringing it from Hamilton, the other from Guelph, meeting in Freelton.
Carluke post office was opened in Ancaster Township in 1854, on the south side of the 7th concession road in lots 40 and 41.
Among the first settlers on the Mountain in Barton Township had been Cornelius and Samuel Ryckman. On the Hamilton and Caledonia Gravel and Plank Road (James Street) at the southern boundary of the township, Ryckman's Corners post office was opened in 1854, with Hamilton Ryckman postmaster. Two years earlier Mount Albion post office had been established in Saltfleet Township on the 7th concession road a quarter mile east of the western boundary. Three sawmills and a grist mill had given it its former name of Albion Mills. The first post office was kept in the house of the miller, James R. Cook. Mail was brought every Friday afternoon by a carrier on horseback from Ryckman's Corners, four miles west. There it was received from the stage coach running between Hamilton and Caledonia. On the south boundary of Barton, west of the 2nd sideroad, Hannon opened in 1854, with Joseph Hannon postmaster.
With the coming of the railway in the 1850's fruit growing in the Niagara Peninsula east of Hamilton flourished, including Saltfleet Township. At Winona a post office called Ontario was opened in 1851. It became Winona in 1867, when the province with the same name was organized. The same township got Tweed side post office in 1861, at the 7lh concession road and 2nd sideroad.
Among the earliest Loyalists to view the site of Hamilton had been Charles Depew, who coasted along the southern shore of Lake Ontario and landed on what was to become the Depew farm, between Ottawa Street and Gage Avenue, in 1785. The second postmaster of Bartonville, established in 1857 on the Hamilton and Stoney Creek Gravel Road (King Street) just east of Kenilworth Avenue, was Sidney F. Depew. P, J, Depew was deputy postmaster and grocer. In the second half of the 1860's storekeeper W. J. Gage became postmaster.
James Gage had settled in 1791 on the Stoney Greet, and turned to the plough. Within a decade he had added a general store to his log house. Progress tempted him to move to Hamilton in 1835. There are many reminders of the name in the city.
Flamborough East post offices have already been covered in the article Early Post Offices of the Oakville-Burlington Area (BNA Topics April 1963), but are in that township which was inadvertently omitted, so will he mentioned here. From 186S to 1869 Bakersville post office was kept by John Baker, proprietor of the Bakerville Hotel, on Grindstone Creek, on the west side of the road north from Waterdown, north of the 5th concession road.
In 1865 also opened Alfrida, on the southern boundary road of Saltfleet, west of the 24th sideroad. 1870 saw Hayesland appear on the Brock Road of West Flamborough, at the 5th concession road. In the old hotel was the post office, and mail was dispatched to several hamlets from there. The mail and express coach, horse drawn, would stop there for refreshments. Michael Hayes was postmaster, Renforth was opened in Ancaster on the eastern boundary south of the fifth concession road in 1871. The same township got Weir in 1877, at its north boundary road and the 6th sideroad.
In 1837 William Bullock built a hotel at the beginning of the Brock Road at the present Highway 8, the nucleus of Bullock's Corners, in West Flamborough. After 1841 he erected a grist and saw mill. Jacob Cochenour had already settled at the southwest corner after 1797. There was an effort made in 1853 to have a post office there called Cochenourville, but nearby Greensville got it. However, 20 years later Bullock's Corners did get a post office, which lasted until 1901.
 

scotto

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Hamilton Beach is a long sandbar at the western extremity of Lake Ontario, cutting it off from Burlington Bay. For 100 years pleasure-seekers have made their way to its sandy shores. There also grew up a permanent population of fishermen on the lake side and market gardeners along the bay side. When Saltfleet Township was surveyed in 1788 Hamilton Beach was reserved as a military area. It continued as crown property until 1884.
In 1885 Burlington. Beach post office was opened on the south half of this sand strip. It temporarily became Elsinore Park in 1892, but later that year was renamed Hamilton Beach.
From 1888 to 1892 there was a North Barton post office, with A. W. Swazie as postmaster, near the northwest corner of Barton Street and Sherman Avenue,
In 1887 Hamilton got its first sub-post office, James Street, at the corner which is now the Canadian National Railways station grounds. In 1891, at the age of 65, when most men retire, Adam Brown became postmaster of Hamilton. He was to hold that post to the age of 97. The same year of 1891 two more sub post offices were added, Pearl Street, at the southeast corner of that street with King Street and Steven Street, at the northwest corner of that street with King Street. In 1904 a]! its sub-post offices dropped their names and got numbers instead.
Chedoke was opened in 1890 in Barton on the road to Caledonia, a mile above the edge of the Mountain. In 1893 Ancaster got Southcote at the 4th concession road and 46th sideroad. Fruitland was established in 1894 at the third concession road and sixteenth sideroad. The same township got Vinemount in 1895, at the 4th concession road and 8th sideroad.
At the junction of the roads in lot 39, concession 1 of Ancaster, Mineral Springs post office was opened in 1900. The same j'ei'.r Harper's Corners was established. Erroneously listed in the postal guides as being in West Flamborough, it was actually on the East Flamborough side of what is now Highway 6, at the Rth concession road. Harness maker Michael Carson was postmaster.
 
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