TORONTO OF OLD. 235 



distance from Newmarket," the Captain says, "which is about three miles to the right of Tonge 

 Street, near its termination at the Holland Landing, on a river of that name running into Lake 

 Simeoe, is a settlement of religious enthusiasts, who have chosen the most fertile part of Upper 

 Canada, the country near and for miles round Newmarket, for the seat of their eartlily taber- 

 nacle. Here numbers of deluded people have placed themselves under the temporal and 

 spiritual charge of a high priest, who calls himself Da\id. His real name is Da-\-id 'Willsoii. 

 The Temjile (as the buMing appropriated to the celebration of their rites is called,) is served 

 by this man, who affects a primitive dress, and has a train of virgin-ministrants clotlied in 

 white. He travels about occasionally to preach at towns and ^^.llages, in a waggon, followed 

 by others, covered with white tilt-cloths ; but what his peculiar tenets are beyond that of 

 dancing and singing, and imitating David the King, I really cannot tell, for it is altogether too 

 farcical to last long : but Mr. David seems to understand clearly, as far as the temporal con- 

 cerns of his infatuated followers go, that the old-fashioned signification of nuum and tuum are 

 religiously centered in his own sanctum. It was natural that such a field should produce tares 

 in abundance." The following notice of the "Children of Peace" occurs in Patrick Swift's 

 Almanac for 1834, penned, probably, with an eye to votes in the neighbourhood of Sharon, or 

 Hojie, as the place is here called. "This society," the Almanac reports, "numbers about 280 

 members in Hope, east of Newmarket. They have also stated places of preaching, at the Old 

 Court House, York, on Yonge Street, and at Markham. Their principal speaker is David 

 "WiUson, assisted by Murdoch McLeod, Samuel Hughes, and others. Their music, vocal and 

 instrumental, is excellent, and their preachers seek no pay from the Governor out of the 

 taxes." On week-days, WiUson was often to be seen, like any other industrious yeoman, 

 driviug into town his own waggon, loaded with the produce of his farm ; dressed in home-spun, 

 as the " borel folli " of Yonge Street generally were : in the axis of one eye there was a slight 

 divergency. — The expression " Family Compact " occurring above, borrowed from French and 

 Spanish History, appears also in the General Report of Grievances, in 1835, where this sentence 

 is to be read : " The whole system [of conducting Government without a responsible Executive] 

 has so long continued virtually in the same hands, that it is little better than a family com- 

 pact," p. 43. 



After the Court House Square came the large area attached to St. James's Church, to the 

 memories connected with which we shall presently devote some space ; as also to those con- 

 nected with the region to the north, formerly the play-ground of the District Grammar School, 

 and afterwards transformed into March Street and its purlieus. 



At the corner on the south side of King Street, just opposite the Court House, was the elock- 

 and-watch-repairing establishment of Mr. Charles Clinkunbroomer. To our youthful fancy, the 

 general click and tick usually to be heard in an old-fashioned watchmaker's place of business, 

 was in some sort expressed by the name Clinkunbroomer. But in old local lists we observe 

 the orthography of this name to have been Klinkenbnumer, which conveys another idea. Mr. 

 Clinkunbroomer's father, we believe, was attached to the army of General Wolfe, at the taking 

 of Quebec. In the early annals of York numerous Teutonic names are observable. Among 

 jurymen and others, at an early period, we meet with Nicholas Klinkenbrunner, Gerhard Kuch, 

 John Vanzantee, Barnabas Vanderburgh, Lodowick Weidemann, Francis Frieder, Peter Hultz, 

 Jacob 'Wintersteen, John Shunk, Leonard Klink, and so on. So early as 1795 Liancourt speaks 

 of a migration hither of German settlers from the other side of the Lake. A number of German 

 settlers collected at Hamburg, an agent there, he says, had brought out to settle on " Captain 

 Williamson's Demesne " in the State of New York. After subsisting some time there at the 

 expense of Capt. W. (who, it was stated, was really the representative of one of the Pulteneys 

 in England), they decamped in a body to the north side of the Lake, and especially to York and 

 its neighbourhood, at the instigation of one Baty, as the name reads in Liancourt, and "gained 

 over, if we may believe common fame," Liancourt says, " by the English ;" gained over, rather, 

 it is likely, by the prospect of acquiring freehold property for nothing, instead of holding under 

 a patroon or American feudal lord. Probably it was to the reports given by these refugees, that 

 a message sent m 1794, by Governor Simeoe to Capt. Williamson, was due. Capt. W., who 

 appears to have acquired a supposed personal interest in a large portion of the State of New 

 York, was opening settlements on the inlets on the south side of Lake Ontario, known as 

 lerondequat and Sodus Bay. " Last year," Liancourt informs us, " General Simeoe, Governor 



