Old House Has Seen Few Sales, Many Sails, First Orange Lodge: Schooner Days DCCCXC (890)

by C. H. J. Snider

ONE of the Presqu'isle houses built "for keeps" in 1807 is still standing. Tradition asserts that its oak frame, which is like that of Elizabethan timbered houses, was made in Boston or in England and brought by sailing vessel to Presqu'sle, but this is incorrect. There was no need to import oak timber when oaks were growing all around the of this house, and ship carpenters from the Royal Navy were here to cut them down. The oak frame was dovetailed and dowelled together with pins and treenails like a ship's, and has not sagged or spread. The floors are of two-inch white pine, tongued and grooved and fitted very tightly. Only the upper faces of the planks were planed; the lower faces still show the marks of the saw and the adze.

This house, which stands on the north shore of Presquisle Bay, near Brighton Wharf and the north end of the Presqu'isle isthmus has been occupied by Lewis Freeman since 1940, and been in the Freeman family since 1893. Earlier it was the home of the Stapleton, Butler and Richardson families, Col. Butler Richardson registering the first deed from the Crown in 1837.

The house is much older than the deed, having been built in 1807, on stone foundation walls two feet thick. Contrary to appearances, it is of brick, covered with plaster, and this in turn clapboarded over. It is thus clinker-built, and the overhang of eaves and gables is supported by small brackets in quarter-circles, suggesting ship ribs. It is more than likely that it was built by artificers in the Royal Navy, as Capt. Selleck's father-in-law and brother-in-law Gibson, had been employed in the Woolwich dockyard. In the cellar are two thick-walled stone vaults, one probably a wine cellar, the other carrying the chimneys and large fireplaces. Both are, traditionally, "prisoner's cells" and the whole cellar was probably full of American prisoners of war, taken at Queenston Heights and kept there overnight on their forced march to the Carrying Place and Kingston by the old Danforth road. In 1812 the Freeman house was a barracks for 1st Irish Regiment officers, and here they formed the first Orange Lodge in Upper Canada.

The house has five windows facing harborwards, three above and two below, flanking the front door. The design seems to call for two more windows to the right of the door. These may have been filled in, and the door may have had a porch or veranda with portico above it, with an inside door which is now is a window lower than the two which flank it. All the windows have been re-sashed. Originally, each had twelve small panes.

The mansion must have greatly resembled the building intended for the courthouse on Presqu'isle Point. It was built by the same men. The courthouse, being intended also for a jail and an inn, had three stories. The two buildings faced one another across three miles of harbor.

EVERY SAIL IN ITS DAY

Although missing sight of the tragic Speedy, which disappeared three years before the tough oak frame of the building was erected, from Freeman Point those southward gazing windows must have seen every sail on the lake of the Speedy's time, and every sailing vessel since. For all, or nearly all, have put into Presqu'isle at one time or another, on business or pleasure, in war or in peace, for rishes [riches] or refuge, for the place has offered anchorage ever since the days of Father Hennepin.

In 1807, when the new house first opened its eyes, it could see four or five vessels of the Provincial Marine—the Toronto Yacht, schooner, built at the Humber, 1799. and the Kingston-built Duke of Gloucester, 1800; Duke of Kent, 1801; Swift, about the same time, and Earl of Moira, 1805.

FIRST MERCHANT MARINE

The "merchantmen" on Lake Ontario at this time were about, a dozen, and so small that fishing boats would have been a better description. When the largest merchant vessel on the lakes, the Charles and Ann, was launched in 1812, she only measured 100 tons. Men-of-war were larger, but not much.

The first on the American side had been a little Schenectady boat, a freetrader brought by John Fellows of Sheffield, Mass., to Sodus Bay. She may have been in use as late as 1804 as a survey boat by Judge Porter for the Phelps and Gorham purchase.

She had been succeeded by the Washington, built at Erie, Pa., 1797, and brought around Niagara Falls on wheels and launched in Lake Ontario. Her Canadian purchasers had renamed Lady Washington. She had foundered in 1802.

In that same year, 1797, Col. John Van Rennslaer of Lansingburg, on the North River, placed two unnamed decked boats, with oars and sails in the coasting trade between Niagara, Oswego and Kingston. They were of 10 tons, and could carry 50 barrels of flour or salt, which was in great demand.

By 1802 the Jemima, of 30 tons, called the "first American schooner on Lake Ontario since the Revolution," had been launched by Eli Granger on the Genesee River at Hanford's Landing, three miles below Rochester, and the Flatbottom, a novel vessel of only 15 tons but 100 barrels capacity, had run the rapids of the Oswego River for Archibald Fairfield, forwarder, and entered the Ontario trade.

Next year, 1803, Mathew McNair, newly come from Scotland, bought the Jane of Genesee and changed her name to Peggy, and in 1804 Wilson, a government contractor, built for McNair the Fair American, for the Ogdensburg salt trade. She could carry 400 barrels, and was rated at from 75 to 90 tons, the largest freighter of the six the Americans now had in commission on the lake. In the fall of the year McNair had another, the Linda, of 50 tons, launched at Oswego, making seven.

Some, or all of these, may have looked in at Presqu'isle, but they were not then welcome.

WEARERS OF THE RED ENSIGN

British records mention a schooner Charity of 70 tons built at Niagara in 1770, and giving her name to the wicked Charity Shoal at the foot of Lake Ontario where she was lost.

After her there was the York or Duchess of York, of 80 tons, built at Niagara in 1792, and hailed, on our side, as the "premier merchantman." She was lost on the Devil's Nose in 1799.

The "Lady Dorchester, merchantman," mentioned by the Upper Canada Gazette as arriving at Niagara from Kingston on April 13th, 1793, "after an agreeable passage of 36 hours" was built at Kingston in 1787.

By 1807 there was the Lady Murray, the Prince Edward, built at Stone Mills of Glenora in 1801, and the Polly, Mary Ann, Skinner's sloop, Peggy and Genesee, the last four of unknown date of building, but mentioned in 1802. The Mary Ann and Skinner's sloop may have been the same vessel, and the Peggy and Genesee may have been American purchases.

There would appear, therefore, to have been seven or eight small British "merchantmen" on Lake Ontario in 1804, besides the Provincial Marine ships like the Speedy which carried mails, passengers and freight as government transports.

The new house may have seen all these. The old house has seen a thousand schooners since. And looks for more, though they be but yachts.

LOOKING SOUTH SINCE 1807

OSCAR L. MORROW, Brighton Corporation Clerk and Treasurer, modestly tries to escape from the scene.