In 1863 William Philp, son of the Wesleyan Methodist minister in Waterdown, graduated from Victoria College, Cobourg where he had studied medicine. Dr. Philp placed second in his class and won the silver medal for his brilliant academic career. After a year of post graduate work at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, he returned to Waterdown and for a couple of years conducted his practice from an office on Dundas Street before moving to a newly constructed house on Mill Street North.
The one-and-a-half storey stone house that was built for Dr. Philp is very similar in proportion to its neighbour at 50 Mill Street. Some minor changes have occurred, the most noticeable being the removal of the doctor’s office that was attached to the house, and the stucco coating that has been applied to the cut stone. There has also been a slight modification to the first floor windows with the insertion of decorative wooden panels over the top of the window sashes.
On 1 June 1869, William Philp married Gertrude Alice Springer of Nelson Township. She was a graduate of the Hamilton Ladies College where she had excelled as both an artist and gifted musician. A year later their son William Arthur was born, but their happiness was short-lived. During the latter part of the summer of 1871, Alice contracted typhoid fever and died seven weeks later at the young age of 23 years.
Dr. Philp remarried in 1873 after courting Miss Violet Wrong of Windsor for almost a year. Their letters written during this period record a picture of Victorian courting etiquette and genteel family life that have been preserved in an unpublished collection known as ‘The Violet Letters’. The family remained in Waterdown until 1879 when they moved to Hamilton. There the doctor practiced from his office until he was 90 years of age. In 1931 he returned to Victoria College, which by then had become part of the University of Toronto and received the silver medal he had won in 1863 that had never been presented to him because of the sad state of the college’s finances at the time.
Dr. Daniel Alexander McClenaham and his young wife Margaret Isabella McCallum came to Waterdown in 1895 and purchased the house and office built for Dr. Philp. For fifteen years the doctor worked in the village and surrounding townships, practicing medicine and involving himself in the community. He served as President of the Waterdown Mechanic’s Institute during the last years of the organization’s existence and as President of the Waterdown Football Club in 1905. Their sons Robert Roy and Harold Douglas were educated at the Waterdown Public and Continuation School in Sealey Park, before the family moved to Hamilton in 1912 following Doctor McClenahan’s appointment as a Provincial Medical Officer of Health.
The same year, Robert Roy McClenahan graduated as a doctor from the University of Toronto and was the gold medalist of his year. He worked for two years at Hamilton General Hospital and at Bellevue, New York City. When war broke out in 1914, he was commissioned as a Medical Officer in the Canadian Army Medical Cops serving with the 11th Field Ambulance. Wounded in 1916, mentioned in dispatches and decorated for bravery, he returned to Waterdown and married Lydia Howland Robertson, the daughter of mill owner Alexander Robertson. Together they donated the Great War Memorial Scholarship to Waterdown High School as a memorial to those from the village and vicinity who gave their lives in the 1914-1918 was and as a mark of their appreciation for the training received as students at the school.
The original letter written in January 1929 from Christie Street Military Hospital, Toronto is held by the High School and the scholarship is still awarded annually to the student with the highest standing on graduation.
© The Waterdown-East Flamborough Heritage Society 2008, 2024.
