The community of Waterdown would not exist as it is known today if it were not for Ebenezer Culver Griffin. Born in Smithville in 1800, Ebenezer was the son of United Empire Loyalist Smith Griffin who founded the village of Smithville in the Niagara Peninsula. Following in his father’s footsteps, E.C. Griffin purchased 560 acres of land in East Flamborough Township from Col. Alexander Brown and William Applegarth in 1823 and began to exploit the natural landscape for his own use. His purchase included a section of the lower portion of the Grindstone Creek, the Great Falls and a quarter mile of river valley that was expansive enough to accommodate two mills and raceways. He first established a saw and grist mill on the creek, and then began to develop a community around his mill.
By the early 1830’s he had built a general store with his brother Absalom and a hotel. He also constructed a flour mill, an ashery, a sawmill and a carding mill within the next decade. By 1831, he had cleared enough land to employ a surveyor to draw plans for village lots. This survey, often called the Griffin Survey, records the early development of the village. In 1837 he purchased Lot 6 of Concession 3 from Col. Brown and extended his plan to cover 400 acres of land and over one mile of creek. The sale of village lots and the gradual industrialisation of the Grindstone Creek went hand in hand.
The industrial development on the creek was controlled by Griffin in the deeds for the land that he sold. Levi Hawke, a mill owner, was given the right “for taking out water and no more to drive and turn two lathes either for wood or iron except for three days, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday when water is to be allowed to go through the raceway to Lot 12 for tanning purposes”. Griffin even placed a prohibition forever of “any woollen manufacturing except with the permission of E.C. Griffin”, so as to maintain a monopoly on the manufacture himself.
The mills attracted other trades and craftsmen to the area and the village became an established centre for the supply of goods and services to agricultural settlers of the hinterland. The general store and hotel (the Eager-Weeks block and the American House Hotel) were placed in a prominent area in the town and supplied travellers along Dundas Street along with the growing number of settlers entering the area.
Along with his entrepreneurial genius, Griffin was also a staunch Methodist and was the only magistrate in the district for many years. His Sundays were devoted to preaching and through he supplied the town with the supply of liquor, he did not indulge. His son George recalled that the building of a Griffin sawmill in 1832 was done in one day with “thirty-eight hands without whiskey”. In comparison, Col. Brown’s mill took two days with the same amount of men and the addition of whiskey!
The Waterdown Review in a 1924 article reported that E.C. Griffin also served as teacher at the schoolhouse that was used as a church on Sundays, and he held a commission in the 8th Regiment of the Gore Militia at the time of the 1837 Rebellion and that his extensive holdings in Waterdown were of particular interest to rebels.
Though the name of Waterdown logically derives from the Great Falls, legend suggests that the name of Waterdown came from Griffin’s abstinence. Custom for a new building at the time was for the carpenter to hold high a bottle of whiskey and call for a name for the edifice, then smash the bottle against a wall. E.C. supposedly substituted water for whiskey and when a bystander noticed and said “Throw that water down”, Griffin mistakenly heard only the end of the remark and named the structure Waterdown.*
Ebenezer Griffin married Eliza Kent of Stoney Creek on 28 March 1821, and they had eleven children, all of whim were raised and schooled in the Waterdown area. Though it is not known exactly where they lived, they are believed to have resided in a cottage on Griffin Street. Ebenezer Culver Griffin died at the age of forty-seven and is buried in Union Cemetery. His very simple obituary in the Hamilton Spectator, 16 October 1847 made not one reference to his enormous accomplishments and involvement in almost every aspect of life in the village of Waterdown.
© The Waterdown-East Flamborough Heritage Society 2001, 2023.
*Editor’s note:
Since this article was published in 2001, our former Society president Nathan Tidridge was presented with the following information.
The name Waterdown was in honour of the Forest of Waterdown close to Royal Tunbridge Wells in Kent County, England, the former home of William Smithers, father-in-law of Ebenezer Culver Griffin.Barbara E. Chipman, 2015
The name Waterdown was in honour of the Forest of Waterdown close to Royal Tunbridge Wells in Kent County, England, the former home of William Smithers, father-in-law of Ebenezer Culver Griffin.
As published in his book, “The Extraordinary History of Flamborough”, the medieval forest of Waterdown has a recorded history that stretches back to 788 A.D., and was included in the Manor of Rotherfield.
