West Flamborough Township, located at the western end of Lake Ontario, was among the first group of townships that Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe’s surveyors “carved out of the wilderness that was Upper Canada” between 1791 and 1793. Now part of the ‘New’ City of Hamilton, together with the other former municipalities of Wentworth County, the township has seen many changes to both its government and boundaries during the past 200 years of its history.
Triangular in shape, West Flamborough was laid out in eleven concessions, starting from a wide base line above Coote’s Paradise to its apex just north of the village of Freelton. Approximately 20 kilometres long from north to south, its width ranges from 10 kilometres in the south to approximately one in the north. The Town of Dundas, Coote’s Paradise and Ancaster Township border its southern boundary, with the township of East Flamborough to the east and Beverly to the west.
Long before the arrival of Europeans to the township, the area was home to bands of Indians. Early French explorers, missionaries and traders recorded that the aboriginal inhabitants of West Flamborough and in particular the Spencer Creek watershed were the Attiwandarouk People. Samuel Champlain misnamed them in 1615, calling them the ‘Neutrals’ because they took no part in the battles between the Hurons to the north and the Iroquois of New York State. Archaeological excavations have revealed that they were a migratory people who resided in palisaded villages containing long houses, growing corn, beans and squash, a diet that was occasionally supplemented by nuts, berries, fish and game. Once the soil around their village had been exhausted, they moved on to establish a new one.
During the seventeenth century, noted French explorers Étienne Brûlé and René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle visited the area. By the middle of the century, the peaceful Neutrals had been annihilated through a smallpox epidemic and war with the Iroquois. They in turn were replaced by the Mississaugas and these were the guides who led La Salle and his part of priests inland through West Flamborough to reach the Indian village of Tinawatawa and then the Grand River.
At the end of the American War of Independence in 1783, thousands of people who had supported the British Crown in her quarrel with the rebel American colonies migrated northwards. They crossed the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario into Canada, believing it would be a safe haven for them. These loyalists, as they were called, were a diverse group of people, rich and poor, government officials, soldiers, farmers, tradesmen, Indians, slaves and even mercenaries. All were wary of the repercussions they faced from their involvement in the war, uncomfortable with the new government that had been established and fearful that their religious convictions would be compromised.
The British government, faced with the enormous responsibility for these “refugees”, recognized that legal ownership of the land west of Québec had to be established and a method of administering the area had to be found. By an agreement known as ‘The New Purchase’, the British Government on 22 May 1784 obtained, at the cost of one-tenth of a penny per acre, all the territory from Niagara to the Head-of-the-Lake from the migratory Mississaugas, so that there would be land available. On 24 July 1788, all the area that lay to the west of Québec and known as the District of Montréal was divided into four administrative districts to facilitate settlement. The District of Nassau, from which West Flamborough would be created, stretched from the mouth of the Trent River in the east to Long Point on Lake Erie in the west.
Following establishment of the districts, Land Boards were set up to receive and report on applications. The appointed members were ordered to examine “the loyalty, character and pretentions” of the petitioner and based upon this, to award appropriate grants. The Land Board at Newark (Niagara-on-the-Lake) dealt with applications from those who wished to locate in the Flamborough area. Like other boards, the one at Newark encouraged the early applicants to locate their land on unsurveyed parts of the district, giving assurances that their “improvements would be protected when the area was surveyed and the land claims properly adjusted.” Later, as the surveying was completed, some of these early petitioners found that their land had been set aside as Clergy Reserves and so they were forced to move; others such as the Morden family from New Jersey became “authorized squatters.”
The arrival of the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, in 1792 resulted in settlement becoming a priority. The District of Nassau was abolished. Two new administrative areas were established, with the future West Flamborough being placed in the Home District. Simcoe appointed Augustus Jones of Stoney Creek as his Provincial Land Surveyor, with orders to begin his work at the Niagara River and lay out townships in a westerly direction. Instructions to Jones from the Surveyor General’s Office directed him to keep a journal and a field book and to engage “ten chain bearers and ax men on the most reasonable terms they can be had, not exceeding one shilling and threepence per day each man” – the whole party were allowed an additional shilling and threepence per day for their provisions. Much of the surveying was accomplished by the following year and a series of townships fronting onto the south shore of Lake Ontario were surveyed, each originally identified only by a number.
From the entries in the notebook kept by Augustus Jones, details about his work in the West Flamborough area are known. Early in May 1793 he was ordered to begin his work at the western end of the lake. He travelled up through the Dundas Marsh and present day Spencer Creek “to the rapids opposite Widow Mordants” and noted that the land was “both suitable for landing goods” and “erecting mills.” Jones and Lt. Governor Simcoe visited Mrs. Morden on May 6th during an inspection of Coote’s Paradise, the excursion initiating the first stage in the construction of a road that would serve as a military link between Lakes Ontario, Erie, St. Clair and Huron and become known as Dundas Street or The Governor’s Road.
Later in the month, Jones returned to Coote’s Paradise, where he was ordered to complete work begun earlier on a township along the north shore of what was called Lake Geneva, now Burlington Bay, and which marked the eastern limit of Crown-owned land. This partially surveyed Geneva Township was incorporated into the new area Jones was ordered to survey and divide into three more townships to be named Ancaster, Beverly and Flamborough – all along Simcoe’s proposed military road westwards to the upper forks of the River Thames which Deputy Provincial Surveyor Lewis Grant had just finished surveying.
To be continued…
© The Waterdown-East Flamborough Heritage Society 2003, 2023.
