One of the early families to settle in East Flamborough Township, north of the village of Waterdown, the Gallagher family of Concession 6, Lot 8 originally came from Ireland. Samuel Gallagher and his wife, Mary Sullivan came from the village of Bantry in County Cork. With their family of four children, Phyllis, John, Daniel and Anne they arrived in the Hamilton area in 1838. According to family tradition, Samuel manufactured boots and shoes in Bantry, and owned a small shop on Blackrock Road in the village. The family, unlike the Irish immigrants who were to leave during the 1840s, were not destitute or even poor, as again according to family tradition, after paying for their ship passage, Samuel carried a money belt containing one thousand pounds in gold to his new home.
Following their arrival in Upper Canada, the family lived in Hamilton for four years, where Mary Sullivan had relatives. Patrick Sullivan, her older brother, had emigrated about 1832, and was living in a frame house on O’Reilly Street (Augusta Street).
Samuel and his family stayed in the Hamilton area, looking for work, and also for a farm property that they could afford. In 1841, news came to the city that work was to be resumed on the Genessee Canal, south of Rochester – one of the lateral canals of the Erie Canal where work had temporarily ceased in the 1830s because New York State had run out of funds. A group of people from the Hamilton area decided to seek work there as high wages were being paid.
Among the people who travelled with the Gallagher family to find work on the canal was James Elderkin, the fiancé of Phyllis Gallagher, Samuel’s eldest daughter. James Elderkin was a carpenter/joiner by trade and the son of Erastus Elderkin and Eve Kribs of Barton Township, Wentworth County. James and Phyllis were married 25 January 1842 while living in Rochester, and their first child was born later that year.
The family remained in New York State, travelling onto Mount Morris for a brief time. Samuel continued to work on the canal until he received news that farms were becoming available in East Flamborough Township, with many of the absentee Crown Patentees selling off their grants to raise money. Patrick Sullivan sent the news to the Gallaghers, but he may have received it from James Sullivan, a possible relation who owned land in Concessions 9 and 11.
The Gallagher and Elderkin families returned to Canada in 1843. A third son, Samuel James being born to Samuel and Mary Gallagher the day after they arrived back. They lived in Elora for a few months, before buying land in East Flamborough Township in 1844. They settled on Lot 8, Concession 6, near Flamboro’ Centre. It consisted of 100 acres, of which ten acres had been cleared. The owners of the property had had a tenant farmer on the land to clear and cultivate it, but he had given up after a few years and abandoned it. Once the lot passed into Gallagher ownership, the property remained within the family for almost 130 years, finally being sold in 1972.
Due to complications in the previous ownership of the property, Samuel Gallagher was not able to purchase the farm immediately. The Bill of Sale for the land was finally signed in October 1852, the previous owners, James F. Smith and William Wilson of Toronto and the Honourable Peter McGill of Montreal receiving “One Hundred Pounds of lawful money of Canada” for the property.
The lot the Gallaghers purchased was covered in large, tall pine trees which were used in the construction of their first home, a log cabin. The second house, also built of logs followed within a few years, but these pine logs were covered with board siding and then painted white. Consisting of six rooms, later additions of a dining room and Summer kitchen were made, making it a substantial house. A large apple orchard and a smaller one of plums were planted, and the land slowly cleared for crop production.
Samuel James Gallagher, the third son, later told eloquent tales of working on the farm as a young man. Clearing fields was back-breaking work, and he remembered the long rows of stump fences he helped to build. Some of the largest stumps were left in the ground until a screw type stump-puller, powered by oxen or horses were available. In the early years the grain was often sown by hand and worked into the soil with a triangle harrow, made so it could slide around the stumps. When ripe, the grain was cut with a “cradle” scythe and bundled by hand.
The Gallagher family eventually consisted of two daughters and four sons. The fourth son, Richard born in 1844, lived only a few years, dying in 1852. Although Samuel Gallagher was a member of the Anglican faith, his wife Mary was a Roman Catholic, and they agreed to bring up their children so both religions were respected. The sons were raised in the Anglican faith, and the daughters as Roman Catholics.
The eldest daughter, Phyllis and her husband James moved into a log cabin on a ½ acre of land on Concession 9 where they lived temporarily. The next year they moved to Barton Township, close to where the Kribs and Elderkin families lived.
Samuel and Mary Gallagher’s second daughter, Anne, born in 1834, moved back to Hamilton, and in 1851 was working for a Hamilton merchant, J. S. Garrett in his shop at 89 Main Street. She later married William Cronin and they are buried in the cemetery of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Freelton.
Mary Gallagher died in 1870, and Samuel in 1873. They are both buried in Grace Anglican Church Cemetery, Waterdown.
© The Waterdown-East Flamborough Heritage Society 1994, 2022.
