By the middle of the nineteenth century, a network of roads had begun to develop around Hamilton and with the advent of stage coach travel, dozens of small crossroad settlements were established to support the new mode of transportation. Some of these communities continued after the demise of stage coaches and the arrival of the motor car, others slowly disappeared, with only a building or two remaining to mark the site.
The lost village of Bakersville, located where Centre Road bridged the Grindstone Creek in the former township of east Flamborough, was established two decades before The Hamilton-Milton stage coach route resulted in the village’s rise to prominence in the township. The Baker family who are associated with the history of settlement in the 4th and 5th Concessions and gave their name to the village, were probably late Loyalists from Earl Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, entering Upper Canada as the 19th century began. George Baker, born in Upper Canada in 1801, purchased one hundred acres on the south west side of the 5th Concession in 1822, paying just £25 for his property which was heavily wooded and included a fast flowing section of the Grindstone Creek. Within two years, a dam had been constructed to control the creek, a sawmill was in operation and a log house erected.
By 1850, George Baker’s entire property had passed into the ownership of his eldest son, John, who by various quit claims, also obtained the shares in the sawmill left to his five other brothers. John Baker appears to have been an aggressive business man, for not only did he come to own everything that his father had developed, but within a year, he had erected a second mill on the creek. By the middle of the 1860s, using both steam and water power, the Bakersville mills were producing over 1,000,000 board feet of lumber per annum. The lumber was transported by teamsters through Waterdown to Brown’s Wharf, Aldershot and then for shipment to various ports on the Great Lakes, ending in Detroit, where his schooner, ‘The Dauntless’ took on coal for the return journey to Aldershot.
At the same time that John Baker came to control his father’s holdings, James Kent Griffin of Waterdown and his road company, opened the Snake Road up the face of the Niagara Escarpment which provided the first direct connection to Hamilton for residents of the township. By 1853, a stage coach route between Hamilton, Waterdown and Milton had been inaugurated, and with this came John Baker’s further development of the Bakersville community. Recognizing that travel was often slow and difficult along the Centre Road, the location of the Baker family home near the bridging point of the Grindstone Creek made it a natural site for a hotel. His father’s original log house underwent a dramatic change, a basement was dug out, rear and second floor additions were made and stables and a blacksmith shop were added. The family home became ‘The Rising Sun Hotel’, serving travellers along the road with refreshments and overnight accommodation.
When the second mill on the Grindstone had been erected, worker’s cottages were built along Centre Road and gradually a recognizable community established. The introduction of stage coach service and the opening of the hotel, with its mills and blacksmith shop, resulted in Bakersville being listed in the various Wentworth County Directories that begun to be issued during the 1860s.
During the next three decades, John Baker served as the Innkeeper of ‘The Rising Sun Hotel’, but also as postmaster of the prosperous Bakersville settlement and as the tollgate keeper on a stretch of Centre Road between the 5th and 6th Concessions. This was the height of the settlement’s history, as the village became an established stop for the stage and mail coaches operating between Hamilton and Milton.
John Baker’s appointment as toll keeper however, resulted in a number of confrontations with local residents as bad feelings developed in this part of the township, especially with local farmers, who were forced to use the Centre Road to reach Waterdown and the Hamilton market. So strong were the objections to payment of the toll charges that a number of nearby land owners, led by Frederick Beeforth, opened up a road allowance across the front of their properties which provided an alternative route between the 5th and 6th Concessions – thus avoiding John Baker’s stretch of the toll road. Once his hotel business began to suffer, John Baker capitulated and allowed local farmers free passage. However, the alternative road that was cut by the objecting farmers still remains today as an additional link between the two concession roads.
By the late 1870s, the mills on the Grindstone had declined in importance and passed out of Baker family ownership. Some of the families employed in the industry remained, others moved to Waterdown and found employment in a small rake, cradle and agricultural implement factory owned by one of John Baker’s sons, George Baker Jr. During the next decade, stage coach travel began to lose its importance and the family came to rely on farming their property as their major source of income.
John Baker died in 1899, and his wife, Maria Myles, relinquished ownership of the Bakersville property to her youngest son, Franklin, and moved to Chicago for a period, where her son, George, owner of the Waterdown agricultural implements factory, had assumed a managerial position with the American Rolling Mills Company. By the first decade of the twentieth century, stage coach travel had disappeared, occasional motor cars had little interest in stopping at the hotel, only farmers occasionally stopped to rest their horses and talk with Franklin Baker. The community of Bakersville slowly disappeared as residences sought the convenience and amenities of the flourishing village of Waterdown.
Today, just one of the mill buildings, now used as a carpenter’s warehouse, and the historic hotel remains of what was once a flourishing community.
© The Waterdown-East Flamborough Heritage Society 2007, 2024.
