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April 15, 2009

A boy named Florence

Posted by Amanda Hill under 1870s, businesses, featured item, people
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The earliest minutes for the town council of Deseronto (in the days when it was known as Mill Point) show the names of the Reeve and four town councillors. One of the names is that of Florence Donoghue, which was intriguing, as it seemed highly unlikely that a woman could have been a councillor in 1872. The mystery was soon cleared up, as later minutes in the same volume referred to this councillor as “Mr. Donoghue”.

A check on the 1901 census shows Florence Donoghue as a male who was born on 28 January 1832. Directories of the time show Donoghue and Bro. as dry goods merchants on the south side of Main Street, at its junction with Prince Street. Donoghue and his partner, James Oliver, were still in business in 1911, when Donoghue was 79 years of age. The shop would have been one of those in the picture below:


Florence, it transpires, was fairly common as a boy’s name in Ireland in the late nineteenth century. In the 1881 census of Canada there were 64 Florences whose place of birth was Ireland. 24 of those were men. Florence Donoghue was born in Ontario, but (as his name suggests) he is listed as being of Irish descent.

 

November 11, 2008

Ship identification challenge

Posted by Amanda Hill under 1900s, featured item, Flickr, Rathbun Company, vessels
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One of the images we added to the Archives’ Flickr account last week was this view of Deseronto’s waterfront, looking west from Mill Street:


The name of the vessel sitting on the marine railway is tantalisingly almost visible (click on the image for a larger version), but not quite. Are there any experts on Great Lakes vessels out there who can help us to identify this ship? The photograph is not dated, but is likely to have been taken in the first decade of the twentieth century. It is part of the Floyd Marlin collection, which was donated to Deseronto Archives by Sally and Wally Vick.

POSTSCRIPT: The vessel has been identified by Deseronto historian, Ken Brown, as the Armenia, one of the ships belonging to the Deseronto Navigation Company.

 

September 18, 2008

New source of photos

Posted by Amanda Hill under 1900s, featured item, Flickr
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An appeal in the latest edition of Deseronto News and Views for historic images of the town has enabled the Archives to scan in a collection of old postcards that were lent to us by R.N. Goodfellow, a local resident.

This lovely coloured postcard of the Independent Order of Foresters’ orphanage on Foresters’ Island is one of these images. The orphanage was built by Dr. Oronhyatekha, a famous Mohawk who also had a house on the Island. (And one in Tyendinaga. And one in Toronto (he was a very successful man).) It opened in 1906 but closed in the following year: the year of Oronhyatekha’s own death.

 

April 30, 2008

Fancy a drink? See your doctor!

Posted by Amanda Hill under 1910s, 1920s, featured item, health
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This was what you would have had to do in Ontario in 1925, anyway. Deseronto Archives holds a ‘Register of Liquor Sales’ which records sales of alcohol made by local druggist T. L. McCullough between October 16, 1925 and May 31, 1927. Under the terms of the Ontario Temperance Act of 1916, a customer was only allowed to buy alcohol if he or she had obtained a prescription from a doctor who had deemed “intoxicating liquor necessary for the health of his patient”.

The volume has columns for the name of the patient and the prescribing doctor, the quantity of alcohol purchased and its cost. The majority of the sales were for ‘alcohol’ or for spirits: brandy, gin, rum or whiskey. There is also a column for wine, but only four purchases of wine are recorded in the volume; all for communion wine for local churches. Every month, the druggist would return a copy of each page to the Board of License Commissioners for Ontario (the predecessor body to today’s Liquor Control Board of Ontario).

This volume was presented to the Town of Deseronto by Dorothy McCullough.

 

April 9, 2008

Deseronto Baseball Club, 1950

Posted by Amanda Hill under 1950s, baseball, featured item, sports
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The Kimmett family donated this photograph to Deseronto Archives today, in memory of Don Kimmett. It depicts the manager, coach and team members of the Deseronto Baseball Club, who were Bay of Quinte League champions in 1950.

The team, from left to right and back to front were:
Kenny Brant, catcher; Don Kimmett, coach; Carl Tinney, pitcher; Jimmy Rodgers, centre field; Fred Smith, catcher; William Wood, manager; Gord Jackson, third base; Don Armitage, second base; Kenny Brennan, first base; George Knight, right field; Bill Doreen, pitcher; Doug Sexsmith, short stop; P. Martin, left field

The caption on the photo only has first initials, so if you can help us with the full first names of the team, we’ll be happy to fill those in. [Thanks to all who have helped with names!]

 

March 26, 2008

The Snow By-Law

Posted by Amanda Hill under 1890s, featured item
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The March/April 2008 issue of Deseronto News and Views contained a commentary on the dangerous state of the town’s sidewalks during the snowy winter and a plea for the Town Council to act. This photograph is of a letter written in December 1898 on the same subject which was published in The Tribune, the town’s newspaper at the time.
So not a new problem, then…

 

March 12, 2008

Mill Street through time

Posted by Amanda Hill under 1870s, 1890s, featured item, maps, Rathbun Company
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Two old maps of Deseronto have surfaced in the last few weeks. One is a photocopy of an 1875 plan of Mill Point (as Deseronto was known at the time). The image below shows the lumber mill, workshops, the steam boat wharf and the post office of the day (click on the image for a closer look). At that time, Main Street was also known by its alternative name of Front Road.

Mill pond, Mill Point, 1875

Around 20 years later, the area around the original mill had changed considerably. The detail below is from a plan of the southern part of Deseronto, made at the height of the industrial era of the town in the late 1800s. Here, the western side of Mill Street is taken up with a sash and door factory. The wharves have expanded greatly and railways form elaborate patterns around the whole site.

Deseronto Mill Pond area, c.1895

The ‘dry kilns’ on this plan are now occupied by the Deseronto Flea Market, but otherwise these buildings have all gone and the area is now a centre for recreation, rather than industry.

Centennial Park
Photo by Dana Valentyne

 

February 27, 2008

Art for the People

Posted by Amanda Hill under 1960s, art, featured item
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This watercolour painting was one of several commissioned by Deseronto Public Library in the early 1960s, leading up to the Centennial celebrations of 1967. It shows the corner of the park and the Post Office, with the Town Hall visible on the right of the picture. The artist was Garnet Hazard (1903-1987), who was living in Deseronto at the time.

The public-spirited aim of the Library Board of the day was that:

Every one who steps into the library can gaze at the town as it is seen by the gifted insight of these painters. Their paintings will capture the courage, hopes, disappointments, struggles, and loveliness of the people of this town.

Rev. Douglas Blair
Library Board

This photograph shows the same view as it appeared on April 16, 2008:

 

February 14, 2008

Winter getting you down?

Posted by Amanda Hill under 1900s, featured item, leisure, Rathbun family
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As we’re experiencing a particularly snowy February, here’s a photograph to remind us that the warm days of summer will be here again before too long. This shot was taken by Harold McMurrich Rathbun, grandson of Hugo Burghardt Rathbun, the man who established Deseronto as a major lumber centre in the late nineteenth century.

It was taken on a trip to the Sandbanks in Prince Edward County in July 1908. To modern eyes, the people in the group seem rather over-dressed for a July day at the lake. Look at the thickness of the coat that the man is carrying. And what on earth did he have in that bag?

The negative of this photograph is one of many taken by Harold M. Rathbun that were presented to Deseronto Archives by the South Fredericksburg Heritage Committee in 2005. The photo’s reference number is HMR2-06-28.

 

November 30, 2007

Hockey players

Posted by Amanda Hill under 1960s, featured item, hockey, sports
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I’m hoping these questions will be easy ones for Deseronto folk to answer. This photograph was received at the Archives this week, but without any supporting information to explain who the hockey team were, or when the picture was taken. The firm sponsoring the team, Sam’s Aluminum, was established in Napanee in 1963, so that gives us the earliest possible date for the photo. It became Sam’s Doors and Windows in 1971 (according to the company’s website), which presumably gives us the latest possible date.

So, over to you, citizens of Deseronto and surrounding areas:

  1. What is the name of the hockey team?

  2. What year was the photo taken?

  3. Do you recognise any of the players or the men in the photo?

You can click on the picture to see a bigger version.

No prizes available for correct answers, but any assistance will be gratefully received!

 

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