Bringing the past to life

Seven volumes of tax assessment rolls reveal the people of Toronto in the 1850s Their occupations and their lifestyles are now all online, writes Bill Taylor

Paul McGrath, who earns his living by living in the past, today is cleaning off a dusty, time-smeared window on a year in Toronto's fledgling existence.

It sheds eye-opening light on a city, population about 30,000, where ... well, you think you have it bad with piddling bylaws and tax grabs? In the 1850s:

You were taxed if you owned a dog; a little higher for a bitch.

Compulsory community service wasn't just something handed down by a judge as punishment. All men between the ages of 21 and 60 had to put in about 10 hours a year, working on highway and bridge maintenance, or pay a stand-in to do it.

A woman who owned property was a relative rarity, McGrath says. Among them was his great-great-great-grandmother, Amelia Pearsall, whose husband Samuel drowned while duck-hunting off the Toronto Islands.

"People called them the Islands even then," says McGrath, at the City of Toronto Archives on Spadina Rd., "even though the sandbar at the Eastern Gap hadn't yet washed away and it was actually a peninsula."

He'll get to the Eastern Gap and a hotel that used to stand on that wobbly sandbar in a moment. Time is a river and, as a professional genealogist, part of his stock-in-trade are the seemingly unconnected facts that float to the surface and let the current push them together into a narrative of life.

Few documents have survived from Toronto in the 1850s. The 1852 city census is long-lost. But volunteers from the Ontario Genealogical Society, with the help of the city's archives, have painstakingly transmuted the 1853 tax assessment rolls — seven volumes of elegantly spidery writing so fragile they have to be handled with white gloves — into digital form. As of today, they're available, free, on McGrath's website, http://www.ontarioroots.com.

"This fills a gap, a whole generation wide, between the 1842 and 1861 censuses," he says. "Genealogists and historians were kind of stuck. We got this idea of looking at the tax rolls and it turns out that in some ways, they're better than the census. There's amazing information in there."

His triple-great-grandmother, for instance. "She owned land on King St. near Parliament, where it turns north to join Queen St."

McGrath kept coming across Elizabeth Hutchinson's name. "She was either the world's best landlady or related."

Related by marriage, he learned — a mother-in-law, with links to the earliest days of Toronto. In 1834, her husband Isaac dug the city's first well, at St. Lawrence Market. "He was paid 25 pounds to dig down to shale and then three shillings a foot after that. He made about 40 pounds, enough that he could buy his house."

And that, McGrath believes, was the city's first stone house, built in 1819 with stones carted from the lake. "Elizabeth Hutchinson owned a considerable piece of land on Duke St., which is now Adelaide, three-quarters of a block between Ontario and Berkeley Sts. There's some commercial thing there now. But when I look at city maps of the period, I can see the house where she lived."

The tax rolls list all kinds of things. That hotel where the Eastern Gap is located was owned by Reuben Parkinson, "listed as a wagon-maker, but I guess that was his day job," McGrath says. "When the sandbar washed away in 1858, the hotel must've gone with it. But it wasn't as dumb a place to have a hotel as it may seem. This was a popular spot, a sandy beach."

Another of his ancestors also owned a hotel. "At the corner of Parliament and Queen. You were taxed on the number of `neat' — that's domestic — cattle you owned. And look, it's listed here ... he's got a cow. Right downtown. It must've been for fresh milk and butter."

Quakers, including a sect called Tunkers, and Mennonists (as they called Mennonites) were listed, too. "They were pacifists and the rolls were used as master lists for the militia."

The tax rolls offer a guide to the lifestyles of the rich and famous:

William Lyon Mackenzie was Toronto's first mayor. He's listed as a newspaper editor and owned property on the west side of Yonge St. between Temperance and King Sts.

Paul Kane, the artist noted for his western landscapes and paintings of First Nations people, was living on King St., McGrath says, "but he owned a house on Toronto St. And he'd just bought the lot on Wellesley St. where his house is now."

Thornton Blackburn was a former slave who fled from the United States and became Toronto's first cab-owner. "A fascinating man," McGrath says. "He owned quite a lot of land. He lived on Park St., which is now Eastern Ave. And look, you can see here that he's done his 10 hours' labour for the year."

Time being a river, a couple of currents are about to flow together. Samuel Pearsall, McGrath's great-great-great-grandfather, was a blacksmith. "I'm pretty sure he worked on Blackburn's cab. I know he worked in Paul Bishop's shop where the cab was built."

(It was, incidentally, a pretty ritzy four-seater, red and yellow with "The City" painted on it.)

Notable names are linked to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography On-Line. You can call up whole streets and see who lived next door to whom. You can marvel at the jobs they had: lime burner, huckster, maltster, band-box maker ...

And look for happy — bittersweet, anyway — endings. Like the man who went to court to say, "I'm not paying this dog tax. My dog is dead." Sure enough, there's a later entry in the book, striking out the poor pooch.

Article from Toronto Star, Feb 28, 2005 - GTA Section