Early Barrie, 1836 to 1872
Barrie's first decades, each read from its source: who held the Oro Township lots that became part of the city on January 1, 2026; who Walton's directory listed as living in Barrie in 1837; the railway that stopped a mile short at Allandale for twelve years; and the town as the county gazetteer described it in 1872, a year after it was incorporated.
1836: the Oro lots that are Barrie now
On September 3, 1836, Wellsley Richey returned his inspection of Oro Township to the Crown: lot by lot, who held each one, since when, the size of the family, the acres cleared and the claim it was held on. The Barrie – Oro-Medonte – Springwater Boundary Adjustment Act, 2025 moved parts of Oro's first concessions into Barrie, and its regulation names them by the same lots and concessions Richey used.
| Lot (Oro) | Richey's return, 1836 | In Barrie since 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Concession 1, lots 1 to 3 and 8 | Capt. Robert Oliver, “Royal Navy”: the east parts of lots 1 and 2, lot 3 and lot 8; he was living on the east part of lot 1, a family of five, with 55 of its 100 acres cleared | Lots 2, 3 and 8, in part |
| Concession 1, lots 4 to 7 | No settler named: “Located” or “Deeded” | In part |
| Concession 1, lots 9 to 15 | Not named lot by lot: lots 9 to 30 are entered together, “All Located or Deeded” | Lots 9 to 15, in part |
| Concession 2, lot 11 | John Chappel, located in July, a family of five, 13 of 100 acres cleared: “Indigent Settler (Doing well)” | In part |
| Concession 3, lot 21 | No settler named: “Deeded (Canada Company)” | In part |
Source: Richey's return as Marjorie McQuay transcribed it from the Archives of Ontario microfilm, matched by lot and concession to the lands O. Reg.
Sources: Return of Inspection for the Township of Oro, by Wellsley Richey, September 3, 1836, Archives of Ontario, RG 1 A-VI-9, vol.
Beyond the annexed lots
Elsewhere in the same concessions, the return records settlers it marks “(Colored man)”: on the second concession John Jackson, a “Dischargd soldier”, on lots 1 and 2, and John Cale, William Cokely, Henry St. Denney, Benjn Johnson, William Leonard and Henry Montgomery on lots 21 to 29; on the third, Charles Hawkings, Ruthy Barber, Edward Walker, Jacob Tucker, John T. Johnson and Manuel Bess on lots 5 to 12; and more on the fourth. None of those lots was annexed; they are in Oro-Medonte today.
Source: Return of Inspection for the Township of Oro, by Wellsley Richey, September 3, 1836, Archives of Ontario, RG 1 A-VI-9, vol.
1837: Barrie's first residents
On May 11, 1898, the Simcoe County Pioneer and Historical Society met to discuss “the first residents of Barrie, as they appear in Walton's Directory for 1837”; its members' recollections, and notes George Sneath and S. L. Soules wrote afterward, were printed in the Society's Pioneer Papers in 1908. The directory lists 28 heads of families, one of them a woman, Jane Duggan. “ALEXANDER WALKER was the first settler in Barrie,” the notes begin one entry.
| No. | Name, as printed | What the notes say |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lucius Boyington | A native of Kentucky who “followed shingle-making at Kempenfeldt”; people “usually shortened his name to Boynton” |
| 2 | John Bingham | Kept the “Queen's Arms” Hotel, “where the Queen's Hotel is now”; a native of England |
| 3 | Dugald Campbell | A tailor who moved into Barrie “some time after 1834”; he and his wife were natives of Scotland |
| 4 | James Campbell | A shoemaker from Ireland, “living in Barrie in the summer of 1833”, on the corner of Dunlop and Sampson streets |
| 5 | Richard Carney | Kept “a little inn on the north side of Dunlop Street”, building a log tavern in 1832; later Sheriff of Algoma |
| 6 | Richard Cobb | “Pronounced Cobe by everyone”; with David McCausland carried the mail on horseback from Holland Landing to Coldwater |
| 7 | C. Cunningham | A shoemaker, “a native of Ireland”, whose house stood on a knoll “in front of the present post office” |
| 8 | Jane Duggan | Called “The Scotch Widow”, though “not a widow”; she later married William Johnston, a plasterer |
| 9 | David Edgar | Lived “for at least three years or more in the deserted Government store house”, then built a house in 1832; found dead in Toronto in 1840 |
| 10 | Andrew Graham | Born in Co. Fermanagh in 1806, in Barrie from 1834; a tanner and storekeeper and “one of the founders of Methodism in Barrie”; died April 4, 1898 |
| 11 | Francis Hewson | An Irish-born magistrate who moved from Big Bay Point to Barrie “in the spring of 1834”; father of W. H. Hewson, the meeting's chief contributor |
| 12 | Francis Martin | A carpenter, and “a constable, or acted in this capacity now and then” for the magistrate Francis Hewson |
| 13 | Francis Meighan | “Or Main, as he was called, was a laboring man about town” |
| 14 | Thrift Meldrum | Kept a tavern near Poyntz and Dunlop streets and was “Crier of the Court”; born in Fifeshire, died December 6, 1860 |
| 15 | Richard McCoy | “Mis-spelled ‘Molloy’ in the original list”; a shoemaker from Co. Tyrone, married to a daughter of John Perry |
| 16 | James Morrison | Later kept a hotel at Morrison's Corners, “now Craighurst”; “a native of the Island of Jersey” |
| 17 | John McCausland | Spent “years and years of time and labor” building a “Perpetual Motion” machine |
| 18 | David McCausland | Kept a tavern with Cobb at Elizabeth and Bayfield streets, then one where the Wellington Hotel later stood |
| 19 | John McDonald | A tailor, “one of the first of this trade in the town”, on the north side of Dunlop Street |
| 20 | William Nesbitt | “An Irishman, by birth, and a carpenter, by trade”, in a small log house on Dunlop Street |
| 21 | John Perry | Came from Cookstown, “which in those days was known as Perry's Corners”; built a house on John Street |
| 22 | D. S. Ross | Came in 1835 or 1836 and, with Leslie Caldwell, built Barrie's second store; in 1898, aged 91, “the sole survivor” of the list |
| 23 | Robert Ross | “An Irishman by birth, and a surveyor by occupation”; the 1872 gazetteer says he “laid out the village” |
| 24 | S. M. Sanford | “Came to Barrie in 1832 and built the first store” |
| 25 | Thomas Smith | An English blacksmith who “built the first brick house in Barrie”, the Harper house on Dunlop Street |
| 26 | George Stokes | A carpenter, “an Englishman by birth”, living on Dunlop Street a little west of Sanford's store |
| 27 | William Strong | An Irishman whose wife, Christina Graham, was Andrew Graham's sister |
| 28 | Alexander Walker | “The first settler on the site of the town”, his house on the first hill northeast of Collier and Bayfield streets |
The names as the Pioneer Papers print the list, in its order; the notes are mostly W. H. Hewson's, from the meeting, with George Sneath's and S. L. Soules's written afterward.
Not on Walton's list
The notes that follow the list name early residents the directory missed or came too soon for:
| Name, as printed | What the notes say |
|---|---|
| Leslie Caldwell | “Not named in Walton's list, as he had died before”; he and David S. Ross came from Toronto to open a store |
| William Carson | “An early inhabitant not named in Walton's list”; he lived at the foot of Bayfield Street |
| Fidel | “Not named in Walton's list”; “the first blacksmith in Barrie”, his shop near Poyntz and Dunlop Streets |
| Thomas Graham | Andrew Graham's brother, a carpenter; “in the early Patentee List, but not in Walton's” |
| Timothy Haggart | Listed under Sunnidale in Walton's directory, but “a resident of early Barrie, both before the year named and afterward” |
| Jonathan Lane | He “lived at Kempenfeldt in 1836”, so “does not come in this list, but was usually reckoned one of Barrie's first settlers”; later postmaster and clerk of the County Court |
| Thomas and Alex. McCausland | Brothers of John and David McCausland who came “two or three years after them”; “their names do not occur in Walton's list” |
| “Tailor” McDonald | “He lived in Barrie in 1836” |
| P. McGuire | “Not named in the list”; a tailor, “here as early as 1834” |
| John McWatt | Taken on as clerk in S. M. Sanford's store, “I think in 1837”, after working for Capt. Oliver at Shanty Bay |
| Pearson | “Came to Barrie in 1838” |
The notes are by George Sneath, S. L. Soules and W. H. Hewson, among others, written for or after the Society's 1898 meeting; the quoted words are theirs.
Sources: Pioneer Papers, Nos.
The site of a district jail and court house
The same year, Barrie was chosen as the seat of a new district. On May 10, 1837, the Home District's magistrates in Quarter Sessions moved “that lots No. 110, 111, 112, 113, 117, 118, 119, 120 in the Town of Barrie be approved of as the site of a Jail and Court House for the New District of Simcoe”, as A. F. Hunter's county history quotes the minute; the Crown granted the District the four-acre block on September 14, 1844. “In 1843 the County of Simcoe, until then part of the Home District, was formed, with Barrie as its county town,” the 1872 gazetteer records.
Sources: A History of Simcoe County, Volume I: Its Public Affairs, Andrew F. Hunter; published by the County Council, Barrie, dated 1909.
1853 to 1865: the railway stops at Allandale
The Ontario, Simcoe and Huron Railway, later the Northern, opened north from Toronto in pieces: to Aurora on May 16, 1853, Bradford on June 15 and, in A. F. Hunter's list, “To Barrie, October 11th, 1853”. It did not reach the town. “The line to Allandale was open for passenger travel on the 11th of October the same year,” Judge John A. Ardagh recalled for the pioneer society in 1892, and the first regular train reached Collingwood on January 3, 1855. The 1872 gazetteer dates the Collingwood line to 1854; Hunter gives January 1, 1855.
The county had put £50,000 into the railway's stock, Hunter writes, on condition “that Barrie should receive the road”, but “it was only constructed to Allandale, and thence to Collingwood.” A popular account had the engineer, F. W. Cumberland, vowing that “he would make grass grow in its streets and would pave Allandale streets with gold”; Hunter thought the hills around the town the likelier reason. “Thus for nearly twelve years,” Ardagh remembered, “passengers for Barrie had to leave the train at Allandale, summer and winter, wet or dry,” and take “a crowded and not overclean bus” to finish the trip.
The mile-long branch across the head of the bay took those twelve years. Arrangements for it were made before June 1855, Barrie having raised £3,000 for the right of way, and in 1857 and again in 1859 asked to take in the station grounds at Allandale, with the County Council opposing it both times. In 1862 an arbitration awarded the town £5,000 (“$20,000”) against the company, which Warden T. R. Ferguson, sitting on the railway's board, voted not to pay; the town went to the Court of Chancery, the county petitioned the legislature in January 1863 and lent Barrie $4,000 to finish buying the right of way that November, and “the famous ‘Barrie Switch’” opened on June 21, 1865, with “a grand banquet and celebration”. The main line went on to Orillia in November 1871.
Sources: A History of Simcoe County, Volume I: Its Public Affairs, Andrew F. Hunter; published by the County Council, Barrie, dated 1909.
Allandale
Allandale was founded in 1846: the 1872 gazetteer records it “settled in 1846 by John Boon, Collingwood Harris, N. King, Bernard Sheridan, Wm. Hamill and Thomas McMahon”, in Innisfil Township. David Edgar, the squatter the gazetteer has taking up his quarters in an old Government store-house in 1831, had owned “200 acres where Allandale is now situated”, the pioneer society's notes record. The 1872 gazetteer, spelling it Allendale, calls it a village and Northern Railway station “one mile south of Barrie” with a population of “about 300”. Barrie's attempts on it in 1857 and 1859 failed; it was annexed in 1896, becoming the town's sixth ward (the City's milestones).
Sources: Pioneer Papers, Nos.
1872: the town in the county gazetteer
W. H. Irwin's Gazetteer and Directory of the County of Simcoe for 1872–73 opens its Barrie entry with “The County Town of Simcoe” and gives its population as 4,000. Its short history agrees with the pioneer society's: “In the year 1831 a squatter named David Edgar took up his quarters in an old Government store-house”; the next year John Bingham “built the first log-house”; and “In 1837 the town comprised twenty-eight families”. Robert Ross, it says, “laid out the village, which was named in honour of Commodore Barrie”. Its railway history is short: the line to Collingwood with its nearest station at Allendale, “one mile distant”, the branch into Barrie in 1865, and the extension to Orillia in 1871.
The council for 1872
| Office | The gazetteer, 1872 | The City's list, 1872 term |
|---|---|---|
| Mayor | Robert Simpson | Robert Simpson |
| Reeve | M.H. Spencer | Michael Henry Spencer |
| Deputy reeve | Henry Sewrey | Henry Sewrey |
| Councilman | Henry Bird | Henry Bird |
| Councilman | George Maundrell | George Manndrell |
| Councilman | Wm. Hunter | William Hunter |
| Councilman | Martin Johnson | James Johnson |
| Councilman | John Seels | John H. Seals |
| Councilman | George Ball | George Ball |
| Councilman | Joseph Anderson | Joseph T. Anderton |
| Councilman | Andrew Miscampbell | Andrew Miscampbell |
| Councilman | N. Dyment | Nathaniel Dyment |
| Councilman | not listed | W.H. Thomas |
| Councilman | not listed | Henry Creswicke |