Homesteads: Early Buildings and Families from Kingston to Toronto

West of Herkimer’s Nose, a point of land just outside Kingston, three early highways ran to the provincial capital of York – the Danforth Road completed in 1802, the York-Kingston Road finished in 1817, the old Highway 2. Along them sprang up settlements – assemblages of inns, mills, churches, and houses. The Loyalists were early arrivals, followed by immigrant families from across the Atlantic and south of the border. Many of the buildings they erected still stand. They are the subject of this book. Margaret McBurney and Mary byers have spent two years following the old highways between Kingston and Toronto, searching for the outside pre-Confederation buildings of each district along the routes. They have talked to residents and local historians, probed into township records and old memoirs, sifted the wealth of the Ontario Archives, in order to trace the history not only of the buildings, but of the families who built them and lived or met in them. The result is a loving account, illustrated with more than 150 photographs by Hugh Robertson, one of Canada’s finest architectural photographers. This book will interest anyone with a sense of local history or a concern for Ontario’s architectural heritage.