[7] Upon landing at Quebec City on 1 August 1870, the Bells transferred to another steamer to Montreal,[8] and then took the Grand Trunk Railway to Paris, Ontario, residing at the parsonage of the Reverend Thomas Philip Henderson.

At the time of the Bell family's departure from the UK, Alexander Graham's health was threateningly poor, with "a chest condition... giving cause for concern" and his tall, broad-framed body being reduced to 59 kg (130 lb), leaving his face gaunt.

[18] At their new home Melville's surviving son Alexander Graham Bell created his laboratory inside the farm's converted carriage house,[19] nearby to what he called his "dreaming place", a large hollow nestled in the elm trees at the back of the property, above the river where he could view its surface.

For his work Alexander Graham earned the tribe's friendship and was awarded the title of Honorary Chief and participated in a ceremony where he donned a Mohawk headdress and performed traditional dances.

As the senior Bell was soon occupied with a lecture position at Queen's College in Kingston, Ontario, he sent his son to Boston in his place when a contract was offered to teach in that city for the handsome sum of US$500 (approximately US$12,700 in current dollars[30]).

During his summer vacation at the Homestead in 1874, Alexander Graham continued to contemplate electrical sound reproduction while viewing the undulating surface of the Grand River from his "dreaming place".

[43][44] When the line connections were completed Graham Bell heard "... explosive sounds, like the discharge of artillery.... mixed with a continuous crackling noise of an indescribable character".

Speaking to his son in Paris from Brantford's Dominion Telegraph office, Professor Alexander Melville Bell sang songs, quoted Shakespeare and read poetry.

[47][48] On a test call one week earlier on 3 August 1876, Alexander Graham's uncle, Professor David Charles Bell,[Note 6] spoke to him from the Brantford telegraph office, reciting lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet ("To be or not to be....").

[43][55] The young inventor, positioned at the A. Wallis Ellis store in the neighbouring community of Mount Pleasant,[43][56] listened to his uncle's voice emanating from his receiver housed in a metal box.

[57] The elder Morton had purchased several hundred acres of land along the Grand River one year earlier from Margaret and Elizabeth Stewart at a cost of £183 (equivalent to approximately C$25,800 in 2012).

Its architectural features included pine and wood pegged floors, walnut window trims, a main floor ceiling over three metres (10 feet) in height, a low-pitched gabled roof,[3] a gingerbread trim-styled front veranda as well as a bathtub and shower equipped washroom fitted to an attic or ceiling level rainfall cistern —installed by the younger Bell at a time when few homes in the region had any fixed bathtubs at all.

[3] The property, which borders the Grand River, originally contained an approximate 4-hectare (10.5 acres) fruit orchard, large farmhouse, stable, pigsty, henhouse, icehouse and a carriage house.

[66][67][Note 9] During the Bells' 11-year residence at the Homestead, the working farm, with its plum, cherry, pear, apple and peach orchards, supplemented Melville's modest income from dramatic readings at elocutionary performances and university lectures on elocution and vocal physiology.

[70] The Homestead and Melville House museum have developed special programs through the years, such as their Christmas holiday celebrations when the farmhouse is "... decorated in the style and traditions of Alexander Graham Bell's American wife Mabel, with stockings stuffed full of oranges and toy trinkets.

[73]Overall, the journalist noted: A pretty white home surrounded by shade trees and flower beds may not be the popular idea of the kind of place where a creative genius lives, especially someone who advised people to "leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods."

[74] At a farewell dinner at Brantford's Kerby House as Melville was preparing to depart for Washington, D.C., the elder Bell addressed the invited banquet guests, saying "[Our son] could not come to us, so we resolved to go to him.

[57] The two story white framed clapboard home of Reverend Thomas Philip Henderson (b. Scotland, 1816 – d. 1887), served as his combined residence and religious library as well as the business office of Canada's first telephone company.

[41] The house had been donated in October 1968 by its then-owner, William C. Burles (born in Bath, England, 1885, eighteen years after Alexander Graham taught there at its Somersetshire College),[75][76] and it is now known at the Homestead as the Henderson Home.

The four bedroom structure had previously been the home and office of Reverend Thomas Henderson (1817-1887), the close friend, advisor and associate of Melville Bell and his son Alexander Graham.

[78] Cowherd's Brantford factory's first shipment of nineteen telephones was made to Hugh Cossart Baker in Hamilton, Ontario on 23 December of that year, with total production of all orders eventually reaching 2,398 phones before James was stricken with tuberculosis and died.

The exhibits included a model of the nation's first telephone factory, a three-story building established by some of Bell's friends in Brantford, Thomas Cowherd and his son James.

[81] Considerable efforts were made to have the phased renovations completed in time for the 1974 centennial year celebrations of the telephone's invention, during which visitor admissions to the Homestead totaled some 100,000 people.

[38] During an elaborate public ceremony before a crowd numbering in the thousands, the Homestead and the Bell Telephone Memorial were both formally presented to the City of Brantford on Wednesday, October 24, 1917, by Victor Cavendish, the Duke of Devonshire,[88] then Governor General of Canada.

The cairn was transferred to the City of Brantford's Board of Park Management in front of Mayor Howard E. Winter, Brant County Warden Stanley Force, representatives of the Charles Fleetford Sise Chapter of the Telephone Pioneers of American and large numbers of the public.

The Bell's musicfests had included four-handed piano duets and recitations of Scottish ballads, combined with the acting of various scenes from Hamlet, Macbeth and Julius Caesar.

Grosvenor Coville also spoke extensively of her grandfather's and great-grandfather's dedication to the education of the deaf (the younger Bell, with his father's financial assistance, founded the Volta Bureau in 1887, later renamed as the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing)[91][92] At the ceremony's conclusion Bates and Coville were presented with gold-plated miniature telephones by Brenda Winter, niece of Brantford Mayor Howard Winter, in appreciation for their assistance in the unveiling.

[45] The event being celebrated was Alexander Graham Bell's "three great tests of the telephone", which culminated with the call he received on August 10, 1876, in Paris, from his father and others speaking to him from the Dominion Telegraph Office in Brantford.

She was presented with a gift antique daffodil phone after being further greeted by Brantford native Ron Johnson, M.P.P., and then departed to meet Prime Minister Jean Chrétien at a reception with 1,000 invited guests.

Citations Bibliography Acknowledgement Many of the sources used for this article were obtained with the assistance of Jennifer Fearnside of the Brant Historical Society of Brantford, Ontario, which has assiduously collected and compiled such materials for over a century for the benefit of researchers.