History of Richmond Hill, Ontario
The Silver Stream site, which is located on a tributary of the Rouge River west of Leslie Street, between Elgin Mills Road and Major Mackenzie Drive, has yielded 27 artifacts that come from peoples of the Paleo-Indian cultures, one of which was dated to 1800 BCE.
[2] Well studied is the Boyle-Atkinson Site, a Late Iroquoian settlement southwest of the intersection of Yonge Street and Major Mackenzie Drive.
A meeting between British officials and Mississauga chiefs in 1805 clarified the northern border placing Richmond Hill within the land of the Toronto Purchase.
[6] The Munshaws soon found their location too isolated from other European settlers in the area, and resettled themselves on the south-west corner of Yonge Street and Highway 7, outside of Richmond Hill (in what is the Vaughan section of Thornhill).
In 1794, the present-day Bayview Avenue and Leslie Street were also laid out and planned, and sometime in the late part of 1794 the first settlers arrived in the area.
The first settlers to come to Richmond Hill and remain there for more than a few years were Hugh and Ann Shaw who arrived in 1798 and occupied lot 46 on the northeast corner of Yonge Street and Major Mackenzie Drive.
De Puisaye and Augustus Jones went to survey the area in December 1798 while the other settlers remained in York, supported by government supplies.
The settlers' work slowed as 1799 dragged on, and individuals began leaving Windham for more developed areas: Montreal, New York and even Europe.
Laurent Quetton St. George, a settler who arrived in Windham in 1799 also stayed in Upper Canada and prospered, making a career as a fur trader.
The oft repeated story is that it was so named after a visit to the area by Governor General of British North America Charles Lennox, 4th Duke of Richmond on July 13, 1819.
[13] By 1828, Richmond Hill featured a general store, schoolhouse, church, tavern, blacksmith's and carpenter's shop along Yonge Street.
[14] The newer immigrants and new generations increased land values and built larger houses with more elaborate and better finished estates.
On December 5, 1837 Mackenzie and some five hundred poorly equipped rebels marched south but were quickly rebuffed by sheriff William Jarvis and some twenty other men.
Unlike most of the farming towns in the region, which developed around a main intersection, or "four corners", Richmond Hill began to stretch out along Yonge Street with no real downtown area.
[18] The little town had two to three hundred residents around this time, and in 1851 it boasted eight commercial stores, five inns, three blacksmiths, six woodworkers, three wagonmakers, a distiller and three doctors.
Neighbouring communities like Langstaff Corners, Dollar, Headford, Oak Ridges, North Gormley and Temperanceville threatened to eclipse Richmond Hill, but none ever succeeded.
[18] 1857 also saw the founding of the town's first newspaper, the York Ridings Gazette and Richmond Hill Advertiser which published its first edition on June 12, 1857.
An August 1881 edition of The Liberal remarked "Few villages of equal size or importance within the Province, have manifested so much activity and energy in church enterprise as our own.
The electric cars shortened the time to travel from Toronto's northern limit to Richmond Hill to forty-five minutes from the previous three-hour rides by stagecoach.
[28] The Metropolitan Street Railway Company bought some land adjacent to Bond Lake, then a short journey north of Richmond Hill.
It opened in November 1906 and soon was the main route for shipping freight, although the electric line along Yonge Street remain the dominant method of passenger travel.
[33] Lawrence also persuaded fellow Toronto florist and former president of the Canadian Horticultural Society John Dunlap to build a greenhouse in Richmond Hill.
The village council hired local carriage maker William Ashford Wright to design a crest for Richmond Hill in 1919.
Run by the Orange lodge, the building contained dormitory rooms, a chapel, an infirmary, a dining hall, lounges, and three classrooms.
The telescope was run by the University of Toronto, and was used for spectra until the mid 1980s, but due to light pollution, its abilities have been reduced and is no longer used for scientific research.
The North Yonge railways consumed huge amounts of power, so the trains were temporarily replaced with diesel-burning buses, starting October 10, 1948.
Although a local outcry arose over the buses, once in operation they proved popular and profitable, with ridership in the first quarter of 1949 up 128 000 riders over the previous year.
On 1 January 1953 Richmond Hill annexed some 1,000 acres (4 km2) of land from Markham Township, tripling the village's size, and increasing the population from 2300 to 3300.
The village's new boundaries extended to Bayview Avenue in the east, Elgin Mills Road in the north and Harding Boulevard in the south.
Social Planning Council member Pierre Burton was quoted as saying: "All we insist on are paved roads and sewers ... no one cares about a community hall or swimming pool or any other kind of recreation for adults or children.
