In 1832, Philip VanKoughnet inherited his father's extensive lands in Upper Canada (which he bought in 1783 after the Americans had put a price on his head for his loyalty to the Crown) adding to them over time until at his death he owned the entirety of the district.

VanKoughnet's father-in-law had been 'a very eminent, affluent and respectable merchant' of Carrick-on-Suir, but following the Irish Rebellion of 1798, he was publicly flogged and then wrongly imprisoned for giving grain to the starving Catholic population in his home town.

Mrs VanKoughnet's sister, Catherine (Scott) Pack (1785–1863), was the great grandmother of the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes.

The VanKoughnets originated during the Middle Ages in Switzerland, when their name was spelt Von Gochnat, meaning "of Gochnang," after they had acquired the lands of Gachnang and Schellenberg in 1336.

They later entrusted their considerable landholdings to Sigismund, Archduke of Austria, but he and the succeeding Holy Roman Emperors used the money raised to fight a series of unsuccessful wars, which led to the loss of their land by 1556.

During the Thirty Years' War, an ancestor fled to Turckheim and then Colmar, in Alsace, where the next three generations of his family were all members of the grand jury.