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The David Gibson Farm

For someone with less than two hundred acres of farmland, David Gibson certainly made his presence known, not only in North York but throughout Upper Canada. His name crops up frequently, since he interacts with many of the more notable families of early North York. His name often appears in the present day as well, for he was the man who built Gibson House at Yonge Street and Park Home Avenue, arguably the most accurately restored and maintained pioneer farmhouse in all of North York. Though currently being dwarfed by the construction of yet another high-rise development, to be named Gibson Square, of course, one needs only to step over the threshold to forget such intrusions and become absorbed into the lives that were once lived here. Gibson House is, in fact, the second house the family built on the property, the first having been burned by government troops following the Upper Canada Rebellion in 1837.

The only child of tenant farmer James Gibson and his wife Margaret, David was born in the parish of Glamis, Forfarshire, Scotland, on March 9, 1804. His uncle, Alexander Milne, also born in Forfarshire in 1777, had immigrated to the United States in 1801, and made considerable money working as a weaver and running a woollen mill, as well as patenting and popularizing a new method of bleaching cotton, before coming to Upper Canada in 1817. David’s mother died in 1811. His father married Isobel Cathow around eight years later, and they would have four more children together: James Junior, William, John, and Isabella.

When David Gibson was still a young boy, William Blackadder, a surveyor working near the Gibson home, asked for the boy’s assistance. David must have acquitted himself well, for when the survey was completed, Blackadder asked if David might train as his apprentice. James Gibson agreed and David spent the next five years learning the surveyor’s trade. David’s apprenticeship, begun in 1819, was completed by June 1824. Armed with his new credentials and letters of recommendation, David set sail from Dundee on the brigantine Gratitude on March 28, 1825, bound for Canada.

By May he was settled in Quebec City where he was received by the surveyor general of Quebec who sent him with one other surveyor and four Native guides to survey the headwaters of the Saint John River, which rise in what is now the state of Maine. For thirty-two days they travelled on foot, crossing lakes on homemade rafts, and living on rations of bread, salt pork, peas, and whatever fish or partridges they could catch. When that job was completed, David found a position with a crew who were surveying the border between the United States and Quebec. He worked in Quebec until the end of September, then decided to head west to seek out his uncles, Alexander and Peter Milne, in the autumn of 1825. By then they were the proprietors of a sawmill, a gristmill, a woollen mill, and a dry goods store in Markham Township, in the area then known as Markham Mills, at the corner of present-day Highways 7 and 48.

The Gibson House Museum in restored condition, as it looked in 2010, snuggled among the same pine trees that have kept it company since before Canada was a country.

Photo by Scott Kennedy.

Leaving snow-covered Montreal in late October, David travelled night and day to reach Kingston, but once there he discovered that there were no schooners or stagecoaches heading to York, so he continued on foot. He recalled the journey in a letter to a friend back in Scotland, dated April 27, 1827:

I put a clean shirt and pair of stockings in my pocket and six days afterwards I arrived in the Township of Markham about eighteen miles north east of York in U. Canada where I was kindly received by my friends. They wrote me when in Quebec to come to Upper Canada, that they had no doubt that I would get plenty of employment, and gave me great encouragement. My friends were very glad to see the letters I had with me from the Governor of Lower Canada. I went to York a few days after and delivered my Introductory Letters, the one was to the Rev. Dr. Strachan and the other to the Lieut. Governor, they both advised me to get appointed a Deputy Surveyor of Land. I was examined by the Surveyor General, found competent and got a commission written out in the usual form signed by the Lieut. Governor (after I found security in the amount of £500 for my good behaviour, my friends in Markham were my securities) the Lieut. Governor gave me back Lord Dalhousie’s letter and stated that there was no situation vacant then but as soon as I saw a situation vacant that I would like to apply for it and again show Lord Dalhousie’s letter. Since I was appointed a Deputy Surveyor I petitioned the Magistrates of the Home District to appoint me a Surveyor of Highways of the Home District which they granted, the clerk of the quarter Sessions then stated to the Magistrates that the Surveyor of Highways for the Eastern division of the Home District was a very illiterate sort of man and that they never got a proper report from him and also asked if they would have any objection to appoint me for the Eastern Division also which they readily granted since I have been appointed Surveyor of Highways for the Southern division of the Home District I have as much business as I can attend to.[1]

David used the time between December 28, 1825, when he was commissioned as a surveyor for Upper Canada, and the spring of 1826 when given his actual appointments, to get his surveying equipment in order, a task that involved cutting the rings for his surveying chain, linking the chain together, grinding the glass in his surveying instruments, and calibrating the instruments by finding a true Meridian Line from the stars. The Gibson family still has David’s original chain.

The scope of his appointments, all made in May 1826, was almost unbelievable. Under David Gibson’s direction, colonization roads were built from as far east as Whitby to as far west as Southampton on Lake Huron, and north to Owen Sound on Georgian Bay. He surveyed much of Simcoe, Grey, Huron, and Bruce Counties as well as townships in Wellington and Wentworth Counties, and those for the future Dufferin County. He was later put in charge of surveying the roads in the Algoma District, all this at a time when these areas were complete wilderness. After all, until someone laid out the colonization roads, there could be no settlers.

This portrait of David Gibson, dated circa 1855, is on display in Gibson House Museum.

Courtesy of the City of Toronto and the Gibson House Museum.

A photograph of Eliza Gibson hangs beside the photo of her husband David. Her picture is believed to have been taken about fifteen years later.

On March 4, 1828, David took time out from his labours to get married. His bride was his cousin, Eliza Milne, daughter of Alexander, who was then operating a mill where Toronto’s Edwards Gardens stands today. The newlyweds built their first house on the Milne property at Leslie and Lawrence. The following year, David and Eliza purchased the southern half of Lot 18-1W from John Willson III for £400 and settled down to the business of farming. Their new frame house stood on the same spot where the current Gibson house stands today. The farm property, the southern one hundred and five acres of Lot 18-1W, ran west from today’s Yonge Street to Bathurst Street, about halfway between Sheppard and Finch Avenues.

Much of the land was already cleared. It had been granted, in 1805, to John Willson II, who had fought with the British during the American Revolution, and had remained in the Willson family for twenty-four years. Following the war, the Willsons had been forced to flee to New Brunswick after their property south of the border was confiscated. They arrived in Upper Canada at the end of the eighteenth century and were among the most prominent of the early families in North York, eventually giving their slightly modified name to Wilson Avenue.

In 1833, David Gibson acquired some additional property, the eastern fifty acres of Lot 16-1E, on the northwest corner of Sheppard and Bayview Avenues. The Gibson family would continue to acquire portions of this lot, eventually owning ninety-six acres (as well as a ten-acre portion of Lot 16-2E) by the end of the nineteenth century, which brought their total land holdings to two hundred and eleven acres. By now the Gibson family was growing, with Elizabeth born in 1829, James in 1831, and William in 1833. Five more children would follow: David, born 1835 (died 1836); Peter Silas, born in 1837; Margaret, in 1840; George, in1842; and Elizabeth Mary, in 1844.

It might seem that starting a family, running two farms, and surveying much of southern Ontario would be enough to keep a man occupied, but David Gibson thought otherwise. In 1831, he was elected president of the local Temperance Society. He also found himself among the growing number of local farmers who were fed up with the way that the ruling Family Compact continued to fill their own pockets while treating the farmers’ concerns with disdain. So David threw his hat into the political ring.

In September 1834, he was nominated as a candidate for the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada, representing the Reform Party. He was nominated at Thomas Sheppard’s Golden Lion Inn, along with John Cummer, James Davis, Joseph Shepard II, and James Hogg. The new party elected William Lyon Mackenzie as its leader, primarily because he was the only Reformer in the area who owned a printing press. Mackenzie was also elected as Toronto’s first mayor in 1834, the year that York became Toronto.

By the 1830s, the Reform Party was gaining considerable strength, especially in the outlying rural areas. David Gibson was elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1834 and 1836. In fact, the party elected so many members that, by 1837, Reformers actually controlled the Legislative Assembly, the lower house of Upper Canada’s government. The problem was that the Family Compact, who still controlled the upper house, continued to dismiss the farmers’ concerns. In 1835, the Legislative Assembly sent William Lyon Mackenzie to London, England, bearing a petition signed by 24,500 Upper Canadians asking the King to address their concerns. Even this plea from the overwhelming majority of citizens failed to bring about any sort of change. Having done their best to play by the rules, the farmers began to believe that their only recourse lay in a much more direct form of opposition.

Many Reformers now felt that physical force was the only tool left to engage the Family Compact. In 1837, groups of militia began training at the Shepard family’s mill site near present-day Bathurst and Sheppard, and also on the Gibson farm. David Gibson was appointed controller of the military organization of the rebels. As many as two hundred men would train at a time, trying to determine the most effective ways to use their numbers and their limited weapons, which were mostly simple farm implements and the occasional musket, to launch a successful overthrow of the upper house. The men came from the immediate vicinity and from many miles away, taking precious time away from the never-ending farm work in an attempt to ensure better lives for themselves and their families. As autumn settled in on Upper Canada and the harvest drew to a close, training intensified and resolve strengthened.

Thursday, December 7, 1837, was chosen as the date the Reformers would march south on Yonge Street to engage the government’s loyalist soldiers, but as the day grew near, farmers to the north became a little over-eager. It seems that they had been told that Toronto was currently undefended, so they jumped the gun and headed south. Travelling on foot through the snow-covered countryside, 150 “soldiers” arrived at Montgomery’s Tavern on Sunday, December 3. The tavern had been selected as a staging area because of the incredibly strategic view it commanded of the surrounding countryside from its location on the hill at present-day Yonge Street and Broadway Avenue. Though hard to believe, in today’s high-rise world, it was once possible to see both Lake Ontario and the heights of the Oak Ridges Moraine from the tavern’s upper floor.

The tavern, however, only had accommodations for two-thirds of the men. The situation grew tense as the farmers, by now quite tired, cold, and hungry, were reduced to commandeering food from local Reform supporters. By Tuesday, December 5, a large group of them had grown so impatient that they grabbed their weapons and headed out on their own. Quickly defeated by the government’s superior firepower, they retreated to Montgomery’s Tavern. One rebel had been killed, allegedly by a stray bullet, but the Reformers had somehow been able to take a number of loyalist prisoners. Apparently, the zealous Reformers had caught their foes somewhat by surprise, for even as they retreated to the tavern, word came that more troops were arriving from the east and west. On Wednesday, both sides regrouped. By Thursday, it was all over.

Early Thursday morning, one thousand government soldiers advanced up Yonge Street, armed with muskets and two cannons. The three or four hundred rebels were not only severely out-gunned and out-numbered; they had also been surprised by the early morning attack. For some idea of just how ill-equipped the rebels were, one need not look any further than their leader, William Lyon Mackenzie, who wore several overcoats as he went into battle — his own personal armour. Only 150 rebels had muskets, and they stationed themselves near the fence fronting the tavern. The others, armed with pitchforks and clubs, hung back by the walls of the tavern. The encounter was brief, lasting no more than fifteen or twenty minutes.

The first cannonball ripped through the walls of an adjoining tavern, the second through the walls of the rebel stronghold. Musket fire was exchanged, and, as the unarmed rebels fled into the surrounding fields and woods, Lieutenant Governor Sir Francis Bond Head ordered Montgomery’s Tavern burned to the ground, declaring that the tavern’s destruction would signal the death of “that perfidious enemy, responsible government.”[2]

The resulting fire was so intense that William Gray, who was grinding flour at his mill over five miles away, near the corner of Don Mills Road and York Mills Road, saw the burning embers of the tavern as the wind carried them over his mill. Casualties were surprisingly few — one rebel killed, eleven rebels wounded (four of whom would later die in hospital), one loyalist killed, and five loyalists wounded. David Gibson, who had been in charge of the loyalist prisoners at the tavern, had marched his prisoners north along Yonge Street to protect them from the gunfire. As government troops pursued him, he turned his prisoners loose around today’s Lawrence Park and ran for his own life.

On the direct orders of the lieutenant governor, Sir Francis Bond Head, de facto head of the Family Compact, government soldiers continued north on Yonge Street and set fire to the Gibson house and barns. Eliza fled into the winter night with her four children, leaving baby Peter Silas Gibson in a snowbank with his siblings standing guard while she ran back into the house to save some of her husband’s surveying equipment and the workings and face of a prized grandfather clock. She then found refuge in a nearby parsonage before being taken in by neighbour John Cummer. The Gibsons’ hired hands had the presence of mind to set the horses free, allowing them to flee into the woods at the west end of the farm. The pigs and chickens weren’t so lucky. The government soldiers slaughtered them all, and rode away with the carcasses.

David, meanwhile, fled southeast through the biting December cold, not stopping until he reached the safety of his cousin William Milne’s house in Milneford Mills, where Lawrence Avenue East crosses the East Don River. William was Alexander Milne’s eldest son, and, though he wasn’t running from the government troops, his brother Peter was. Peter and David were hidden in a woodpile behind the family’s sawmill until a fellow rebel came to spirit David away. The two men then headed east where David found sanctuary at a friend’s farm near Oshawa. He stayed there until mid-January of the following year, hiding himself from the government troops by burrowing his way into a haystack. Though soldiers searched the farm several times and plunged their swords into all of the haystacks, David somehow avoided detection. By now, there was a bounty on his head of £500, ironically the same amount he had been granted by the former lieutenant governor for “good behaviour,” just twelve years earlier. Peter Milne was eventually captured, but was released after his trial, on bond for good behaviour.

In mid-January 1838, David Gibson and a number of his fellow rebels, all of whom had been indicted for high treason, fled into exile in the United States, crossing Lake Ontario in a small, open boat. Landing on the other side of the lake in Rochester, New York, with little more than the clothes on his back, David found a surprisingly warm welcome, and, in short order, some employment.

Leaving her children with members of the Cummer family, Eliza made a brief journey to Rochester, bringing her husband’s tools, clothes, and £180. On the basis of his impressive credentials, and, with the assistance of an influential friend or two, David was soon working on major projects such as the expansion of the Erie Canal, where he was hired as first assistant engineer. Things went so well, in fact, that Eliza and the children soon joined him. They lived in Rochester and Lockport before David finally purchased a farm near the now-vanished village of Hickory Corners.

Back in Upper Canada, David’s elderly father, James, and half-brother, William, had left their families behind, immigrated to Canada in 1843, and moved onto the family farm to keep it going. Eliza returned every six months to take care of paperwork and any other pressing business, and would then go back to her family. The Gibsons had plenty of company in the United States during this time since more than twenty thousand people left Upper Canada over concerns with the Family Compact. Among them was Thomas Alva Edison’s father, Samuel Edison of Vienna, Ontario. He too had been charged with treason for his role in the Rebellion and had a £500 reward posted for his capture.

In 1841, the government of Upper Canada instituted many of the changes that the farmers had fought for in 1837, and most of the rebels were pardoned shortly afterwards. By the time David Gibson’s pardon came in 1843, the family was so comfortable in New York State that they paid little attention. They even applied for United States citizenship in 1846, but it was a step they would never take. Some years earlier, perhaps feeling the pull of Upper Canada once again, David Gibson did a most unusual thing. He had started to build a house by remote control.

David contracted Toronto brick-maker Henry Neal to produce 133,333 bricks from raw materials found on the Gibson farm, where a kiln was to be built for the purpose. The project, supervised by John Cummer (the man who took Eliza and the children into his home after the government troops burned the first Gibson house), went off without a hitch. The number of bricks was more than sufficient to build the current Gibson House, which was completed in 1851. As well, there were enough bricks to also build both the shingle mill of Jacob Cummer II (John’s brother) just to the north on Yonge Street, and Willowdale School S.S. #4, which stood near the corner of present-day Ellerslie Avenue on the west side of Yonge. David also contracted local tradesmen John Martin for all carpentry and joinery and James Morrison for the masonry work.

The Gibsons returned to Upper Canada in 1848, after David lost his job following an election south of the border that saw the new government cleaning house of former appointees. It was a fairly complicated move, involving many loads of furniture, tools, and personal effects. Once back home, the family set about completing their new house, which, despite the pre-production, was still little more than a finely finished shell. Interestingly, the house would find itself in the same condition over one hundred years later, but that is a later story.

Though it has not been possible to find any mention of where the family stayed while their new home was being completed, it was likely in one of the other houses already standing on the property, built by previous owners, the Willsons, or constructed to house hired hands. David’s diaries of the time make mention of repairing fences, cleaning out the well, putting in stoves, and repairing the pump. The Gibsons moved into their beautiful new Georgian-style house in November of 1851. They would keep their farm in New York State, however, and visit it on a regular basis for the remainder of their lives.

Once resettled, David wasted little time getting back to his overachieving ways. In 1851, he was appointed to the First Board of Examiners of the Provincial Land Surveyors — now the examiner instead of the examinee. In 1853, he was appointed Crown Land commissioner, inspector of Crown Land Agencies, and superintendent of Colonization Roads. It seems that he was missed when he was gone.

His sons James and William, now aged twenty-two and twenty, respectively, had joined him in his surveying business. Youngest son, Peter Silas Gibson, survived his time in the snowbank to graduate from the University of Michigan with an engineering degree in 1864. David built an office addition at the back of the farmhouse and seamlessly continued to survey and farm. The Agricultural Census of 1851 shows two-thirds of the farm being cultivated, with the remaining acres, likely the ones on the west end by the river valley, as “wild.” The commodities produced at the farm included wheat, oats, potatoes, wool, pork, beef, and butter.

In 1855, David Gibson petitioned the government for a local post office and suggested the name “Willow Dale,” because of the number of willow trees on the property. His request was granted and the post office opened on March 28, 1855, in the Cummers’ store on Yonge Street, just north of the Gibson farm. Jacob Cummer II was named the first postmaster, a position he held until 1880, when his brother Samuel took over.

As a little-known aside to David’s land holdings, it should be mentioned that in 1854 he was granted 10,000 acres in the District of Parry Sound in appreciation for his contribution to opening up the area for settlement. The land was mostly covered in pine, and David’s eldest sons, James and William, came up with the idea of building a sawmill to take advantage of the family’s new holdings. The mill wasn’t operational until the summer of 1857, but, when the big saw did begin to turn, it became the first business in the area. The pioneer settlement that grew to house and supply the mill workers marked the beginnings of the town of Parry Sound.

Harold Gibson’s house is shown here in 1957, the year it was torn down for construction of the Gladys Allison Building of the North York Public Library. The house stood on the southwest corner of Yonge Street and Park Home Avenue.

Photo by J.V. Salmon, Toronto Public Library, S-4064-B.

The Gibson brothers were so busy that they had to hire their Willow Dale neighbours Joseph and Michael Shepard to help them run the mill. Things went well until the outbreak of the American Civil War in April 1861, when the demand for the Gibson’s lumber slowed during an economic downturn in the United States, where many of their largest customers were located. Despite David’s objections, his sons insisted on selling the land. Its value then proceeded to rise ten-fold over the next several years. Today, its value would be inestimable. After the sale, William worked for his father as a chain-bearer and James worked for his father as a chain-bearer and surveyor. Neither were included in David’s will and most sources indicate that the brothers were left so well off after the sale of the sawmill that their father had no need to worry about their futures.

David Gibson died in 1864 at the Russell Hotel in Quebec City on Monday, January 25, after contracting a lung infection on a train trip to one of the meetings he regularly attended in the area. Though he didn’t live long enough to celebrate his sixtieth birthday, he accomplished enough to fill several lifetimes. His contributions to Upper Canada and Lower Canada had been phenomenal.

After David’s death, the family remained at the Gibson house. David left the farm to his unmarried daughter, Margaret (son William also remained unmarried). Eliza died there in 1887. Before Margaret died in 1868, she sold the farm to her brother, Peter Silas Gibson, who was demonstrating serious need for larger premises. He and his wife, the former Eliza Holmes, would eventually have nine children and twenty-six grandchildren. George Gibson wed Augusta Holmes, the sister of Peter Silas Gibson’s wife, Eliza Jane Holmes. They had two sons and six daughters. George died in 1935. Elizabeth Mary Gibson married Walter Armour, whose family farmed near Bathurst and Wilson. They had one daughter, named Lula Ada.

In addition to the Gibson house that stands today, Peter and Eliza’s eldest son, Harold, built a house immediately to the south, which was later used as the North York Public Library. It was torn down in 1957 for construction of the Gladys Allison Building of the North York Public Library, which in turn was demolished in 1986 for construction of the current library.

Peter and his older brother James carried on their father’s surveying business. James would later move to Oshawa where he opened a book and stationery shop. Peter would serve for thirty-five years as chief engineer of York County, in addition to continuing the family’s surveying business, until he suffered a stroke in 1908 and was forced to resign for health reasons. He tendered his resignation to York Township Reeve, George S. Henry, and moved out of the Gibson House and into the house his son Harold had constructed some years earlier.

Peter Silas Gibson died in 1916. His funeral was conducted by the Reverend Thomas Webster Pickett, George S. Henry’s father-in-law. Peter’s sons, Harold, Wilbert, and Morton carried on with the family’s surveying business, now located at the corner of Yonge and Avondale.

After Peter moved to his son’s house in 1908, the Gibson farm was rented to the Grainger family, tenant farmers who were also relatives of the Gibsons. They lived in the house and worked the farm for a number of years. When the Graingers retired from farming in 1913, the Gibsons sold the farm, except for the main house and the one acre immediately surrounding it. The house was then rented to a family named Thompson, who lived there until 1938. The remaining acreage was divided among a number of different owners who continued to use it for agricultural purposes.

The Gibson farmhouse is at its nadir, rented out to uncaring tenants in 1957, and deteriorating a little more each day.

Photo by J.V. Salmon, Toronto Public Library, S 1-4167.

In 1938, Noel H. Knowles, whose parents clearly had a warped sense of humour when it came to naming children, bought the main house. The farmland was gradually reassembled into one parcel by a company called Parkhome Developments, with the intention of building a subdivision. When Noel Knowles died in the mid-1950s, the development company bought the Gibson house and rented it out to tenants who couldn’t have cared less about either the farm’s history or the house’s upkeep. Meanwhile, to the east, north, and south, the subdivisions were closing in around the former Gibson farm.

Noel had spent a considerable sum of money repairing the house but, after a few years at the hands of Parkhome’s questionable tenants, the house was once again in a state of disrepair. This is not an unusual ploy for developers to use when they are saddled with an old house they’d rather just tear down. They either rent it out to undesirables to wring the last dollar from the place or they just stand back and let the elements have at it.

The practice, called “demolition by neglect,” happens all the time. When the developers know that there are people in the community who would like to see a heritage property preserved, they stop all maintenance on the property in hopes that a roof will cave in or pipes will burst or vandals will damage the structure to the point where the developer can say, “Well, I’m sorry. I’d like to save the place but as you can see, it’s beyond repair.” Unexplained fires also claim more than their fair share of structures caught in limbo between developers and preservationists. In cases like these, the stealth demolition is referred to as “heritage lightning.” By the early 1960s, the Gibson farmhouse was in real danger of succumbing to one of these fates. Demolition was being discussed as a real possibility. Then the cavalry rode in.

In this case, the cavalry was the North York Historical Society. Formed in 1960 to document and salvage what they could of the township’s heritage, the society celebrated one of their earliest and biggest victories when they were able to convince North York Council to compel Parkhome Developments to sell the house and surrounding property to the Township for the nominal sum of $1.00. When members of the society and council stepped inside for the first time to see what their dollar had bought them, they suddenly realized that the restoration would be no easy task. The house was a mess. A lot of work would have to be done before it was even safe.

By 1965, the historical society had convinced the township to allocate funds for a full restoration of the house as a centennial project to celebrate Canada’s one hundredth birthday in 1967. Noted restoration architect Napier Simpson Jr. was commissioned to oversee the project. A better person could not have been chosen, for although Simpson was a stickler for authenticity, he made sure that all structural and practical concerns were also addressed. By 1967, the restoration was completed at a cost of $45,000, a considerable sum at the time and, though the restoration was impeccable, there was still much to be done.

After having visited the house, Miriam Chinsky wrote these evocative words for the Willowdale Enterprise newspaper of September 25, 1968.

The house stands now, a lovely shell, its front door and wide shutters gleaming with ebony paint, its exterior woodwork a spanking white, its ruddy bricks carefully in place, every pane of glass whole-in a tangle of dandelions. Inside, the floorboards are intact, the panelling is perfect, every one of its many fireplaces is ready to function, — and its rooms are dismayingly bare! A few senior citizens have been using it briefly for a toy repairing project, but the dismembered dolls lying about only emphasize the terrible, almost macabre loneliness about the place.

The desolation wouldn’t last long.

Soon, a team of dedicated volunteers from the North York Historical Society would transform the house from “a lovely shell” to a fine representation of what the home was like when David Gibson and his family lived there. The family was whole-heartedly behind the project and donated many priceless and poignant heirlooms to furnish the house once again. Included were many of David’s books and surveying instruments, as well as a magnificent walnut sideboard for the dining room that David and Elizabeth purchased after they returned from exile in 1848. More everyday items such as dinnerware, candlesticks, and children’s dolls were also donated by the family, but perhaps the most moving item of all can be found in the dining room. Remember the workings of the grandfather clock that Elizabeth ran back to salvage after the government troops set fire to the Gibsons’ first house? Well, the clock lived to chime again. It seems that, while the family was living in Lockport, they had a local cabinet maker build them a replacement cabinet, and this is the very clock that now stands in the dining room of the Gibson House. Talk about living history....

The house is not the only tell-tale left behind by this remarkable family, however. It is quite likely that if you live in southwestern Ontario, your property was surveyed by the Gibsons at one time or another. Anyone searching old land records will see the Gibson name appearing everywhere, sometimes to the exclusion of all others. Even today, there is a listing for “W.S. Gibson and Sons” in the Toronto Yellow Pages under the heading of Surveyors — David’s descendants, still showing us the way.