Gravenhurst 150th

GRAVENHURST POST OFFICE BECAME OFFICIAL IN AUGUST 1862

THE HAMLET WAS NAMED AFTER A BOOK BY WILLIAM HENRY SMITH

     "SMITH, WILLIAM HENRY (1808-1872), philosopher, poet, and miscellaneous writer, son of Richard Smith, barrister-at-law, was born at North End, Hammersmith, in January 1808, of parents in easy circumstances. Theyre Townsend Smith was his brother. He was educated at Radley School, then a non-conformist institution, and afterwards at Glasgow University, where he made many valuable friends and imbibed the habits of thought which influenced his subsequent life. After his father's death in 1823, he was placed with Sharon Turner to study law, and served out his articles as a solicitor with excessive distaste. He was afterwards called to the bar, and went circuit for awhile, but obtained no practice. Having a small independence, he mainly led the life of a recluse man of letters, reading, thinking, writing, and enjoying the friendship of Mill, Maurice, and Sterling, (author philosophers of considerable acclaim) having assisted the latter two when they edited the 'Atheneum.' Caroline Fox notices his likeness to Maurice," which is a strikingly significant compliment, in fact. (The Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press)
     William Henry Smith turned his back on the legal profession, and became a well regarded and accomplished author, and this connects to us, today, in modern day Gravenhurst. His decision to quit law, in reality, and the passion he had to write, generated some years later, the book "Gravenhurst," in 1862, the same year our post office was officially named the same. It was no coincidence. Just provenance we knew very little about.







     THERE WERE NO BALLOONS SET FREE AS A BUNCH, INTO THE BLUE SKIES OVER GRAVENHURST. THERE WAS NO PARADE, NO FLY-OVER BY THE SNOWBIRDS, GUNFIRE IN CELEBRATION, OR A SINGLE NOTICE ANYWHERE IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN, THAT TODAY MARKED THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE OFFICIAL NAMING OF THE TOWN OF GRAVENHURST.......MARKED BY THE OPENING OF THE FIRST POST OFFICE IN AUGUST 1862.
    BUT A FEW OF US DIDN'T FORGET, AND WE MADE A SPECIAL VIDEO THAT WE HAVE OFFERED THE TOWN FREE OF CHARGE, TO MARK THE HISTORIC MILESTONE OF WHICH WE ARE ENORMOUSLY PROUD AS HOMETOWNERS. I HAVE ALSO PLANNED A MULTI-BLOG SERIES TO FURTHER EXPLAIN OUR FASCINATING CONNECTION TO ONE OF BRITIAN'S WELL KNOWN AUTHORS, AND HOW IT ALL CAME ABOUT, THANKS TO THE HANDIWORK OF POSTAL AUTHORITY, AND CANADIAN HISTORIAN, WILLIAM DAWSON LESUEUR. AS HISTORY GOES, OF THIS KIND OF THING, THE "GRAVENHURST" CONNECTION IS A DANDY, LARGELY BECAUSE OF ALL THE SCREW-UPS OVER THE DECADES, THAT HAVE KEPT US DISTANT, FROM KNOWING MORE ABOUT THE WRITER RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR NAME. I HOPE, AT THE VERY LEAST, THAT THIS SERIES OF ARTICLES, AND MUSIC VIDEO, WILL ESTABLISH ONCE AND FOR ALL, A SUITABLE ONLINE ARCHIVE, FOR RESEARCHERS AND HISTORIANS IN THE FUTURE......AND HELP THEM AVOID THE SAME MISTAKES THAT HAVE BEEN MADE OVER AND OVER FOR WELL MORE THAN A CENTURY.
     IN A DOCUMENT IN POSSESSION OF THE GRAVENHURST ARCHIVES COMMITTEE, AND ORIGINALLY SENT TO REGIONAL HISTORIAN, CECIL PORTER, FROM THE FEDERAL OFFICE OF CANADA POST, THERE IS CLEAR CONFIRMATION, OF THE CONNECTION BETWEEN POSTAL AUTHORITY, WILLIAM DAWSON LESUEUR AND BRITISH AUTHOR, WILLIAM HENRY SMITH, AS RELATES TO THE 1862 NAMING OF THE NEW POST OFFICE.
     THE LETTER DATED, THE 10TH OF SEPTEMBER, 1965, NOTES THE FOLLOWING, ABOUT THE NAMING AND OPENING OF THE POST OFFICE: "The Post Office records show that the Post Office at Gravenhurst, was originally opened under that name on the Ist of August, 1862. The original appointee to the Postmastership was James McCabe, whose term of office extended to December 1867, when he was succeeded by Peter Cockburn whose appointment was on the first of April, 1868, and who served until February 1873."
     The letter also informs Mr. Porter, one of the authors of the well known local history, "Light of Other Days," (working with the Centennial Committee), that "Records in Ottawa indicate that in 1905 an early settler wrote that the community prior to the establishment of the Post Office was called McCabe's Landing, and it will be noted that the original postmaster in 1862 had the surname McCabe. Records also show that W.D. LeSueur of the Post Office Department, acknowledged naming the area Gravenhurst and indicates he secured the name from the title of a book by William Smith, author of 'Thorndale'."
     In a November 1923 article, published in the Gravenhurst Banner, also provided by the Archives Committee, the following paragraph identifies the connection with William Henry Smith:
     "Mrs. J.A. Northey, of Toronto, who was a patient at 'Calydor' (Sanatorium) last winter, received a letter from a lady friend in Toronto, a member of a reading circle, who gives a new clue to the naming of Gravenhurst in the following paragraph from her letter. 'When I wrote the name Gravenhurst, I recollected something my uncle once told me about that place. For over forty years he was in the Post Office Department, at Ottawa, and for very many years he was secretary of the department, which is the next post to that of Deputy Post Master General. In the course of his work there, he had to name a great many post offices throughout Canada, mostly of course small hamlets just setting up an office; when it became necessary to find a name for one up in the northern districts, he called it 'Gravenhurst,' after the title of a book he happened to be reading at the time."
     Where the facts of the official naming become confusing, has a lot to do with Bracebridge officials and historians, who for whatever reason, began substituting Washington Irving's book, "Bracebridge Hall," into the last line of the paragraph above. Time and time again, LeSueur is accused of naming our town, based on a book he happened to be reading at the time. The same holds true, in fact, for Bracebridge, two year after the opening of the Gravenhurst Post Office. "He named the new post office after the name of a book he was reading at the time." This one line has frustrated me for the past fifteen years, because it makes assumptions, that LeSueur was both cavalier, and a postal clerk who read books while on the job. Consider what respected writer and historian, Redmond Thomas, gave as a speech, many years ago, to the male members of the Teachers' Federation of Muskoka, published in the local press.
     As to how the communities of Muskoka received their names, he writes about both Bracebridge and Gravenhurst, by suggesting, "(LeSueur) picked the names Bracebridge and Gravenhurst from two places mentioned in a book he had read, namely 'Bracebridge Hall,' by Washington Irving. In the reference book, "Places in Ontario," by Nick and Helma Mika, the following information is included about the naming of Gravenhurst: "The centre of this town, situated on the south end of Lake Muskoka, was variously known as McCabe's Landing, McCabe's Mill, and McCabe's Bay, after James (Micky) McCabe, the first settler here in 1859. It was given its present name in 1862 by William Dawson LeSueur (1840-1917), a secretary of the post office department, after a reference to Gravenhurst in Washington Irving's novel, "Bracebridge Hall (1822). William Smith's novel "Gravenhurst," (1862) is frequently cited as the source of the name, but LeSueur left a written record about how he chose it."
     In another article, provided by the Archives Committee, the following is noted of the naming of Gravenhurst: "Local historian, Claud Snider, has gone to considerable trouble in efforts to find who named the tiny village of Gravenhurst, but without success. However, he believes it was named after a small English town in Bedfordshire, England, during the first ten years of settlement."

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT - NO "BRACEBRIDGE HALL CONNECTION"

     Quite a number of entries have been made in Bracebridge histories, suggesting incorrectly, that Gravenhurst was the name LeSueur fished out of  American Author, Washington Irving's famous book, "Bracebridge Hall." I worked for months to disprove this was possible, and I purchased a copy of the book, and read it twice. I also asked several Irving authorities, in the United States, if the revered writer had ever used the name "Gravenhurst," in any of the books he wrote.....not just in the case of Bracebridge Hall. I even asked if there was any chance that Irving had visited the community of Gravenhurst, in England, while on his travels.
      First of all, Irving did not use the name "Gravenhurst" in the book "Bracebridge Hall." He didn't write the name in any of his other books either. There is no evidence he visited the village of Gravenhurst in England. I gave my copy of Bracebridge Hall to the Archives Committee, here in Gravenhurst, to read, in order to satisfy themselves, that there is no credit due the good Mr. Irving, at least for our name.
     Based on my firm belief, that our town was named after a book written by British Author, William Henry Smith, entitled "Gravenhurst; or Thoughts on Good and Evil," our family purchased a rare 1870's memorial edition of Smith's book, and presented it to the Gravenhurst Archives Committee, along with an Archives of Canada photograph of William Dawson LeSueur, and a copy of his biography, entitled "A Critical Spirit - The Thought of William Dawson LeSueur," by A.B. McKillop. The antiquarian copy of "Gravenhurst," was purchased from "Timothy B. Wilder, Rare Books, of Hubbardston, Maryland, in 1998. It was the 1875 edition, with a memorial biography of the author, as penned by his wife. He died in 1872.
     As a sidebar to this story, is the fact the packaged book was returned to sender, by the Gravenhurst Post Office.....Mr. Wilder receiving the book, because there was no postal code on the package. Even though my name and address was correct, postal policy indicated it had to be returned as undeliverable. I thought this was quite appropriate and a little amusing, considering all the mistruths, and information tangles, I'd been dealing with for severals years previous to this event.
    My intrusion in the naming debacle was not welcome by several Bracebridge historians, who thought it best to leave historical record as it had been intially written, including the clear error with their research; the name "Gravenhurst" was never used by Irving, as they had been claiming for decades if not longer.
    I even offered these same historians my copy of "Bracebridge Hall," to read, as they had not done so previously, but they opted to avoid the issue. I pointed out to them, and to any one else who would listen, back in the late 1990's, that it was unreasonable, for Mr. LeSueur, a scholar as well as a federal civil servant, to take a name from inside a book, when he could have used its title. This means, that because Gravenhurst was named two full years before Bracebridge was granted its post office, that LeSueur, would have named our post office "Bracebridge" instead, if their theory held water.......and used a name found in the text, to re-name "North Falls," which was the title of Bracebridge before LeSueur made his unsubstantiated change. You have to know the accomplishments and handiwork of Dr. LeSueur first, to understand he would not have done this, ever! I had a chat, quite a few years ago now, with one of a number of "North Falls" loyalists in Bracebridge, still offended all these years since, that LeSueur buried the name the citizens had selected. They were so concerned about this federal over-ruling of their choice, that they registered the name, to keep it from being lost by time. I'm not sure about the citizens of Gravenhurst, just how they felt then, and today, about having the name "McCabe's Landing" rejected by LeSueur, in favor of a title borrowed from a newly published book.
     As I've repeated about a thousand times, LeSueur was not just a civil servant. He was a respected historian and literary critic, known in Europe and North America, and he would have had access to most of the newly published books.      Smith's book was published in 1862, the same year the Post Office was given its name. As for the naming of "Bracebridge," he obviously admired the work of the author, enough to afford the name he imposed by authority, onto a fledlging Canadian hamlet, he thought would come to appreciate the literary provenance, of being related to one of the great authors in history. I think he would be disappointed it took about 150 years to raise significant interest amongst the citizenry. Just as a little footnote to this; my readership has tripled in the last few days, in part, related to this coming historical feature. (Of course, it could also be because of my Music on the Barge reviews)
     I will offer more information on Mr. Smith in an upcoming blog, but what is important to remember, is that William Dawson LeSueur, was in roughly the same enterprise as his colleague William Henry Smith; both writing reviews of philosophical texts, for magazines such as Blackwoods. I adamently believe, LeSueur was so impressed by Smith's book, that he borrowed the title, to name the hamlet on Muskoka Bay. The citizens then were miffed why LeSueur had discarded their choice of names, "McCabe's Landing," and gave them the strange name of "Gravenhurst." LeSeuer had an explanation but he kept it largely to himself, feeling the settlers in the encampment, wouldn't have understood the literary significance anyway. Admittedly, this was his failing, and even if the citizens didn't get the connection, they should have been offered an explanation none the less. As a result of his failure to communicate, why he had selected "Gravenhurst," as the name of the brand new Post Office, history and its keepers, have distorted the act many different ways, somewhat retarding the credit deserved to both gentleman.....LeSueur and Smith. Hopefully this has been corrected, if historians in the future, would research more diligently and thoroughly than in the past.
     In the coming days, I will present more background information about both Dr. LeSueur, and William Henry Smith, and why the 150th anniversary of the naming, deserves more public recognition than it has to date. If I hadn't decided to create this editorial series, and beg help from my videographer son, the 150th would have been missed (neglected) entirely. Make sure you click onto the music video, son Robert produced to commemorate the occasion of the century and a half anniversary. Much more to come.

(NOTE ABOUT THE VIDEO - I WANT TO THANK SON ROBERT FOR HAVING THE PATIENCE TO DEAL WITH HIS MEDDLING, ARGUMENTATIVE, INTRUSIVE, PAIN-IN-THE-ASS FATHER, TO MAKE THIS CONTEMPORARY MUSIC VIDEO, TO HIGHLIGHT THIS AUGUST IST ANNIVERSAY. HE'S A GOOD LAD! THE VIDEO AND THIS PROJECT, WERE DONE OUT OF RESPECT FOR OUR HOMETOWN, AND ALL THE FOLKS PAST AND PRESENT, WHO WORK SO HARD, TO MAKE IT A DYNAMIC, GOOD NEIGHBOR COMMUNITY.)


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