Kleinburg History: Stegman's Mill

The Search For Stegman's Mill

By Pierre Berton

Reprinted from the 1974 Binder Twine Festival Guide

One by-product of the Binder Twine Festival has been a renewed interest in Kleinburg' s history. In earlier issues of this program we have discussed the background of the Shaw family and of Charles Shaw who originated the Festival in the 1890's and carried it on until his death in 1931. We have conductged an inquiry into the once-mysterious John Kline, for whom our village is named. We have examined the history of the old manse where Lester B. Pearson's father lived in the 1890's. And we've published accounts of the plank toll road which became Islington Avenue. Now it is the turn of the Stegman family.

The road which runs east from Kleinburg into the Humber Valley and past Binder Twine Park has this year been officially named Stegman's Mill Road. For years we knew it as the Kleinburg Side Road. Then Andy Gillespie found that it was listed on old maps of 1848 as "Road to Stegman's Mill." He appropriated the name. The Binder Twine Committee had street signs made; and this year the Town of Vaughan, at the Committee's request, made it official.

But where, actually, was the Stegman mill? And who was Stegman?

Old maps of the district show that the sawmill operated in a gooseneck curve of the Humber a few hundred feet to the north of the present bridge. Documentary evidence shows that it was in operation at least as early as 1840. And it is still shown on Tremaine's Map of York County dated 1860. It was undoubtedly badly damaged in the great spring flood of 1850 which wiped out every mill dam on the Humber. But we do not know when it ceased active operation.

Four years ago I took an old map showing the location of Stegman's Mill and set out with some of my children to see if we could find any traces of it. This was not easy; the river's course had been changed after Hurricane Hazel tore out the bridge in 1954. But finally we happened upon the remains of the dam and the millrace on John Beevor's property. Tremaine's map of 1860 shows this property - the eastern half of Lot 25, Concession 8, as being owned by a Mrs. Stegman. The land on which my own house is situated formed part of the same parcel.

But who were the Stegmans? Where did they come from? What happened to them? Are there any living descendants? During this past year my wife Janet has done some detective work and the results were fascinating.

The first of the family to settle in Canada was John Stegmann, a mercenary soldierone of the 17,000 Hessians who were paid by the British to fight against the colonists in the American Revolution. Captain Stegmann, late of Hesse-Kassel (now a state in West Germany) fought in that war from its beginnings in 1776 to its finish in 1783. Then he became one of the 10,000 Hessian soldiers who decided to settle in British North America and take up free land as a reward for their services. Stegmann not only got free land, he also got a job. In 1790, at the age 36, he was made deputy surveyor for the province of Upper Canada.

Stegmann's name appears on a good many early maps of Ontario. He surveyed several townships, including Vaughan, in which he came to own considerable acreage. He designed the first bridge over the Don River at Castle Frank. He laid out the major part of Muddy York-everything between Toronto and Peter Streets, Queen and Front. The grid system which includes the T-D Centre, the Royal York Hotel and the Commerce Court was Stegmann's doing. He also surveyed the road that led through the village of Weston to Pine Grove-the forerunner of modern-day Islington Avenue.

Like many surveyors of those times, he was a brusque, no-nonsense type of man. When somebody complained that the Pine Grove Road had too many curves he snapped: "What do you do when you don't have money or equipment for the job.! You take the easiest way - the cowpath!" Some of those original curves are still there.

The easiest way was also the way of the famous Toronto Carrying Place, the old Indian route that led down from Lake Simcoe to the lakeshore. Originally, this was intended to be the main thoroughfare out of York; but Governor Simcoe preferred a straighter path, and so Yonge Street was cut out like a ruler across country. Again Stegmann was involved. There exists a voluminous report in his own hand on the survey he did of Yonge Street from Lot One to Lot 95. Again the crustiness shows through. He complains trenchantly about the conditions of the new roadway. The people living along it had agreed to be responsible for burning the logs and underbrush but many had welshed on the promise. Stegmann wrote that "the most ancient inhabitants ofYonge Street have been the most neglectful".

John Stegmann had married shortly after coming to Canada. His wife, Marie Hamelin, is believed by his descendants to have been a French countess. She was certainly a staunch Roman Catholic and her husband did his best to follow in the faith after several of his children were baptised in the church. But he rebelled when the local priest told him he would have to pay a tithe before he could take communion. "No money-no communion" is the phrase remembered in the family legend. The crusty Captain Stegmann was having none of that. He exclaimed that he had already paid the church a fancy price by doing all its surveying for nothing. And with that he removed his children from the church and brought up all seven-three boys and four girls-as Protestants. His wife, however, remained true to her faith and was buried in the Roman Catholic cemetery on John Street in Thornhill, where her grave may be seen today, with the name mis-spelled "Stagman".

Stegmann's second daughter, Lisette, exhibited some of her father's spirit in rejecting the hand of a French count who wanted to marry her. "I would rather drain Bond Lake with a clamshell than marry the likes of him", the independent young lady declared. She retained her independence, remaining a spinster all her life, as suspicious of banks, apparently, as of French nobility, for when she died at the age of 82 in Woodbridge, it was discovered that she had squirreled away her life savings beneath the parlour rug, where inquisitive mice had nibbled away at them. Her grave may be seen today in the Balmer plot of the Anglican cemetery in Woodbridge.

John Stegmann's death was tragic, unexpected and bizarre, precipitated by a strange series of events which began in 1803 when a white trader named John Sharpe killed a Mississauga Indian named Whistling Duck on Washburn Island, Lake Scugog, about 25 miles north of Oshawa. A year passed and the white man was not brought to justice. This so enraged Whistling Duck's brother that he shot Sharpe dead. Then, when the Indian band was camped on Toronto Island, the murderer, under the influence of liquor, boasted about his crime, and was apprehended and charged. The court-appointed lawyer, however, argued that the trial could not be held in York since the crime took place in Newcastle district. Stegmann was brought in to survey the exact location of Washburn Island and a change of venue to Presque Isle was ordered. And so, on Sunday, October 7, 1804, a distinguished company boarded the government schooner, Speedy, for Presque Isle. The passenger list included the judge, the Solicitor General of Ontario, the accused's lawyer (also a member of the legislature), a

law student, an Indian interpreter, the prisoner himself and Stegmann. The following day the schooner was within hailing distance of its destination when a gale sprang up and drove the ship out of the harbour. In the terrible storm that followed the vessel sank with all hands. And John Stegmann at the age of 50 and at the height of his career, was dead.

His estate eventually passed into the hands of George, his youngest and only surviving son. It consisted of several thousand acres of property in Vaughan Township in the Pine Grove and Kleinburg areas, plus the family home-a handsome stone house in Pine Grove with walls two feet thick. Today it forms part of the Pine Grove Nursing home.

George was a well-to-do merchant and man of parts and first postmaster of Vaughan in 1846. His wife, Mary Ann, was a Bright of the famous wine-making family. He himself was a captain in the militia at Richmond Hill, a considerable social distinction in those days. George was in real estate with several partners, apparently, one of whom may have been William Henry Boulton, a mayor of Toronto in the 1840's. He was also in the sawmill business; he built sawmills and leased them out in much the same way that Col. Sanders leases out chicken places today. These mills could be operated by one man. George Stegman, (he dropped the double 'n' in the family name) owned several mills including one in Pine Grove and the one in Kleinburg known as Stegman's Mill.

His partners included members of the Gooderham and the Worts milling and distilling families. (Milling and distilling went together in those days -- rather than let the grain go bad, the millers turned it into whiskey.) George's daughter, Harriet, married Alfred Gooderham, who operated the Pine Grove grist mill for his father -- the same mill which is now the Hayhoe mill -- with its same great log beams. George and his wife and children and his widowed mother and some dependent sisters all lived in the family home. After George's death in 1848 at the age of 45, they continued to live there.

The Stegman properties in Pine Grove and Kleinburg are listed in the registry office as late as 1860, partly under the name of his widow, Mary Ann, and partly under the name of the estate. But in 1862 all but a tiny residue passed out of the family's hands as the result of a complicated court ease. At this distance in time the details have grown fuzzy but it appears that the Stegman property was under mortgage to John Boulton and the title was clouded. The court ordered the property sold. The high bidder was Boulton. The amount he paid for the land was less than the amount he was owed and so without further ado the court conveyed the title to Boulton and the Stegman name vanished from the record, to be revived this year on a street sign in Kleinburg, where, hopefully, it will continue to tickle the curiosity of those who are intrigued by the texture of the past.

Overlooking Stegman's Mill

The first real evidence that there was indeed a Stegman's Mill came this year when a letter arrived from Bertrand Robinson, a professional engineer from Toronto and Port Hope, who wrote that his great grandfather, George Robinson, had worked in Stegman's Mill, and that his grandfather had been born in Kleinburg in 1844.

Mr. Robinson still has the "hickey" belonging to the mill -- a long slender hickory stock with a hole at one end. It was part of the equipment used to sharpen or "re-dress", the mill stone.

George was born in Ireland in 1800 and married Adelaide, a daughter of the Earl of Stafford, who felt that she had married beneath her. When they decided to emigrate to Canada, the young couple was forced to leave their first-born son, James, behind presumably so that he would get some education and not be ruined by "the colonies". Little James grew up to found the firm of Robinson and Cleaver, a well known British firm.

George worked in Stegman's Mill on the east branch of the Humber and in 1847 built himself a house at the top of the hill overlooking the mill and the Humber Valley below. While the plaster was still fresh, he slept in the house overnight, caught a chill and died of pneumonia, leaving Adelaide with 12 children. She later married George Appleby who milled on Steeles Avenue at what is now the site of the Connaught Laboratories.

The house, on Napier Street, stands there still and is now the home of Robert and Marguerite Hill and their family. It has been remodelled several times, once by Hjormund and Charlotte Kummen who put in the stone fireplace, by hand, with stones they gathered from the area.

Another house. overlooking the old Stegman's Mill, and which looks the same as it did in the old days, is the Ellis-Egan house which was used this year in the CBC series "The National Dream". John A. MacDonald was shown sitting having tea in front of it, with its delightful "gingerbread" having been restored recently by Chuck and Jean Ellis who live there with their family and her father Lou Egan.

Mr. Egan, one of Kleinburg's older pioneers, used to collect milk from farmers all around and take it into the large dairies. He bought the house in 1900. It had been built by Tom Simpson and occupied at various times in the '70's and '80's by John P. McDonough, a wagon maker; James Barber, a tanner and currier; and George Jones, a butcher, and father of Joe Kersey. The little shop "Geordie" Jones used has been moved to the front street and has been a bank, library and now the Pine Shop.

Lou Egan's family used to live in the old home at the corner of Teston Road and the 8th Concession. His brother John and his wife moved from there recently and now live next door, also overlooking the site of the old Stegman's Mill on the Humber.

 

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