Heritage House Signs

A Social History of the Old East Village

A few years ago, Susan and I were driving through Fergus, Ontario and noticed that many of the homes in the core had signs indicating the year the home was built and the name and occupation of the original occupant(s). Having never been shy about using other people's ideas, we thought this might be an interesting project for this neighbourhood.

Judging from the number of calls that we receive on these signs, people are noticing that these signs are proliferating. It's an interesting way for us to brand our neighbourhood and to draw attention to the occupations of our first residents.

We have arranged a bulk price for these signs with Print Studio a very good printing shop located at the corner of Dundas and Dorinda Streets here in Old East Village. (1050 Dundas Street East, 519-951-9595, print@printstudio.ca ) They have a template in place and they are charging $20 per sign. The signs are vinyl lettering on sign-grade aluminum. We've had ours up for nearly two years now and have had next to no deterioration. In our experience the best and safest method of installation is with closed S-hooks hanging from eyelet screws (pry open the S-hooks to attach the sign and the eyelet and then close them again, it's very difficult for someone to then remove). Chris Reid at the Old East Village Hardware Store on Dundas (at English) has the hardware in stock.

Now for the harder part; researching the history of your home. Susan and I have now done about 40 homes in the 'hood and it is quite easy (if a little hard on the eyes).

A Garden Club Founding Father?

The Central Branch of the London Public Library has the original City Directories on microfiche. These are located in the London Room (3rd floor) and the reference librarians are eager to help get you set up. The directories begin around 1885. Each year, there are usually 5 years worth on each microfiche reel - the city directory contains two major parts. First there is a Street Directory, in alphabetical order. From the street directory, you will get the year of the home and the name of the first occupant. Pick a year around where you think your home was built and look for the address in the street directory section. If the number is not there, move forward to the next year, and so on until the address first shows up. If it is there reverse the process; go back until the first year in which the address does not appear and then move forward one year to the first citation. This will be the year in which the first occupant moved in. Once you have located the year in which your street address is first cited, proceed to the second section in that year's directory, which is the Name Directory, again listed in alphabetical order. This will give you the occupation of the first resident and, perhaps, the employer. (Hint: several times we located year and first occupant from the street directory but there was no mention in the name directory of an occupation and/or employer. If this happens to you, check the name directory for the following year(s), you might get lucky).

A few caveats are in order:

In almost every home history we have done, the year in which the address first showed up in the city directory is later than the year given obtained by lawyers on the Title Search. The reason, I think, is that most of the homes in Old East were built on spec by property developers between 1885 and 1910. Consequently, the title search will reveal the date in which the properties were severed from the original land grants and sold to developers. But, of course, homes were not built and resold to the first occupants until some time after this.

Sometimes, you may run into problems with addresses that don't seem to line up, though this is mainly a problem when you are doing a block of homes. Interestingly enough, in a few locations, it appears that smaller homes were torn down at the turn of the 20th century to allow for the construction of the homes we now have. In a few of these cases, we seemed to have dropped some addresses with the bigger lot sizes put in place. When you are out walking around, these sites are quite easy to locate. Look for jumps in street addresses; like from 810 Lorne Avenue to 814 Lorne Avenue. Two homes now sit where three used to.

The last caveat pertains to accuracy. Mistakes will be made in the history search. My opinion is that this is relatively unimportant. The aim of the project is to capture a snapshot of the neighbourhood as it first existed; the age of the buildings, the people who first lived here and their occupations. It's an exercise in social history not title searching.