Tenants in Time: Family Strategies, Land, and Liberalism in Upper Canada, 1799-1871 9780773575134
Life as a tenant farmer in a society where ownership was revered but tenancy was of vital importance.
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English Pages 400 [394] Year 2008
Polecaj historie
Table of contents :
Contents
Maps and Tables
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
PART ONE: PERSPECTIVES AND IDEOLOGIES
1 Introduction
2 The Ideology of Landholding
PART TWO: TENANTS AND THEIR LIVES
3 Tenancy and Tenants
4 Their Landlords and the Landlord-Tenant Relationship
5 Their Rent
6 Their Lives within a Legal Framework: Distraint and Eviction
7 Their Legal and Customary Rights
8 Their Farms, Families, and Agricultural Practices
9 Their Aspirations, Successes, and Failures
Conclusion
APPENDICES
A: Note on the Database and Sources
B: Statistical Tables
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Y
Citation preview
tenants in time
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Tenants in Time Family Strategies, Land, and Liberalism in Upper Canada, 1799–1871 catharine anne wilson
McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston London Ithaca G
G
© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2009 isbn 978-0-7735-3425-4 (cloth) isbn 978-0-7735-3523-7 (paper) Legal deposit first quarter 2009 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp) for our publishing activities. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Wilson, Catharine Anne, 1958– Tenants in time : family strategies, land, and liberalism in Upper Canada, 1799–1871 / Catharine Anne Wilson. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-7735-3425-4 (cloth) isbn 978-0-7735-3523-7 (paper) 1. Farm tenancy – Social aspects – Ontario – History – 19th century. 2. Farm tenancy – Economic aspects – Ontario – History – 19th century. 3. Tenant farmers – Ontario – Social conditions – 19th century. 4. Tenant farmers – Legal status, laws, etc. – Ontario – History – 19th century. 5. Landlord and tenant – Ontario – History – 19th century. 6. Land tenure – Ontario – History – 19th century. 7. Agriculture – Ontario – History – 19th century. I. Title. hd319.o5w54 2009
306.3’630971309034
c2008-903099-0
Typeset by Jay Tee Graphics Ltd. in 10.5/13 New Baskerville
For my children, Anna and Charlie, and for Matt with love.
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Contents
Maps and Tables ix Illustrations xv Acknowledgments xvii
part one
perspectives and ideologies
1 Introduction 3 2 The Ideology of Landholding
part two 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
23
tenants and their lives
Tenancy and Tenants 47 Their Landlords and the Landlord-Tenant Relationship 70 Their Rent 103 Their Lives within a Legal Framework: Distraint and Eviction Their Legal and Customary Rights 143 Their Farms, Families, and Agricultural Practices 168 Their Aspirations, Successes, and Failures 190 Conclusion 214
appendices A Note on the Database and Sources B Statistical Tables 231 Abbreviations 255 Notes 257 Bibliography 325 Index 355
221
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es
Maps and Tables
maps 1.1 Location of Cramahe Township in the Province of Ontario (Upper Canada) 17 3.1 The Districts of Upper Canada in 1802
49
3.2 The Dispersion of Crown and Clergy Reserve Lots, Cramahe Township 51 3.3 Tenure of Occupiers of Agricultural Land in 1820, Cramahe Township 52 3.4 Tenure of Occupiers of Agricultural Land in 1842, Cramahe Township 53 3.5 The Districts of Canada West (Upper Canada) in 1849
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8.1 Distribution of Land Held on Shares in 1842, Cramahe Township 178 8.2 Distribution of Rented Land in 1842, Cramahe Township
182
8.3 Distribution of Leased Land in 1842, Cramahe Township
186
tables 3.1 Farm Tenants as a Percentage of All Occupiers of Rural Land in Canada, 1844–1911 231 3.2 Number of Crown and Clergy Reserve Leases by District in Upper Canada, 1803–18 231
x
Maps and Tables
3.3 Tenancy by District in Upper Canada, 1848 and 1871
232
3.4 Farm Tenants as a Percentage of all Occupiers of Land in Upper Canada, 1848–1911 233 3.5 Tenure Type and Place of Birth of Household Head, Percentages for Cramahe Township, 1842 233 3.6 Tenure Type and Age of Household Head, Percentages for Cramahe Township, 1842 233 3.7 The Young and Newly Settled by Tenure Type, Percentages for Cramahe Township, 1842 234 3.8 Tenure Types Compared Regarding Family and Labour Characteristics, Percentages for Cramahe Township, 1842
234
3.9 Tenure Type and Household Type, Percentages for Cramahe Township, 1842 235 4.1 Age of Landlords Compared to Other Landholders, Percentages for Cramahe Township, 1841 235 4.2 Landlords Compared to Other Tenure Types, Cramahe Township, 1842 236 5.1 Comparison of Recommended and Actual Rent Values, 1820–79, Upper Canada, with Rent Calculated as One-Third of Average Wheat Value Per Acre 236 5.2 Rent as a Percentage of Purchase Price 1820–79, Upper Canada 237 5.3 Crown and Clergy Reserve Rents for Each 200 Acre Lot
237
7.1 Value of Selling a Clergy Reserve Lease in Cramahe Township, 1810–69 238 7.2 Value of Selling the Lease on Amherst Island, Lennox and Addington County, 1843–86 238 8.1 Acreage Data by Concession for Owners and Tenants in Cramahe Township, 1842 239 8.2 Land Held and Improved by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842 239
Maps and Tables
8.3
Distribution of Farm Sizes amongst Tenure Types, Cramahe Township, 1842 240
8.4
Percentage of Farms with “x” Percent of Farm Improved by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842 240
8.5
Distribution of Tenure Types by the Amount of Improved Land, Cramahe Township, 1842 240
8.6
Measuring the Ability to Feed One’s Family, Percentage of Households with “x” Improved Acres per Person by Tenure Type 241
8.7
Land Use by Owners and Tenants in Cramahe Township, 1848 241
8.8
Percentage of Owner and Tenant Farms Growing Individual Crops, Percentage of Improved Acreage Devoted to the Crop, and Average Number of Bushels Produced on Those Farms Growing Each Crop, Cramahe Township, 1842 242
8.9
Percentage of Farms Growing Individual Crops by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842 242
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8.10 Percentage of Improved Acres Estimated to be Devoted to Field Crops by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842 242 8.11 Percentage of Farms Producing “x” Bushels of Wheat by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842 243 8.12 Percentage of Farms Producing “x” Bushels of Oats by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842 243 8.13 Degree of Crop Diversification by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842; Percentage of Farms in Each Category 244 8.14 Average Number of Livestock for Tenure Types, Cramahe Township, 1842 244 8.15 Average Number of Livestock per Improved Acre by Tenure Type – A Measure of Farming Intensity, Cramahe Township, 1842 244 8.16 Percentage of Owner and Tenant Households with No Livestock, Below Subsistence, Subsistence Level, or Surplus Livestock, Cramahe Township, 1842 245
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Maps and Tables
8.17 Percentage of Farms by Tenure Type with No Livestock, Below Subsistence, Subsistence Level, or Surplus Livestock, Cramahe Township, 1842 245 8.18 Percentage of Farms Producing Some Nonagricultural Produce by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842 246 8.19 Percentage of Farms Producing “x” Amount of Cloth by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842 246 8.20 Percentage of Farms Producing “x” Pounds of Wool by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842 247 8.21 Percentage of Households with Male and Female Servants by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842 247 8.22 Percentage of Households with Certain House Types by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842 247 9.1
Cramahe Township Tenants’ Career Paths Prior to 1842
9.2
Career Paths of Tenants and Farm Size, Cramahe Township, 1842 248
9.3
Career Paths of Tenants and Farm Size and Value, Cramahe Township, 1842 248
9.4
Career Paths of Tenants and Family Characteristics, Cramahe Township, 1842 249
9.5
Career Paths of Tenants and Farming Characteristics, Cramahe Township, 1842 250
9.6
Career Paths of Tenants and Moving from Farm to Farm, Cramahe Township 250
9.7
Career Paths of Tenants and Place of Birth, Cramahe Township, 1842 250
9.8
Career Paths of Tenants and Religion, Cramahe Township, 1842 251
9.9
Number of Moves Made by Ladder Tenants Before Becoming Owners 251
248
9.10 Career Paths and Landlord Type, Cramahe Township, 1842
251
Maps and Tables
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9.11 Transiency of 1842 Tenants and Owners over the Decades, Cramahe Township 252 9.12 Career Paths of Tenants and Land Tenure, Cramahe Township, 1842 252 9.13 Tenure Type and Moving about in Cramahe Township
252
9.14 Career Paths of Tenants and Assessed Value, Cramahe Township, 1842 253
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Illustrations
2.1 Tenancy Is Detrimental
31
4.1 Rear Admiral Henry Vansittart
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4.2 Stephen Moore, Third Earl of Mount Cashell 4.3 Mount Cashell’s Lease, Amherst Island 4.4 Moore Park
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4.5 Canada Company Lease
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4.6 Honourable Zaccheus Burnham 4.7 Bellevue
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4.8 Rental Advertisement for McMurray Farm 5.1 “Wanted to Rent” Advertisement
96
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5.2 Rental Advertisement, Otonobee Township 5.3 William Henry Moutray, Landlord’s Agent 5.4 Rent Receipt for Captain Hugh Glenn 6.1 The Eviction
135
7.1 Stage One in Improvement
149
7.2 Stage Two in Improvement
150
7.3 Stage Three in Improvement 7.4 Assignment of a Clergy Reserve
150 164
116
105 116
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Illustrations
8.1 Landscape of Cramahe Township Today 9.1 Climbing the Agricultural Ladder
191
171
nts ents
Acknowledgments
I have been fortunate to benefit from the enthusiasms of many people. Don Akenson inspired me with the confidence to view rural history as a worthy pursuit in its own right. Doug McCalla offered perceptive criticism and encouragement on several drafts of the book, and I greatly enjoyed the times when Doug, Roy Loewen, and I shared our fascination with the details of rural life and ordinary lives. Jim Phillips carefully and kindly provided helpful comments on my legal chapters and introduced me to the Legal History Workshop. Bill Marr gave sound advice on earlier versions of this work and Kris Inwood provided insightful comments at various stages. The readers for McGill-Queen’s University Press inspired me to embark on a final round of revisions with their supportive and astute suggestions. Jamie Snell and Terry Crowley, as chairs of our department, ensured that I had fewer teaching and administrative duties during key periods of writing. Ever since I began as an undergraduate at the University of Guelph they have given me advice and support; so too with this project. I thank my colleagues in general for making a friendly workplace in which one can share ideas. Some of my most enjoyable hours on this project were spent with my research assistants. Marty Pullen and I drove the concession roads of Cramahe Township for hours and spent months entering data, discussing what it could possibly mean, and imagining how these tenants lived. I appreciate his patience with the minutiae of my work and his wide knowledge of early agriculture. I would also like to thank other assistants who brought their own areas of expertise to the job for short periods of time: Lisa Talbot for her thorough research and translation into lay language of the legal documents; James Calnan,
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Acknowlegments
Karen Kennedy, and Brian Van Nostrand for locating and copying relevant information in the statutes, agricultural periodicals, and immigrant guide books; Alison Schneider for her editing and tireless effort to track down copyright; and Maya Holson and Kendall Garton for their proofreading. Marie Puddister and Jenny Marvin lent their talents to my mapping and spatial analysis, and Richard Gorrie helped with the illustrations. The staffs at Library and Archives Canada, the Archives of Ontario, Trent University Archives, University of Toronto Archives, Colborne Public Library, and Cramahe Township Office were very patient and helpful in tracking down little-known and seldomused references to tenancy. I greatly appreciated the financial assistance of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council. Many thanks also to the staff at McGill-Queen’s University Press for their interest and commitment to the book. Bits and pieces of several chapters appeared in a much different form in the Journal of Social History. My family have been an integral part of the research and writing of this book. Mother accompanied me on several trips to various archives to do her own genealogical research and shared the frustrations and thrills of detective work with me over lunch. Dad, once a farm boy, gave advice on agricultural matters. Matt, my husband, sounding board, and soulmate, has patiently picked up the pieces on many occasions so that I might have some time and mental space for my work. To him, I owe my greatest appreciation. My daughter, Anna, was born during the research of this book, and she and my son, Charlie, have sweetened my life and made me ever mindful of the importance of family in the historical process.
part one Perspectives and Ideologies
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d Ideologies
1 Introduction
Bailiffs knocking down cottages to make way for sheep, evicted tenants wandering homelessly on the roads, rack-renting landlords with their rotten boroughs: these are the images of nineteenth-century tenancy in British literature and emigrant memory. Such images form no popular part of our picture of Upper Canada. This was considered a land of opportunity and freeholding yeomanry. It comes as something of a surprise, therefore, to learn that in the first half of the nineteenth century, one-quarter to one-half of the occupiers of farmland in Upper Canada were tenants – such as the man William Thompson encountered one day in the 1840s who was busy chopping wood on his newly rented fiftyacre farm. Travelling along Dundas Street by the Humber River, Thompson was invited inside the tenant’s shanty, made of a few logs with brushwood for a roof. There the weary traveller was promptly offered a tree stump as a chair, and a piece of pork, a slice of wheaten bread, and a gourd of water all of which was placed on a wooden box that served as a table. As he visited with the tenant farmer – whom he later described as being strong of arm, full of hope, and surrounded by a smiling wife and children – he learned that the family was planning to put up a log house before winter and earn enough to keep themselves fed and to buy a cow, after which “they would get on first-rate.”1 A few years later another traveller, A.W.H. Rose, visited a tenant in much more comfortable circumstances who for remarkably little rented a 170-acre farm, ninety acres of which had been cleared and was in good working order. The tenant had a very comfortable log house, by no means a common shanty, with two sitting rooms, a verandah, and attractive green shutters.2 Tenants like these are nearly invisible in our understanding of the rural past. What were their lives like and what was
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Perspectives and Ideologies
their historical significance? Did tenancy really matter in the New World where freehold reigned supreme? This book is about tenant farmers in Upper Canada from 1799, when the Crown began leasing clergy reserves on a temporary unofficial basis, to 1871, when the census first saw fit to include tenants as a category.3 Throughout, tenancy is viewed as a relationship that existed in various forms.4 Hence, while this book is mainly about tenancy and tenants, one cannot understand either without a parallel knowledge of their partners in this relationship, namely, ownership and landlords. Both will figure prominently in the pages that follow. On a broad level, this book examines the evolving cultural attitudes toward property and improvement that were remarked and acted upon by state officials, landlords, and tenants. It also reveals a hitherto unexplored part of the land market that includes renting and the buying and selling of leaseholds. The study details how landlords and tenants across the province made their way through the formal process of law and looks at their informal negotiations over arrears and customary rights to improvements. On a more intimate level, it takes us down the concession roads of one township, entering the farmyards of tenant families in an attempt to appreciate the complexity of family strategies and business decisions, and to understand why they might have seemed logical to those who made them. This book is thus very much about tenants and time: paying rent on time, eviction time, harvest time, election time, moving-on-and-moving-up time, life cycle and family time, and change over time.
the perspective of nineteenth-century liberalism In the effort to locate tenancy within the broader currents of the nineteenth century, determine what questions to ask of my sources, and understand tenants themselves, I have found certain ideological, disciplinary, and methodological perspectives particularly useful. Throughout the era under study, land was of central importance to the province’s economic progress. The opportunity to own land was a major incentive for thousands of immigrants who decided to enter the province, and real estate was the principal form of wealth. Several case studies have shown the relationship between ownership and family reproduction strategies, underscoring the centrality of land to individual families and explaining how farm-owning families remained numerically and socially dominant throughout the nineteenth century.5 Relatively easy
Introduction
5
access to farm ownership made Upper Canada “one of the most open societies of the last century in comparative international terms.”6 Property and the way it was held was also of considerable ideological and political importance. Much of Western culture rests on the desire to possess privately held land and the belief that it is the source of independence and power.7 Whether Crown lands, church lands, or the family homestead, the land not only emerges as a neutral or objective term but also resonates with constructed meaning.8 In the nineteenth century, property in the form of land was arguably the most fundamental element in the trinity of liberal values – property, liberty, and equality throughout the western world. Liberalism rested on the belief that individuals pursued their own self-interest. According to political philosophers and classical economists, land ownership was the prerequisite for creating a free and independent person, someone whose mind and body were his alone; someone who had true self-possession and could act freely upon the natural world; who had power over resources and embraced progress and rationality. At the same time, ownership implied a greater commitment to the community and state. Land, in contrast to other forms of property is visible, fixed, and secure. It followed that owners were tied to it in a tangible way that increased their interest in the welfare, running, and defence of the larger society.9 It was also deemed to be the cornerstone of the capitalist order as markets depended on secure title and the free disposal of property.10 Private property, liberty, progress, and the nation’s interests were closely integrated. These ideas, drawn from the North Atlantic world of liberal discourse, were used to great effect throughout the nineteenth century by politicians and land reformers in public debates about property rights. The nineteenth century witnessed highly politicized, often violent attempts to bring property rights to the centre of public debate. A strong “defeudalizing” tendency swept across Europe, notably after the revolutionary upheavals of 1789 and 1848, as big estates were broken up into smaller holdings.11 Landlordism was attacked by tenants and land reformers in the name of liberty, democracy, and the emerging liberal capitalist order. Ireland, the United States, and Prince Edward Island witnessed highly organized movements characterized by political protest, rent boycotts, and violence. Between the 1820s and the 1860s farmers from New York to California attacked large landed interests. In eastern New York State an anti-rent movement raged in the late 1830s and 1840s on leasehold estates; supported by nearly sixty thousand ten-
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Perspectives and Ideologies
ant families, it became one of the most powerful social movements in the antebellum era. In the anti-renters’ bid to end “feudal servitude and voluntary slavery,” they intimidated landlords, elected scores of local and state officials, swept a government into office, and rewrote the state constitution.12 Meanwhile, in Prince Edward Island (pei) where leasehold predominated, the land question was at the centre of politics. Virtually all the land had been granted by the Crown to favourites of the British court in the eighteenth century, and there was almost no Crown or public land that could be granted free or on easy terms. The escheat movement, which called for the end of landlordism on the island, peaked in 1838 following the extension of the franchise and a victory for reformers in the general election for the House of Assembly. Though the movement was unsuccessful in achieving its aims, the land question remained a burning political issue.13 In 1864 tenants formed their own Tenant League committed to establishing freehold tenure. Thousands of farmers supported this militant grassroots movement and refused to pay their rent until landlords sold them the land. They rejected conventional politics, resisted the law, and fostered social disorder. Their tactics were successful. By 1871 not one landlord or landlord’s agent sat in the House of Assembly and in 1873 the leasehold system officially ended with the compulsory land purchase act included in the terms of Confederation.14 Nineteenth-century Ireland was even more notorious for its attack on landlordism. The Irish Tenant League, founded at mid-century and dedicated to parliamentary land reform, was initially successful. Following the election of 1852, more than forty Irish members of Parliament supported its principles of tenurial reform.15 Then in 1879, inspired by events in pei, the Irish National Land League was formed uniting the nationalist agenda for an independent Ireland with land agitators who called for an end to landlordism and the implementation of a peasant proprietorship.16 Such highly publicized movements sparked widespread condemnation of old feudal inequalities and in effect destroyed the ideological defences of landlordism. Freeing tenants from their landlords’ power in the United States came to be associated with the larger “free labour” ideology of the postrevolutionary and Civil War era that championed the abolition of slavery and indentured servitude.17 Agrarianists and land reformers believed that the democracy of the New World had to be securely grounded on widespread property ownership. It is against this international background of liberal ideology, organized protest, revolt, and violence that tenancy in Upper Canada needs
Introduction
7
to be understood. Some scholars see the first four or five decades of nineteenth-century Upper Canada as a time when liberalism fought for and gradually acquired ascendancy. Upper Canada might be seen as a project of liberal state formation in which political subjects were identified, sovereign authority was established, specific knowledge was centralized, and certain values were privileged by law.18 Land was central to this process. Individualized ownership of land went hand in hand with colonization as Europeans displaced the native populations.19 The era opened in 1791 with certain parts of the territory of British North America along the St Lawrence being set aside for native reserves. The area as a whole was then divided into Upper Canada and Lower Canada – a division in which land tenure played an essential and symbolic role. Lower Canada was inhabited largely by French Catholics who had lived for generations by French civil law and the property relations of the seigneurial system. English liberals and Tories viewed the seigneurial system as synonymous with Old World feudalism, a complicated and dense social fabric of mutual dependence and obligation inimical to the freedom and rights of the individual that were the necessary prerequisites for improvement.20 Upper Canada, in contrast, newly established and just opening up for European settlement, was founded upon English common law and freehold tenure. For generations contemporary observers and scholars associated Upper Canada with independence, capitalism, and progress, conferring a uniqueness and superiority based on ownership for all, while Lower Canada was associated with dependence, feudalism, and backwardness. Upper Canada became the norm of liberal progress against which other parts of Canada were measured.21 In other aspects of state formation land played a central role. Who controlled access to land, who owned it, and who could benefit from it were important to the structuring of power relationships within the state.22 Beginning in 1791, ultimate ownership of all the land in Upper Canada lay with the Crown. As thousands of immigrants made their way to Upper Canada in search of a home, much of the government’s business was taken up with land. The state’s obsession with it was natural in a settler and agricultural economy where the connection between land, production, and power was strong. A well-functioning land market relied upon standards and rules that gave individuals the confidence to invest and were a pragmatic response to the influx of people. From Upper Canada’s formation the landscape was surveyed, mapped, and divided into lots and concessions. The government reserved some
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Perspectives and Ideologies
land to support the established church, military, and native populations, as well as government officials, and the executive council spent much of its time on issues surrounding the distribution and protection of these reserves. Meanwhile, an array of officials gathered data annually on ownership and compiled it in land registries, assessment schedules, and clergy and Crown reserve records, creating authoritative centralized public knowledge about title to the land.23 Land ownership was also used to identify what constituted full citizenship: only those owning properties of a sufficient value, who met the liberal criteria of “true self-possession,” were given the vote. Indeed, Upper Canada’s very sense of itself as being different and better than Lower Canada, along with its faith in the future, lay in the independence and progress land ownership promised. Tenancy was not part of the liberal vision for the New World. Though we have come to know something about property ownership, we know almost nothing about tenancy. Leases first appeared in thirteenth-century Britain and were associated with commerce. A lease gave the lessee a real interest in land, defined the premises exactly, and covered a fixed term. The notion of someone exploiting the land only for a term of years did not sit easily with the feudal conception of perpetual faithful service and allegiance to one’s lord. Leasing was considered to be more commercial than feudal.24 Curiously, however, it did not fit the conception of a liberal capitalist state either. Capitalism developed complex systems of spreading and sharing risk, making the best use of capital. So it was common for businesses that were starting up to rent rather than own real property. But renting one’s home and farmland was less acceptable. This kind of tenancy was associated with a feudal past, with the oppressed peasants of Europe, particularly Ireland and Scotland, or with sharecroppers in the American South where distinctions between owners and nonowners were made even sharper by racial and religious differences. By mid-century anti-renters in New York, escheaters in pei, and Tenant Leaguers in Ireland made it impolitic to side with landlords. Most politicians, journalists, and other social commentators in Upper Canada either regarded tenancy as an anachronism or were disdainfully silent about it. Tenancy was not used to advertise the potential of the new land to settlers, and it was not vigorously recorded as part of the state formation process. For all these reasons tenancy was generally overlooked by contemporaries, hence underestimated by modern researchers. Powerful images and assumptions dominate rural history, the freeholding pio-
Introduction
9
neer being one, so that when scholars study land tenure and encounter tenancy, they treat it as incidental, anachronistic, or temporary.25 But tenancy has always been an integral part of Upper Canada’s, and later Ontario’s, agriculture for the simple reason that owners are not always able or willing to use their land and need tenancy as a way to transfer the right of land use from one person to another. As Donald Winters puts it, tenancy has been an essential part of agriculture on the frontier and in settled areas, under subsistence and commercial agriculture, and within free and slave labour systems.26 This study seeks to understand tenancy for its own sake and to relate it to several larger historical issues. Numerous studies have examined ownership in relationship to reform agitation, social status, government policy, spatial organization and immigration, settlement, inheritance, and family strategies of survival.27 This book establishes a parallel set of understandings for tenancy. What role did tenants play in the larger liberal capitalist order? They were clearly not included in the liberal ideology but their lives and actions deserve scrutiny. Was tenancy a temporary phenomenon, a step for aspiring farmers on the ladder to eventual land ownership? Or was it a form of marginality, of permanent dispossession and oppression? Or was it simply an alternative to ownership with a different, not inherently inferior, set of practices and characteristics? Knowingly or unknowingly, tenants may to some extent have reshaped, resisted, or even embraced liberalism. One major theme of this book is that while tenants were not included as part of the liberal vision of a capitalist political economy, they were very much a part of its working reality.
disciplinary perspectives Finally, this study contributes to the international literature on tenancy by taking a more interdisciplinary approach. This is rather daunting as most of the international literature on tenancy, while immensely rich and useful, has been compartmentalized into disciplinary perspectives each with its own preoccupations and historiographies. Economists, geographers, political philosophers, and legal historians have all approached the topic, but with few crossovers. Land, however, was fundamental to the larger social life and provided a link between generations of families, the economy, and the political and legal power structures. Tenancy as a phenomenon therefore requires an interdisciplinary approach. I have applied the questions and perspectives of
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Perspectives and Ideologies
other disciplines in order to understand the larger structures within which tenants lived, their behaviour, and the limitations, challenges, and opportunities they confronted. My own contribution is to bring microhistory, especially family history, to bear on our understanding of tenants’ lives. As this study begins with the period of initial European settlement in Upper Canada, it makes sense to begin with historical geography. Historical geographers are interested in how humans organize the space around them and in human movement within that space. Their work is particularly useful in providing an understanding of early settlement patterns and government land policy that shaped the spatial relationship of early settlement. Sometimes tenancy enters their work as it relates to speculation and transiency, but generally they have been more interested in speculators, who were sometimes landlords, and their control over spacial patterns than in the details of tenancy or tenants themselves.28 Economists approach tenancy more directly with a different perspective and set of questions. Ever since Adam Smith, economists have evaluated property in regard to its contribution to an efficient market and its function within the larger economy. A substantial body of international literature evaluates different types of land tenure according to the degree of incentive each conveys for the efficient use of scarce resources. So when looking at tenancy, economists are particularly sensitive to landlord investment and tenant security and their implications for farming systems and agricultural development more generally. They assume that human behaviour is governed by rational economic self-interest, and that both parties freely enter a contract whose terms and conditions have been established in accordance with supply and demand. They view the lease as a business arrangement, rent as a charge for the temporary use of land, and the rise of farm tenancy as a natural outgrowth of a normally operating maturing agricultural system in which parties try to reduce their transaction costs and risks.29 Those economists who adhere to a Marxist framework have a fundamentally different perception of the landlord-tenant relationship. They are far more sensitive to unequal power relationships, viewing the relationship as feudal or akin to that between capitalist and proletarian. They argue that tenants could not accumulate capital but had to hand over the fruits of their labour to the landlord class, which benefited far out of proportion to its entrepreneurial contribution.30 A tendency exists in this work to place too much emphasis on the institu-
Introduction
11
tional framework and not enough on the behaviour, choices, and opportunities of tenants themselves. Besides, the landlord-tenant relationship was far more qualified than that of the exploiter and exploited. I have admittedly relied on the approach of the classical economists in understanding tenant behaviour, but the Marxist literature has made me ever mindful of conflict in the relationship and of the unequal social and economic leverage that each party brought to the bargaining table. Lawyers and legal historians understand property differently from economists.31 They are concerned with the bundle of “rights” that each party has in the land. Approached from a legal perspective, one is more sensitive to the actual contract and its covenants between landlord and tenant. Furthermore, understanding landlord-tenant law and the court process provides another layer of understanding about how tenants were perceived, how the landlord-tenant relationship was fashioned, and what happened when it fell apart. By the early nineteenth century, English land law had become extremely complex. As A.W.B. Simpson, a leading authority, points out, nineteenth-century land law, formed centuries earlier in feudal conditions, had undergone “refined elaboration of legal principles and distinctions” to a greater extent than other branches of the law because land was still the principal form of wealth and the sphere in which “the richest pickings” for lawyers and litigants were to be had.32 The new legal history goes beyond this empirical history of jurisprudence to understand law as a determinate abstraction. The legal system helped to bring about unequal access to the process of law, determining who could start an action, what was actionable, the nature of legal argument, and the outcome. The law had an impact even on those who avoided the courts – it had a symbolic authority and social meaning as it helped structure patterns of deference, influence, and power. Those approaching nineteenth-century law from a poststructuralist stance see the legal order as constructed through the discourse of liberalism. Law was central to the making of a liberal order: it created and upheld an economic arena in which exchanges and the resolution of conflict were guided by standardized and predictable rules.33 Disentangling the different meanings of ownership and coming to understand ownership in legal terms has added immeasurably to this study. Indeed, the law of landlord and tenant, which I anticipated would be dull and labourious, turned out to be the most provocative part of my research, forcing me to look beyond my own assumptions and rethink
12
Perspectives and Ideologies
tenancy. The concept of property is extremely complex and really no easier to elucidate than the concept of justice. One of the most striking conceptual points is that absolute ownership does not exist in a legal sense. In common usage we use the word ownership when in a legal sense only rights and obligations really matter. This raises the question what people mean when using the term “owner.” Technically no such thing exists though it might be commonly construed as the person possessing the greatest bundle of rights. In this regard, ownership and, by association, tenancy were social constructs.34 Legal history shows what “ownership” meant in the nineteenth century: what it was supposed to be and what it was misunderstood as being. Thus, it helped me to separate out the liberal overtones that have become so enmeshed in our understanding of the term. Classical liberals in those decades had a rather inflexible view of ownership as synonymous with freeholder status. Looking at the concept of ownership historically, however, shows that it varied and was much more flexible.35 Even during the nineteenth century variant understandings of ownership existed or coexisted with the liberal one; witness, for example, the distinction between the freeholder and the leaseholder of a long lease. One could argue that both were owners: the first of a freehold, the second of a lease. Indeed, franchise law in some places recognized this, called the leaseholder a freeholder, and gave him the vote.36 Political philosophers and historians of land reform also have their own perspective on ownership. From John Locke (1673–1704) onward, political philosophers evaluated property institutions in terms of their consistency with man’s “natural rights.”37 In the case of tenanted estates, they argued that the land had no value without a tenant’s improvements; hence they had a natural right to own their improvements. In the act of production the individual had created a commodity that was morally his own, and he had put something of himself into the land so that a special connection existed. Some radicals and land reformers even went so far as to claim that occupation and improvement gave the tenant actual ownership of the land itself.38 Thus, political philosophers and historians of land reform keep us alert to the variety of social constructs concerning ownership and tenancy and the political power, or lack thereof, these were meant to convey. Onto this layering of perspectives, I add microhistory. Microhistory alters the scale of observation and hence what can be seen. It releases us from the conventional legal, institutional, and economic frameworks for a moment and takes us into the farmyard and household.
Introduction
13
Essentially experimental, detailed empirical observation uncovers factors previously overlooked and challenges notions of uniformity, one-directional change, sharp dichotomies, and dominant ideological perspectives.39 Microhistory enables the researcher to accentuate individual lives and focus on what tenants did, not what others said, and ask new questions. So focused have scholars been on questions concerning agricultural efficiency, political rights, economic development, and class relations that they have forgotten that tenants could use renting for their own ends. Through the prism of microhistory, their strategies, practices, relationships, and values become more visible. Family history in particular encourages us to look at factors within the family that affected tenancy rates and might explain tenant behaviour and experience. Family, after all, was central to farming operations, and therefore we need to understand how the family cycle and economy affected tenants and landlords. Family economy theorists emphasize that since the family, not the individual, was the basic decision-making unit, it ought to be the basic unit of analysis. They argue that social change springs from the family economy as it moves from stage to stage as a collective unit and operates within the context of external forces.40 Liberalism as a discourse has obscured and marginalized the rural family. Until recently, the farm has featured in the historical narrative largely in terms of what it contributes to agricultural production for market and the accumulation of capital, and not in terms of its own political economy. As Ruth Sandwell succinctly states, “Liberalism is so pervasive, and alternatives to it often seem so inimical to our common sense, that it is difficult to ‘see,’ let alone understand various cultures, beliefs, economies and structures of feeling that it gradually replaced.”41 Through the study of family history scholars have been exploring how the liberal state, the individual, and older, sometimes aliberal worlds interrelate.42 This perspective extends economic analysis into areas not commonly viewed as economic and allows consideration of the role of women and children, patriarchal authority, desires for security and leisure, neighbourhood and kin – factors that complement and stabilize the market experience and figure in families’ strategies for survival. The farm family’s relationship to a liberal and capitalist framework is problematic and controversial. A debate has emerged over several years that takes various forms: was the family farm peasant or capitalist, subsistence or market-oriented, based on a moral or market economy,
14
Perspectives and Ideologies
on aliberal or liberal values?43 The basic dichotomy has at its extremes households that are intimate economies where social obligation is the determining force and households in which individuals pursue their rational self-interest. For some scholars this suggests that family structures are evolving with family ties gradually giving way to self-interest. Others see the extremes as separate but parallel paths.44 These issues have relevance for the study at hand. The nineteenth century was a time when liberal ideas about the commodification of land coexisted with earlier household-centred, family-centred, land-based ways of making a living. My understanding of the motivations and choices of tenant families has been influenced by those who believe that in rural households obligation and self-interest combined in a rich dialectic. Within each household in this study, decisions were made by mixing subsistence production and family concerns with participation in the market.45 The main aim of most farm families was not simply to make a profit but to fulfill the family’s material needs in a way that minimized risk and irksome labour and took into consideration that only some family members could help and that they needed to be rewarded in a variety of monetary and nonmonetary ways. In order to support their families, tenants, to varying degrees, combined earlier forms of household economy – unpaid family labour, kin networks, subsistence production, and self-provisioning – with entry into the market to sell produce, purchase leases, pay rent, and engage temporarily in wage labour. In this way the family connected with the larger community. Their way of life may at times have seemed ideologically distant from liberal ideals but it did fit in with its working reality. Indeed, without tenancy and the household economy many individuals might not have found the security and flexibility necessary to experience the social mobility, economic progress, and independence that the liberal New World promised. The household economy has an important, if not central, role in my analysis of tenancy. Profit, for example, while undoubtedly important, was often part of a broader range of motives that encompassed family goals of maintaining a career on the land, providing security in old age, and ensuring a future for the next generation. The decision when to set up independently on a rented farm was often based on collective family needs and schedules. Indeed in many cases, especially those where the landlord-tenant relationship was a family affair, tenurial agreements were premised more on family circumstances and on the careful balancing of the needs of different generations than on market forces.
Introduction
15
In short, I have evaluated tenancy as a family strategy for survival and advancement. We will discover how some owners became landlords by renting out their farms in order to weather family crises and hold their patrimony together for the succeeding generation. We will meet tenant families who used renting throughout their lives to support current and successive generations on the land. Finally, we will encounter landlord-tenant relationships that were also intergenerational arrangements existing outside the usual land market and playing a central role in father-son succession. Using a family-centred approach highlights the discrepancy between the liberal construct of tenancy and how tenancy actually functioned. Nineteenth-century liberals thought that to be denied ownership was to suffer a lack of liberty. But to what degree was this true? As we shall see, tenants may have been denied the official status of ownership, but they were at liberty to choose from a range of rental contracts. Leaseholders had a package of rights that gave them the legal right to the use, income, management, and even sale of their lease so that they could achieve long-term family goals in much the same way owners did. The family approach also casts light on the value of property, not just in terms of its use and exchange value but also security, stability, access to a personalized space, and sentimental attachment. In fact, the family approach broadens our understanding of the function of tenancy. It was often instrumental defining parent-child relationships and extending parental control. It was a social process for families if they moved up the agricultural ladder to freehold status, and it was an agent of acculturation and socialization for immigrant families as they learned the ways of the New World. For some it was a way of life.
the sources and the case study This book combines a study of the broad contours of tenancy as found across Upper Canada with a focused examination of one township, Cramahe. Sources for tenancy are difficult to find and this may be yet another reason why the topic has been insufficiently studied. Few, if any, comprehensive estate records consisting of rent ledgers, leases, maps, correspondence with tenants, etc., have survived to tie the same landlords and tenants together over time. Thus, I deal with tenants and landlords in separate chapters to take advantage of the sources that have survived. The most readily available sources convey the landlord perspective: newspapers, correspondence, travellers’ accounts, immi-
16
Perspectives and Ideologies
grant guides, and government land reports were all written for, and by, the well-educated landowning class and those in positions of authority. Such sources embody the dominant liberal discourse and attitudes about tenancy, its perceived function within the larger economy, and the factual material (such as rents paid and arrears) that was most likely to affect tenants. Unfortunately, evidence left by landlords is not matched by tenant’s evidence. Sometimes illiterate, and occupied with making a living on the land, tenants left very few written records. Paying special attention to those that have survived can partly offset this bias; but there is a limit to what scholars can squeeze out of factual information given by tenants to census enumerators, assessors, lawyers, and land agents, who then fit the information into categories formed by those in authority for specific purposes. Besides these official situations when information was required, the power structure may have stifled tenant opinion. Tenants were unlikely to risk their security and position by publicly exposing flawed conditions or insulting their landlords. The sources are also patriarchal, making little or no mention of women and children. Despite these deficiencies of evidence and interpretive challenges, I am compelled by curiosity and a sense of responsibility to rural history to set forth a more complete and nuanced account of tenant lives. I gathered evidence about landlords and tenants throughout Upper Canada, but some questions required a case study in a local context. As Richard Wilk argues in Household Ecology (1991), “Households are creative responses, culturally constructed systems rooted in local history, local understandings, and local communities.”46 Without a case study it is almost impossible to learn about how market opportunities, geography, spatial dynamics, social relationships, local politics, and religious, ethnic, and kin networks affected tenancy. Local history provides yet another kind of microhistory whose analytical level allows one to study the conjunction of local and larger processes at work. Cramahe (pronounced Cramee) Township, in Northumberland County, Newcastle District, situated between the present-day cities of Cobourg and Brighton, is my case study. It is one of only a few townships in Ontario where the 1842 and 1848 censuses have survived and been carefully filled out. The census taker in 1842 noted tenants’ rental arrangements, their landlords, agricultural products, and family characteristics. Furthermore, an unusually complete collection of census and assessment data for Cramahe survive for nearly every year from 1803 until the beginning of the decennial censuses in 1852.
Introduction
17
1.1 Location of Cramahe Township in the Province of Ontario (Upper Canada)
The censuses of the 1840s reflected the government’s concern about meeting its debts, and its need for data to use in assembly debates and for advertising the country’s potential to immigrants and investors. The 1842 census was by far the most ambitious census attempted to that point. It included the usual enumeration data and many new categories on land tenure and agricultural production to measure growth and resources.47 As Bruce Curtis points out, the census was to some degree “worked-over oral history and third-hand hearsay.”48 The enumerator usually sought out the male household head who tried to remember and accurately measure what his family had produced over the year, their ages, etc., and who likely consulted other family members for their recollection of events and quantities. The enumerator then translated this material onto the census sheet. It is nevertheless one of the sources that brings us closest to the subjects of this study. The 1842 census, consisting of fourteen large folio pages, had column headings only on the first page. Fortunately the document is legible, internally coherent, and complete. Information was carefully
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Perspectives and Ideologies
aligned and then transcribed before it could be used. All owners (157) and all tenants (97) who defined themselves as farmers in this census were selected and then manually traced backwards and forwards in time through all the other surviving records – mainly censuses, assessments, various kinds of land records, township papers, court records, gravestones, genealogies, newspapers, and scrapbooks. Linking and making sense of these notoriously complex, dry, and sometimes confusing sources was a lengthy process but it brought me very close to the people under study and inspired me to ask questions and view issues from new angles. The evidence enabled me to reconstruct local economic conditions and some of the personalities and events of Cramahe families at mid-century. Even so, tenants, the most important actors in this study, remain somewhat obscure. The men have the most to say; one can only speculate on the silent majority – women and children. This book pulls together the dry scraps of evidence, the disparate minutiae, that tenants and officials have left behind to provide a glimpse of their lives. More discussion of my sources and method can be found in appendix a. Cramahe was chosen because of its rich surviving sources, not for its typicality; yet it can be argued that it mirrored general trends in the province, especially the other settled townships along the St Lawrence and Lake Ontario. Upper Canada’s economy at mid-century was characterized by extensive growth and capital creation, particularly on its farms. Land clearance and the construction of buildings were the most important elements in this growth. The number of acres that were agriculturally productive, for example, doubled every ten years as settlers cleared and fenced their land, turning forest into fields and dotting the landscape with buildings and productive barnyards. There was qualitative growth too, as the rural population improved their homes and furnishing, sawmills became more sophisticated, gristmills expanded their productive capacity and produced higher grades of flour, and woollen mills and distilleries consolidated their operations. In the 1840s many financial institutions were created, steamships began to supercede sail, the St Lawrence canal system was completed, the railway age took off, and Upper Canada experienced a wheat boom. By 1851 Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, London, and Kingston were firmly established.49 Upper Canada’s relationship with Britain was also changing. The repeal of the Corn Laws and Navigation Acts, phasing out of protective timber duties, and Britain’s acceptance of responsible government for
Introduction
19
Upper and Lower Canada all formally marked the end of the imperial mercantile system and the devolution of power to the colonies. The effect of these changes on the Canadian economy was subtle.50 Strong economic ties to Britain continued while those to the United States increased as the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, the Civil War, and other factors encouraged a greater diversity of exports to the United States. Political changes were occurring too. From 1840 to 1867 Canada was a proving ground for experiments in representative democracy and political administration as the country graduated from colonial rule, acquired responsible government, and achieved Confederation. In this study I take the 1870s as an appropriate cut off point. On the one hand, tenants had achieved some recognition as they had finally acquired the vote, and the 1871 census was the first national census to include them systematically as a category. On the other hand, by the 1870s Upper Canada’s agriculture was shifting toward a more capital intensive farming. One could still acquire land in the settled part of the province but with increasing difficulty and expense, especially if one was a newcomer. The American west was opening up for settlement and attracting some of Upper Canada’s surplus population, which was also drawn to industrial work in the burgeoning urban areas of Canada and the United States. All these factors changed the extent and nature of tenancy in Upper Canada. Never again would it attain the same prevalence or be used by families in quite the same manner. Cramahe, like other parts of Ontario at mid-century, was experiencing extensive growth characterized by an expanding population, settlement, and land clearance.51 Its landscape rose from the shore of Lake Ontario to meet picturesque rolling hills of deciduous and coniferous trees divided only by the occasional swamp and many streams. This had been the land of the Mississauga, an Algonkian-speaking people, but by the 1840s white settlement had altered that landscape.52 Settlers from the United States and the British Isles first began entering Cramahe in the early 1790s when it was still largely thick bush.53 By the 1840s, when the detailed censuses of tenants were taken, Cramahe was one of seventy-five townships that could be classified as “settled,” that is, as having a population of over two thousand people with over five thousand acres in cultivation.54 By then several pretty farms, orchards, and fishing stations dotted the lake shore and for miles inland farm clearings made ever larger, well-defined spaces amidst the dense forest. In 1842 3,043 people lived there, 15,380 acres were being cultivated, and timber and wheat were its principal exports. Frame houses were
20
Perspectives and Ideologies
replacing log shanties. In 1848 the township counted among its industries five gristmills, seventeen sawmills, a brewery, woollen mill, numerous carpentry shops and forges, an iron foundry, a pottery, and seven merchant shops. Its inhabitants were served by two private schools, nineteen district schools, and ten places of worship. By 1856 the first bank branch had opened.55 The port village of Colborne, easily accessible by schooner or steamboat, had developed as the township’s major entry point for people and goods. In the 1840s it consisted of one long street with a number of respectable dwellings, several trades and merchant shops, a post office, a physician, and a lawyer. Its principal business was the export of grain and lumber. Local traffic used the main road running between Kingston and York through Colborne all year round, while the Percy Road, which ran perpendicular to the main road, connected Colborne with the much smaller centre of Castleton and other locations further inland. Castleton was situated in an area that was still being cleared and that was dependent on the lumber industry.56 Schooner and steamship were the preferred forms of travel beyond Cramahe’s borders, except in the winter when stagecoaches or sleighs operated between Kingston and York. In 1856 the first train sped through the township. By then population growth was slowing, and agriculture diversifying. Growth was becoming more intensive in nature, characterized less by the bringing together of new population and resources and more by rising output per capita. A mid-Victorian liberal would have felt quite at home in Cramahe. Local politics focused on improving the economic infrastructure of the township and fostering progress. Both “old country” immigrants, who tended to be Tories, and those born in Canada or the United States, who tended to be Reformers, agreed on a number of principles.57 The overall political tone was decidedly in favour of the British constitution, a parliamentary monarchy, the queen’s law, moderate reform, and religious and civil liberty for all independent individuals. Given that the population consisted largely of those born in Upper Canada or immigrants from the British Isles, and that dissenting Protestant denominations predominated, this was not surprising.58 The people of Cramahe were against the union of Upper and Lower Canada in 1840 and supported responsible government. Only a small republican component existed, primarily amongst the American-born. In 1856 Cramahe’s first local newspaper, the Colborne Transcript, declared in its inaugural issue that it was an “independent and liberal” paper dedicated to maintaining the
Introduction
21
British connection and institutions and promoting reform along with religious, and civil liberties.59
The chapters that follow tackle the larger themes outlined in this introduction. Chapter 2 establishes the ideological framework in which land tenure operated. It examines how proponents of the liberal creed and their idealization of the freeholding yeomanry knowingly and unknowingly cast tenancy as its ideological opposite, with the result that tenancy was overlooked in official records, underestimated, and misunderstood. Though tenancy was not part of the liberal ideal, subsequent chapters show that it was a vital part of liberalism’s working reality. Part Two looks at tenants, the context of their lives, and lived experiences. Tenancy’s functional role right from the early days of settlement, its popularity, and the wide variety of available rental contracts are the subjects of chapter 3, which also establishes a general profile of who rented and why. In contrast, chapter 4 looks at the kind of people tenants had as landlords. Whether Old World aristocrats, corporate landlords, speculators, or ordinary farmers, their circumstances and goals helped shape the landlord-tenant relationship. The ordinary farmer landlords, of whom almost nothing has been known until now, were the most common and arguably the most important. Chapter 5 goes straight to the centre of the landlord-tenant relationship to understand and evaluate rent levels. Trouble could arise over rent and other issues. Thus, in chapter 6, I examine distraint and eviction for nonpayment of rent, the various informal ways landlords and tenants settled their grievances out of court, the changing nature of the law on these issues, and how those who resorted to legal action made their way through the system. I also seek to explain why reform never became a burning political issue in a context in which freehold and the international struggle for human liberty were idealized. If tenants were not officially considered owners, I argue in chapter 7 that they owned certain rights in law and in custom. This chapter complicates our understanding of ownership and shows considerable voluntary cooperation between landlord and tenant as they negotiated over tenants’ ownership of emblements, improvements, and the lease. Chapters 8 and 9 examine issues relating to farm production and social mobility, based on a richly detailed presentation of tenant families in Cramahe Township and their household economies. Chapter 8, for example, addresses two basic questions:
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Perspectives and Ideologies
what kind of agriculture did tenants actually practise, and was it affected by the rental contract? Using Cramahe farm households, I argue that the terms of the rental contract influenced the level of tenant security, responsibility, independence, and incentive. These factors meant that share tenants, for example, made rather different farming decisions and ran different kinds of farms than cash-paying tenants with long leases. Chapter 9 looks at what happened to tenant families over time. Did they eventually move up the agricultural ladder to become owners? Without succumbing to the ideas of nineteenth-century liberal ideologues – that ownership was inherently better and that those who did not climb had failed – this chapter explores how and why families became owners, moved away, or remained tenants for generations. Tenancy, as we shall see, did matter in the larger liberal capitalist order, but not always in the way we expected it to.
d f Landholding Ideologies
2 The Ideology of Landholding Up! be stirring, be alive, Get upon a farm and thrive! He’s a king upon a throne, Who has acres of his own!1
ownership Ownership is better than tenancy. Most people would agree with this statement, especially if they lived in nineteenth-century Upper Canada. As the Honourable John O’Connor, mp and advocate for property reform, looked back over the mid-nineteenth century, he concluded that “there was something sacred about ownership of land.”2 This chapter examines the patterns of thought that form the basis of this belief – an idealization of the freeholding yeomanry and its corollary, a disregard for tenancy. Politicians and administrators created a land system that relied on the assumption that people should and would own, a record system that deemed tenants irrelevant, and a franchise that excluded them. As a result, tenants were overlooked in the public record of the past and have therefore been ignored or misunderstood in the present. In short, a pro-ownership stance, enhanced by the emerging liberal order, denied tenants political representation, a historical record, and a place in our understanding of Upper Canada’s past. The disposal of land, Lord Durham said in his famous report of 1839, was of “paramount influence” in a new country. “In old countries no such matter ever occupies public attention; in new colonies, planted on a fertile and extensive territory, this is the object of the deepest moment to all, and the first business of the Government.”3 John Graves Simcoe, Upper Canada’s first lieutenant-governor (1792–98), established a hierarchical social structure based on land to
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Perspectives and Ideologies
follow in the British tradition and rapidly increase the population.4 He gave large tracts of free land to Loyalists and friends of the government in high places and created the Crown and clergy reserves. Established under the Constitutional Act of 1791, which brought Upper Canada into existence, the Crown reserves were for the future disposition of the Crown, and the clergy reserves were to support the Protestant church. Other denominations were denied a share in this revenue. The lands set aside in each township for the reserves were to be leased to settlers in the hope of creating a tenant class as part of Simcoe’s class pyramid of landed aristocrats, tenants, and labourers. Their rents were to be used to support the Church and the government. The governor and his appointed executive, not the elected assembly, controlled the disposal of government land, including the reserves. This conservative vision, however, soon came under attack as the tide of liberalism rose. Its anti-democratic notions did not appeal to immigrants, especially American settlers who placed a high value on equality of opportunity and separation of church and state. The radicals and reformers that emerged in Upper Canada, inspired by liberal ideals, favoured a society of small property owners governed by elected representatives. Though Simcoe tried to create a hierarchical society, agrarian idealists, such as Robert Gourlay, firmly believed that without the independence and opportunity that ownership conferred, a wealthy few would oppress the dependent masses, making them vicious and weak and arousing animosities between the classes that would infect the social and political state as they had in the Old World. Widespread ownership, Gourlay argued, inspired many of the finest human qualities by raising the moral tenor of individuals and society alike.5 The virtuous and independent freeholder and the peasant proprietor had long been idealized amongst English and American social theorists. Distressed by the displacement of independent labourers from their holdings brought on by the intensification of the English enclosure system in the period 1745–1876, English thinkers believed that widespread ownership was necessary to maintain and foster the best kind of society.6 Meanwhile, American civic republicans of the revolutionary years, federalists in the Constitutional and post-Constitution years, and others saw widespread ownership as the foundation of individual independence, free participation in a democratic society, and civic virtue. Cast as an opposite to this liberal position was an imagined “feudal” past. It was the central metaphor for hierarchy and corruption and tenants were considered to be part of it in their dependancy and
The Ideology of Landholding
25
subordination. Little did it matter that leasing, a relatively short-term commercial relationship between landlord and tenant, had never fit into the feudal world of long-term service and allegiance. Liberals in the New World had rejected and transcended their imagined feudal past and, with it, tenancy.7 They had created their own hierarchy in which land was the most important form of property and ownership the only tenure that really mattered. On both sides of the ocean, proponents of widespread ownership drew on the liberal belief that private property and its improvement secured independence and the perfectibility of man. This view was not a distinct discourse but rather “a sentiment, or disposition, that was compatible with more than one political-legal ideology.”8 Theorists such as Karl Marx, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and David Ricardo thought deeply about and thoroughly elucidated its many theoretical and practical components. Some of their ideas entered the popular rhetoric of land reformers, liberal politicians, and the discourse of pamphleteers and promoters of immigration. Meanwhile notions about ownership, improvements, and individual and national progress had become so deeply believed as to be unselfconsciously used by the general population. Within the various strains of political-legal rhetoric, multiple visions of the good to be obtained from widespread ownership existed and arguments shifted over time. In particular, there were two inextricably linked and competing ideas of property in American legal thought: first, that property was valued as a form of wealth that emphasized its exchange function in the marketplace; and second, that property was valued as propriety, as the material foundation for creating and maintaining the proper social order – in short, that it was “the private basis of the public good.”9 While both visions could be found in Upper Canadian attitudes toward ownership, with market concerns came to dominate over aristocratic ideas of worthiness and social order by the early 1830s.10 As land policies took effect, land reformers soon made a clear distinction between good ownership, or wholesome homesteading – the occupation, use, and improvement of the land by a family – and bad ownership by greedy speculators who perverted the course of liberalism, hoarding vast acreages of unproductive, unimproved land that might otherwise be put to good use.11 At its most basic, good ownership conferred economic independence and was believed to encourage economic growth. Karl Marx and Adam Smith argued that successful economic growth depended on efficient property rights. Ownership
26
Perspectives and Ideologies
conferred on individuals the exclusive right to sell or use their property as they saw fit within the marketplace and to enjoy the benefits of their own labour. This freedom, in turn, increased their incentive to be innovative, energetic, and efficient so as to raise the rate of return. In effect, ownership spurred self-interest and improvement and guaranteed individual reward. Ownership therefore turned slovenly, disinterested farmers into comfortable, efficient farmers. Only the promise of such rewards could overcome man’s natural disinclination to labour.12 On the frontier, where work was particularly arduous and comforts few, ownership provided settlers with “the strongest and most rational stimulants to persevere.”13 Ownership, it followed, provided security against poverty. As James Alexander Christie informed readers in The Emigrant’s Assistant (1821), the value of ownership was that it procured security during one’s own life, a comfortable old age, and the opportunity to set up the next generation.14 Even if crops failed or sickness struck, William Hutton told prospective immigrants, “a little freehold ... secured a kind of breakwater against poverty and destitution.” A man’s self-respect could be maintained and “there is no fear of him becoming an inmate of the workhouse, or a burden to society in any way, either himself or his little ones.”15 Strength of character, it was argued, also sprang from ownership. John Beverly Robinson, a High Tory, claimed that it was only when Irish labourers “become owners of property, with their families living on their farms, and their days occupied in labouring for their own benefit that the change in character takes place.”16 The man who owned his own soil, who had incentive to improve, who had the self-esteem that comes with independence, who lived under the “wholesome influence” of God’s sky, was “not” easily imbibed by other unwholesome sources.17 He was not beholden or dependent on anyone. As Hutton explained, the freeholder “can neither be bought nor sold, nor driven to the hustings to vote against his conscience, he can keep that unimpaired and walk erect, his dignity as a man uncompromised.”18 He would take a permanent interest in the soil, be thrifty, sober, honest and self-supporting. Indeed, ownership was not only the foundation of individual morality but also the basis of the ideal family life. Others argued that the finest family life nurtured by love, religion, honour, and virtue and characterized by continuity and permanence was symbolized in “the home owned and transmitted from generation to generation.”19 Later in the century, the highly influential philosopher and
The Ideology of Landholding
27
economist John Stuart Mill argued that ownership implanted the bourgeois moral virtues of thrift, foresight, and self-control that were so important to the modernizing nations of the world. By the 1880s the ideal of small-scale proprietorship, widely extolled as a way to reform and control the native, immigrant, and working-class populations in Britain, the United States, and Canada, had moved from the realm of economic thought to practical politics.20 Ownership was also seen to confer social mobility, influence, and authority. Ownership implied stability, permanence, and respectability, qualities that could grow over the generations. As the pioneer-gentlewoman Susanna Moodie argued, with the purchase of a homestead of one’s own, over time an industrious man could become “one of the most important and prosperous class of settlers in Canada, her free and independent yeomen, who form the bones and sinews of this rising country, and from among whom she already begins to draw her senators, while their educated sons become the aristocrats of the rising generation.”21 From the state’s perspective, ownership fostered the ideal population and the ideal state. It stabilized society, which was then better able to avoid the problems associated with extremes of wealth and poverty. Furthermore, ownership created an incentive to foster greater agricultural productivity and a disincentive to careless procreation, offsetting Malthusian fears that the population might outstrip the food supply.22 Ownership also created ideal citizens who were self-supporting, enterprising, and moral, and who had a long-term interest in their community. They contributed to the material wealth of the country and such improvements tied them to their land and gave them a stake in the country. Such a stake, it was argued, turned settlers into a law-abiding and particularly loyal population. Any threat to the state and its system of law and order was a threat to the labour, time, and money they had invested in building a home and a reputation within the larger community. They were also deemed to be the most energetic supporters and contributors to the running of the state. As Marshall Spring Bidwell, a radical reformer, argued in his address to the provincial assembly of Upper Canada in 1831, “Instead of a peasantry, let us have a yeomanry; and the country, on the one hand, would be more free, and all its liberal and popular institutions be supported with more spirit.”23 It was these basic beliefs about the benefits and opportunities ownership conferred that were held out to prospective immigrants to Canada. The lure and promise of ownership had a strategic value in promoting
28
Perspectives and Ideologies
immigration and was essential in initiating and sustaining the settlement process. Canada was advertised as the poor man’s country, a place where, in just six years of hard work, a landless labourer could move up the agricultural ladder to become the owner of an independent freehold unless he was so idle, inept, or improvident as to subvert the available opportunities.24 Advertising the attractions of Upper Canada, Martin Doyle urged his readers to “just fancy yourselves possessed of real property ... no yearly tenantcy [sic] – no terminable leases to breed interminable jealousies at the change of occupants, but pure fee simple – no rent to pay – landed proprietors – estated gentlemen!!!”25 Ballads appeared in English newspapers singing the praises of the New World. No landlords are there the poor tenants to tease, No lawyers to bully, nor stewards to seize; But each honest fellow’s a landlord, and dares To spend on himself the whole fruit of his cares.26 It might be necessary to labour for a few years before buying land, but in the meantime, E.A. Talbot advised his reader to keep his eye “steadily directed ... not only to re-animate his efforts, but also to illuminate his otherwise uncheerful path,” on “the star of independence ... glittering in all its radiance beyond them.”27 The Tory attorney general Henry John Boulton reminded his readers that, once a man had purchased his fifty acres of freehold land, “he then becomes a juror, an elector of his own representative in Parliament, whose vote is canvassed with as much care as that of the squire in the parish he left behind him; and finds himself respected and looked up to, as one of the yeomanry of the country. He sees his family growing up around him, all looking forward with a full assurance of equal independence when they arrive at man’s estate.”28 The promise of ownership had talismanic charm.29 In its supposed ability to benefit and protect, it induced migrants to leave all that was familiar and cross the Atlantic, and it sustained their hard work, deprivation, and investment once they reached the New World. It had real and symbolic value not just for the promoters of immigration but for settlers themselves. As James Reid, owner of a prosperous farm in Gore, wrote to his relatives back in Scotland, “I am not now in any distress to make up rents we live very quiet very much at our ease.”30 George Forbes, originally a tenant farmer in Aberdeenshire, wrote home from Canada in 1850 urging his brothers to come out: “We in
The Ideology of Landholding
29
Canada have this glorious privilege that the ground whereon we tread is our own and our children’s after us. No danger of the leases expiring and the laird saying pay me so much more rent, or bundle and go, for here we are laird ourselves.”31 Once here settlers endured hardship and privation with a patience and fortitude that contemporaries deemed astonishing. Many went without the basic comforts of life year after year in order to set aside enough money to purchase a small plot of land that could support them and be left to their children, eventually raising the family in social rank and dignity.32 William Magrath of Adelaide, writing in 1832 to his brother in Dublin, explained that he quelled his homesickness by looking at his rent-free land, “and I ask myself, if I were back again, how could I command such certain independence.”33 It often took at least one lifetime to create a comfortable living on fifty cleared acres of farmland, but such economic realities did not deter settlers in their quest for the independence that they believed would come with being a “landed proprietor.”34 Indeed, their actions only make sense in terms of a belief that the land would one day be theirs, and that ownership would bring security and independence as a reward for the risks they had taken and the sacrifices they had made.35 This belief was essential in initiating and sustaining the settlement and investment process in Upper Canada.
tenancy Understanding the meaning of ownership helps us to understand the meaning of tenancy. If ownership was associated with the New World, then tenancy was associated with the old feudal world. If ownership symbolized enterprise, security, and success, then tenancy symbolized its opposite. If ownership inspired initiative and economic efficiency, tenancy sapped initiative and was a hindrance to individual improvement and national progress. Tenants, it was argued by those adhering to the liberal ideology of landholding, had no incentive to maintain or improve their farms because any profits that might ensue would quickly be claimed by the landlord in higher rents. Indeed, motivated by the short-term pressure to pay the rent, tenants exhausted the soil in search of quick profits, stripped the property of amenities such as wood, and spent nothing on repairs. Those who held this view, however, conveniently forgot the centuries-old association of tenancy with a commercial world of enterprise and efficiency based on the ease with which one could acquire and dispose of property.
30
Perspectives and Ideologies
If ownership meant economic security and independence, then tenancy meant poverty, insecurity, and ultimately servility and immorality. As Charles Stuart warned prospective immigrants, renters or sharecroppers “are still labouring on the property of others; and unless, in addition to their own maintenance they can lay by sufficient eventually to purchase, they are securing no permanent provision for themselves or their families ... but remain until death, the servants of others, and leave a similar state of dependance to their prosperity.”36 Being poor and lacking any stimulus to improve themselves, it followed that tenants ended in the poorhouse or, fell in with those of evil intent. Being in bondage, say, to one’s landlord or creditor meant accepting whatever terms they dictated, even if one had to act against one’s conscience, abandon one’s self-respect, or lose the respect of others.37 The theme of poverty, rootlessness, and despair echoed sadly through such accounts. In a society where class was based on one’s level of independence and respectability, tenants clearly stood near the bottom of the hierarchy, barely above servants and labourers.38 The general conclusion was, therefore, that tenancy created inferior citizens and was not in the best interests of the larger community. Those who rented land to others, whether absentee landlords, speculators, or holders of land monopolies, were considered to be detrimental to local development and national pride. They represented a fraudulent power elite who had no place in the New World and who frustrated and degraded an oppressed tenant class. Their tenanted estates were viewed as quasi-feudal institutions, blighting individual initiative and thwarting honourable human aspirations and democratic development.39 Tenancy was clearly not a part of the grand scheme agrarian idealists envisioned for the frontier, nor was it desirable at the community level. Tenants, these idealists assumed, had no long-term stake in the locale but rather only a short-term interest. They weakened the spirit of community by taking less interest in good husbandry, roads, schools, churches, and general civic affairs. They were not likely to become part of the permanent respectable class of people but were more apt to be a burden or leave.40 Furthermore, one could not depend on their loyalty. A contented freeholder, argued R.B. Sullivan, the commissioner of Crown lands, would rise to defend the country against enemies, but disgruntled tenants who had no political rights might easily become disenchanted with a country in which they had only a temporary stake. Worse yet, they might strike a deal with enemy invaders, offering up their rented land – which might be strategically
32
Perspectives and Ideologies
gage lender as a landlord? Did mortgaged owners, saddled with large regular payments, differ from other kinds of owners in their farming operation, permanence, and ability to set up the next generation? Though home owning implied social mobility, was it sometimes a “costly asset” that, in the long run, brought only “the accumulation of devaluing assets”?43 These and other questions that unpack the myths of ownership beg answers but are beyond the scope of this study. Second, tenancy has been overlooked – and sometimes deliberately ignored – by contemporaries and historians in their depiction of Upper Canada. Upper Canadians wanted to view themselves as a society of freeholders. Much of the promotional literature and immigrant guidebooks avoided the topic of tenancy altogether. These sources were usually observations by the elite – visitors, government officials, educated gentlemen – who viewed tenants as undesirable and had no interest in really understanding them. Besides, these writers assumed that those intending to immigrate were anxious to escape a system that was closely associated with Old World oppression and were not likely to be lured to Canada by the promise of more landlords. Any mention of tenancy was therefore carefully avoided. Some writers boldly denied the existence of tenancy in any significant degree. Hutton, in his 1854 guidebook, informed readers that there was “scarcely such a thing known as a tenant-farmer. We are almost all our own landlords.”44 In Travels in America (1871), George Easton told readers that land in Upper Canada was “generally cultivated by its owners. Very few rent land.”45 When guidebook writers acknowledged the existence of tenancy, they were always quick to assure readers that it was a temporary position en route to eventual ownership, not a permanent condition. Colonizer John Robert Godley, who travelled Upper Canada in the early 1840s, admitted that renting was “not uncommon” but assured his readers that tenancy would never become “very extended or influential.” It just did not suit “the habits” and character of the people or the destiny of the New World.46 The editor of The Canada Farmer declared in 1865, “We hardly think any system of renting ... is adapted to the state of things in Canada ... the spirit of our people is apt to rebel against the constant supervision of a proprietor.”47 The public records of the era did little to correct the view that tenancy was inconsequential. To some degree the ideology of landholding determined that tenants were either not clearly identified, treated superficially, or simply not included in public records such as the census, assessment, or land registry. It was assumed that they were irrele-
The Ideology of Landholding
33
vant or that they would soon be owners, and that their legal interest was of little consequence. Ownership was a matter of nation-building importance and needed to be measured and recorded; tenancy was not. Documentary evidence regarding tenants, therefore, is disproportionately small compared to their percentage of the population. The census was curiously vague when it came to land tenure. As Curtis has shown us, the census normalized and assigned people and things to their proper place in the larger political scheme. That tenancy was not clearly identified until 1871 suggests that it was not considered worth measuring.48 The census was taken almost annually in the early years of Upper Canada, then every ten years beginning in 1852. Its purpose was to discern population and production figures, acquire knowledge of the resources at the government’s disposal for military and other purposes, and secure the province and localities their just share of grants for public improvement and educational purposes. Though its content varied from year to year, it generally contained information about household size, ages, acres, etc., but rarely about land tenure. The censuses of 1842 and 1848 contained a category of “non-proprietor” into which tenants and others fell. The 1852 and 1861 censuses avoided tenancy as a category, possibly as part of the government’s attempt, in those years, to use the census to prove the success of its land and immigration policies.49 It was not until the census of 1871 that property was clearly considered a conceptual entity and tenants were specifically enumerated.50 Such information was not given prominence but lay buried in schedule four of the “Return of Cultivated Land, of Field Products and of Plants and Fruits.” Though there was great qualitative diversity among different types of land tenure, the census category of “owner, tenant” (no variants possible) lumped all sorts of tenants into one artificial category and all types of owners into another, thereby reinforcing and exaggerating the structural divide between them. Thereafter scholars would compare owners and tenants and think of them as two homogeneous groups that were decidedly different. Compilers of assessment records, land records, even agricultural journals showed similar lack of interest in tenancy. Assessment records were tabulated for the purposes of taxation and were vague about the land tenure of their subjects. Usually owners paid the taxes and therefore appeared on the assessment, but often tenants paid the taxes if the lease stipulated that they do so. Early assessment rolls, however, did not distinguish between landlord and tenant. Even records in the land reg-
34
Perspectives and Ideologies
istry offices across the province are relatively silent about tenancy. Freehold title was recorded in the Land Registry Copy Books, but not for leases, unless they were for more than twenty-one years, and these were rare.51 For example, in the period up to 1852 in Malden Township, of 624 transactions recorded only one was a lease.52 Even the farm press and government officials concerned with agriculture had very little to say about tenants. Their publications were directed toward freeholding farmers and their concerns with commercial and improved husbandry. The ideology of landholding was also used to deny tenants political rights, hence any voice of their own in politics, or any claim to the ear of interested politicians who might take up their cause. Historians have suggested various reasons why the franchise was not extended to tenants until 1853, the main one being that old established settlers felt suspicious and hostile toward newcomers and were uncertain of their political leanings.53 Such political motives were usually buried well beneath the rhetoric used to justify political privilege, which rested, however, on the ideology of freeholding outlined above. A franchise in which only owners could vote reinforced the structural principles of society and the values that went with them. Leading spokesmen believed that to vote one must have a sufficient stake in the country. The “stake in the country” or “independence” view of the franchise was implicitly based on the ideology of landholding. Though independence was often measured in other provinces and countries by the ownership of a freehold or a leasehold of land, or the payment of taxes, in Upper Canada in the first half of the nineteenth century only ownership of a freehold earned a man the right to vote. It could be assumed, safely if not conclusively, that owners were intelligent, that they would uphold the laws and institutions of the country in which they had amassed their wealth, and that they were sufficiently independent to vote freely and without influence of any kind.54 The “dependent” and “transient” state of tenants did not give them a sufficient stake in the country to vote. It might even be dangerous to let tenants vote as they might be tempted or forced to vote under the undue influence of other people with ambitious or otherwise dubious designs. Scholars have argued that the franchise was adequate and that “no numerous and important segment of the population was excluded from its exercise.”55 In fact, it has been argued that the freehold franchise of England, when transferred to the Canadas, was “transformed into virtual manhood suffrage by the abundance of land and the gener-
The Ideology of Landholding
35
osity of the Crown in its disposal.”56 Such, however, was far from the truth. Tenants, a substantial part of the population, were denied the right to vote in both the parliamentary franchise as it was established in 1791, and the municipal franchise, the real operating unit of local government, as it was established in 1841.57 They were also denied the right to hold political office in those two levels of government. This meant that in the election of 1844, only one-sixth (seventeen percent) of the population was entitled to vote in the Newcastle District.58 By 1841 tenants and occupant-purchasers were so numerous in Huron County that only 308 people out of a population of six thousand (five percent) were qualified to vote.59 Such a situation likely rankled with tenants who had been in the country for years, made farms out of the wilderness, paid taxes, done road duty, and served in the militia but still were not considered to have a sufficient stake in the country to vote. Sullivan informed the government in 1837 that clergy reserve leaseholders wanted to vote and were anxious to convert to freehold status to gain that right.60 Beyond Upper Canada, leaseholders already had, or were gaining, political rights. Tenants who held leases for lives in Ireland, New York, and Prince Edward Island could vote; habitants in Lower Canada who paid an annual cens et rentes to their seigneurs could vote; after the 1832 Reform Bill in England, rural leaseholders in England could vote; after 1849 urban tenants in Upper Canada could vote; and those settlers possessing only a promise of sale on the lands of the British American Land Company in the Eastern Townships of Lower Canada could vote.61 But conservative and reform politicians in Upper Canada showed very little interest in taking up the issue of the franchise for farm tenants. Perhaps politicians feared that extending the vote to farm tenants might lead to a redistribution of property, or perhaps they assumed that, in due course, tenants would become freeholders. Having no vote deprived tenants in Upper Canada of the political leverage they might have enjoyed. They had no relationship with the local or provincial political centre. They lacked the opportunity to engage in grassroots politics, to learn about political leadership, organization building, recruitment, to act out political convictions, develop a sense of common grievance, and mobilize community resentment as tenants did in places such as New York State. In 1831 attention was drawn for the first time to tenants’ lack of political rights in Upper Canada. In the previous year John Brant, Mohawk chief and Indian Department official, was elected to the Upper Canadian House of Assembly by
36
Perspectives and Ideologies
Haldimand County but lost his seat in 1831 when it became known that some of those who had voted for him were white leaseholders who held leases for 999 years.62 Thereafter in 1832 petitions were submitted from Haldimand County for the enfranchisement of leaseholders; in 1835 Prince Edward District petitioned on behalf of the leaseholders of clergy reserves; and in 1836 the member of the House of Assembly for Huron sponsored a bill to enfranchise, among others, leaseholders.63 But such petitions received very little attention. In the politically charged atmosphere of the 1830s enfranchising leaseholders slipped by the wayside.64 Lord Durham had made no recommendations about it in his famous report, nor did the 1840 Act of Union modify the franchise. Then in 1850 the Clear Grits took up the vote for rural leaseholders as part of their democratically inclined platform. Spurred on by the desire to implement “representation by population” and end the entrenched political power of French Canada in the Union government, they saw the extension of the franchise as critical. Tenants got the parliamentary vote in 1853 and used it for the first time in the election of 1858, the year in which the municipal franchise was also extended to them.65 But tenants and tenancy were never explicitly singled out for discussion. Some of the most prominent social commentators, men who professed to be concerned with liberal democratic reform and the general advancement of humankind, had little or nothing to say about tenancy. Robert Gourlay, William Lyon Mackenzie, and Lord Durham glossed over the existence of tenants in Upper Canada. Neither the vexatious issue of the clergy reserves nor the momentous rebellion of 1837 generated discussion about tenancy. What’s more, although the clergy reserves were a heated political issue for years, no reform politician or social critic ever objectively and carefully assessed the leasehold system or spoke for the tenant’s interests. Robert Gourlay, radical agrarian, self-appointed guardian of the people’s rights, and author of the much-quoted two-volume Statistical Account of Upper Canada (1822), had almost nothing to say about tenants. This is curious because Gourlay had been a champion of tenants’ rights in Britain where he had tried to create a national organization of tenant farmers against great landlords and had waged a long battle with his own landlord over the terms of his lease in Wiltshire. Once he arrived in Upper Canada in the summer of 1817, he made connections with several of the leading landowners in Niagara and York and embraced the vision of a society based on widespread ownership.66 To
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37
this end, and impressed with New York State’s greater advancement in settlement and superior land policies, he proposed a grand scheme of land reform and immigration from Britain to Upper Canada. After asking questions and holding meetings throughout the province, he quickly concluded that the government was guilty of gross mismanagement in many affairs of state, especially land policy, and set about publicizing his findings. He believed that the government’s disposal of land and other policies had thwarted the natural opportunity and liberty that ownership conferred, creating a wealthy few who oppressed the rest and poisoned the social and political state; Upper Canada, in short, was little better than the Old World. The government’s deliberate attempt to create a hierarchical society and prevent widespread ownership, he argued, had undermined the people, who had “retrograded in civilization and moral worth.”67 Though Gourlay was eventually jailed and deported in 1819 for his account of an unjust society and his attempt to rally the population behind a movement for land reform, the plight of the tenant class did not form part of his critique. Instead, Gourlay represented the interests of the freeholding yeoman. Like civic humanists in England and the United States, Gourlay viewed property as propriety. He envisioned a society of independent owners who, freed from the shackles of aristocratic power and corruption, would be able to participate in a democratic society and virtuous politics. His advice to the government was to sell land cheaply to settlers and thereby act in the interest of the public welfare, increasing the prosperity and loyalty of the population.68 Though he gathered information on the prevalence and terms of share-renting throughout the province, he did nothing with it.69 Interested in fostering widespread ownership, Gourlay specifically addressed the grievances and interests of owners. Nowhere in his ideas on land reform did he express concern for the opportunities and liberties of those who occupied the land as leaseholders on government reserves or were share tenants or cash renters. In fact, he ignored their existence. William Lyon Mackenzie, radical journalist and eventual leader of the ill-fated 1837 rebellion in Upper Canada, likewise held to the ideal of widespread ownership and had nothing to say about tenancy. Mackenzie railed against the special privilege of the ruling class in Upper Canada whether the issue was land speculation, the clergy reserves, the Canada Company (discussed further in chapter 3), the Church of England, the Bank of Upper Canada, or the various policies that had created a social hierarchy. Amidst his often contradictory ideas
38
Perspectives and Ideologies
concerning the economy and society was a consistent belief in agrarianism. Like other agrarian idealists and civic humanists of his age, such as proponents of Jeffersonian republicanism, Jacksonian democracy, and English radicalism, Mackenzie’s philosophy rested on the belief that the most healthy, natural, and unified society was based on agriculture and a widespread freeholding farm population.70 To replace what Mackenzie viewed as a corrupt hierarchical society, he called for the abolition of the Canada Company and the clergy reserves and the distribution of free deeds to those lands so “that the yeomanry may feel independent, and be able to improve the country instead of sending the fruit of their labour to foreign lands.”71 It was a romantic social vision. Writing in his paper, the Colonial Advocate, in 1826, he explained the moral superiority of the farmer, who “depends directly on his maker ... his crops are ripened by the solar beam and refreshed by the dews of heaven ... he has continually before his eyes innumerable instances of the wisdom and goodness of his Creator.” Such men of the earth made the best leaders, since the freeholding farmer “trusts in no degree to the caprice of the multitude, and is perhaps the most independent among the lords of creation.”72 Mackenzie’s “Appeals to the People” were directly addressed to owners since for him, “the people” was synonymous with the freeholding farming class. Occasionally he included mechanics and apprentices in towns, but usually he meant the voting farming class – the freeholders, whom he considered to be “the sole depositories of civil and religious liberty.”73 He urged them to run for Parliament and vote in men of their class who were by nature patriotic, cultivated, honest, wise, and free from undue influence. Clearly his vision of social democracy was not inclusive but left out many who were deemed to be less valuable members of society owing to their economic dependence or social demoralization. Thus, Mackenzie satirized Jews, Catholics, French Canadians, and blacks and ignored Quakers, natives – and tenants.74 Gourlay and Mackenzie, who wrote prolifically and whose actions have gained them much attention, saw themselves as men of “the people,” but they provide us with no description or analysis of tenancy. Their own ideological biases prevented them from acknowledging its existence. The closest commentators of the day came to addressing tenancy was in relation to the issue of clergy reserves, and even here their freeholding perspective has muddied the historical record. In the period of adjustment after the War of 1812, amidst mounting administrative
The Ideology of Landholding
39
and financial problems, a controversy developed over the purpose of the reserves and the means of achieving that purpose.75 Crown and clergy reserve lots, usually scattered throughout each township, were leased to settlers who turned them into farms and increased their value. Eventually these lands were sold and the proceeds were used to support the church and government. In the meantime, rental revenue provided the Church of England with an income. The majority of the population (those not belonging to the Church of England) did not benefit from these funds and resented the speculative nature of the system. Robert Gourlay, William Lyon Mackenzie, and other radicals and reformers cried out against this kind of land speculation and attacked the administration of the reserves, accusing officials of being corrupt and inefficient, which in fact they often were. To critics concerned with creating a democratic society of freeholders, the clergy reserves represented Anglican exclusivism and ecclesiastical privilege.76 Their attack on the clergy reserves was part of the ongoing struggle over relations between Church and state, particularly a statesupported religion; but the reserves were also seen as obstacles to the settlement of a freeholding yeomanry. Gourlay and Mackenzie represented the interests of the freeholding class who wanted access to the reserves; they did not represent the leaseholders residing upon them. The extensive survey Gourlay conducted in 1817 was directly aimed at immigrants from Britain who might be encouraged to buy land in Upper Canada.77 In his Statistical Account, he mentioned in passing that reserves were leased and yielded rents but he did not evaluate the system of leasing or the tenants’ situations.78 Mackenzie’s agrarian bias and his courtship of the farm electorate also led him to expound the freeholder’s point of view on the reserves. Freeholders resented that good lots near towns and transportation routes were held in reserve and could not be purchased. They also quickly concluded that the reserves were to blame for the slowness and inconvenience of settlement and local development. At the heart of their argument was the assertion that the reserves and land held by the Canada Company were “waste land”. As John Weaver has pointed out in his study of various frontier societies, “the most repeated justification for occupying frontier lands turned on a single word – waste.”79 Actual settlement was synonymous with freehold, not leasing. Rarely did freeholders admit that by the 1830s thousands of leaseholders had settled on these lots and were clearing farmland out of the wilderness and building homes for their families, paying taxes, and doing road
40
Perspectives and Ideologies
duty.80 Instead, in blanket statements, they declared that reserved land was vacant wild land that contributed nothing to the public benefit and served only to prove the injustice and conspiracy of those crafty covetous few who held power in the province. Reform-minded freeholders complained that they had to do three times the amount of statutory roadwork in order to ensure that roads passed through vacant reserves in their neighbourhood. Such unimproved wasteland served to reduce the market value of their own improved farms, they complained, and retarded the general improvement of the township. They argued that reserve land contributed nothing to the local tax base, and that freeholders had to bear an extra burden of taxes to support basic institutions and improvements or do without them. Only contiguous settlement could support the necessary roads and schools, and the reserves prevented settlement unless freeholders were willing to bear the extra burden.81 Such a burden, Mackenzie argued, ran freeholders into debt and thwarted the God-given liberties of the freeholding yeomanry to benefit from the fruits of their labour.82 These were the issues opponents of the clergy reserves focused on; they ignored the actual system of leasing the reserves (rents, security of tenure, covenants) and the conditions under which tenants lived. Their understanding and interest stopped short at the dubious association of reserves with wasteland and ineffective settlement. In their treatment of the clergy reserves historians have tended to follow suit,83 drawing an easy connection between the much maligned reserves and Upper Canada’s relatively slow rate of development compared to that of the United States. Apart from the political rhetoric, however, there is little evidence to support these assertions. Absentee owners, a shortage of currency, poor transportation facilities, war, and slow rates of immigration before 1815 were arguably more detrimental to settlement than the reserves. Only half of the respondents to Gourlay’s questionnaire actually blamed the reserves for slow settlement.84 After 1815 settlers eagerly sought leases and started creating farms out of the wilderness. In 1821 it was reported to the executive council of Upper Canada that though the reserves had threatened to be an obstruction to development, “this only objection which had weighed with many at first has now vanished when the benefit begins to be apparent. As the settlements increase the Leases of these reserves are eagerly sought after – from the instant they are under lease, they become subject to the making and repair of roads.”85 In fact, the reserves, as we shall see, were one of the best rental arrangements to be had in Upper Canada and afforded many the opportunity to
The Ideology of Landholding
41
get a good start on the land. By 1837, on the eve of the rebellion, 361,000 acres of clergy reserve land were tenanted by some 1,805 leaseholding families.86 Sales were also well underway as many of these lessees converted their leasehold to freehold. But in the politically charged atmosphere of the 1830s and 1840s, and holding firmly to the ideology of the freeholding yeomanry, it was impossible for the public to evaluate the leasing system objectively. The clergy reserves have been cited as one of the grievances leading up to the rebellion. The main irritant was ecclesiastical privilege. Rebels and reformers, as a result, did nothing to assess or publicize information about the burden of rents or insecurity of tenure for thousands of leaseholders, but chose instead to focus on a few specific cases that substantiated their claim that religious privilege resulted in gross injustice. They were particularly incensed when, in 1835, LieutenantGovernor Sir John Colborne created fifty-seven new glebes, to be used as rectory land for Anglican clergymen, out of Crown and clergy reserve lots near towns.87 Had it not been for this highly impolitic act, Lord Durham believed, the clergy reserves might have been left alone.88 That squatters and leaseholders previously occupying the lands would be deprived of the opportunity to buy them or be ejected legally was deemed outrageous. The case of Daniel Arnot of Clarke Township, for example, was taken up and widely publicized by Mackenzie. Arnot, a genuine lessee with a good record of improvements and no arrears, had hoped to purchase his clergy reserve lot but was devastated by the news that the executive council had decided that that particular lot was to be a glebe and was not therefore purchasable. Worse, Arnot accused the deputy surveyor of conniving to deprive him of the lot so that the deputy surveyor could lay hands on it, since it adjoined his land and was increasingly valuable as a village site. True or not, the number of such cases brought before the executive council was small, but they were of tremendous political value in advancing the cause of those who loathed the political elite and their established church.89 The publicizing of such cases increased the suspicion and dislike levelled against the clergy reserves and created a misleading impression of the leasehold system.90 Mackenzie capitalized on the stereotype of tenants as a disloyal and easily led population in his strategy to frighten those in power. In a handbill entitled Appeal to Arms, circulated on 1 December 1837, he promised to give lessees on Canada Company and reserve land free deeds if they supported the rebellion, and he implied that those who
42
Perspectives and Ideologies
refused to support the rebels would lose their land. Such confiscated land, along with the vast tracts of wasteland, he held out as an inducement to American forces as they assembled along the frontier, promising every enemy invader several hundred acres.91 Such threats and promises frightened the government and made it feel vulnerable. They had already stopped making new leases because leasehold was held in such disfavour by Mackenzie and others like him, and they feared that lessees themselves would become disaffected and join the rebel forces.92 But did they need to be afraid? The position taken by lessees during the rebellion is unclear and awaits further examination. Beyond a vague sense of insecurity, however, and the natural preference for ownership, it seems unlikely that lessees had any outright economic grievances. As succeeding chapters will demonstrate, their rents were low and their twenty-one-year leases were legally guaranteed. The administration usually granted lessees a renewal of their lease, but no legal claim to automatic renewal existed. Conversions from leasehold to freehold were common. From what scholars have uncovered, the Mackenzie and Duncombe risings were formed of men from a fairly stable, long settled, reasonably prosperous sector of society – farmers (both owners and leaseholders), craftsmen, professionals, and merchants.93 It is not clear what proportion of them were tenants, or whether the reserves were really an issue since in some rebel townships they had been settled and improved and in others they had not.94 Elsewhere in the province, tenants were likely part of the loyal population. In the Newcastle District, where Cramahe Township was located, for example, only eight men (mostly from Belleville) were arrested and held under strong suspicion of disloyalty. Henry Ruttan, mla, district sheriff responsible for collecting reserve rents, and colonel of the Third Northumberland Regiment, believed the area was loyal and travelled with a regiment of two thousand men from the district to suppress the rising in Toronto.95 Nor was Lord Durham any more interested in or informed about tenancy. In 1838 John George Lambton, earl of Durham, was made governor general of the Canadas and was asked to prepare a report for the British government on the causes of the rebellions and ways to avoid further trouble. After spending only a few months in the colonies, he produced his report in early 1839. Durham, nicknamed “Radical Jack,” was an ardent liberal imbued with the idea of progress and the need to free individuals from constraints on their ability and initiative. He believed that to replace the monopolistic reserves with widespread
The Ideology of Landholding
43
ownership would encourage settlers to pursue with energy, ambition, and innovation their own rational self-interest, something deemed essential to the nation’s economic progress and public virtue. Impressed with the moderate reformers in Canada, Durham simply reiterated the standard interpretation of the land system that had been well established, first by Gourlay, then Mackenzie, and others more moderate. He associated the reserves with wasteland and believed the religious privilege associated with them to be “the most mischievous practical cause of dissension.”96 He believed that the reserves should be abolished and that public land should henceforth be sold at a uniform fixed price and the proceeds devoted to immigration and local development. Like those before him, Durham failed to acknowledge or understand New World tenancy. Crown lands occupied the greatest part of his correspondence with the secretary of state, but much of his information came from Charles Buller’s commission of inquiry pertaining to land, which made no mention of renting or leasing.97 As C.P. Lucas so astutely pointed out in his introduction to the 1912 reprint of the Durham Report, no part of the inquiry was “more detailed, more elaborated, or more complete, but ... it must be added that no part was so academic or so divorced from living realities.”98 Durham’s recommendation of a uniform system of land sales and colonization – the Wakefield system – was impossible to implement. Upper Canada was already too settled and too evolved for this to be even a remote possibility. Furthermore, the proposed scheme denied the existence of a system of leasing that already provided immigrants with access to land and upward social mobility. Though the Wakefield system never materialized, Lord Durham’s recommendation that the clergy reserves be secularized was eventually carried into effect. The settlement of 1854, which officially ended the reserves and nominally repudiated state endowments for religion, was primarily a religious issue, and not an economic one.99 It brought political relief by ending the controversy over the purpose of the reserves but ironically ended a system whose means – the leasing and eventual sale of lands – had proved useful in the settlement of the province. Reformers’ indifference to tenancy helped legitimize a disdainful attitude toward it. They mobilized agrarian ideals against land companies and government reserves but were unwilling to use them to assist tenants in gaining independence, dignity, and equality. Their assertions that tenancy was rare, that the reserves were vacant wild land, and that ownership was widespread have been accepted uncritically by
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Perspectives and Ideologies
historians. They, like our pioneer ancestors, have got caught up in the ideology of freehold. Thus, for example, the failure of the Laird of McNab’s settlement in Renfrew County is ascribed to his confrontation with “the egalitarian and democratic ways of the new world.”100 Lord Mount Cashell’s estate on Amherst Island is dismissed as a “disaster” because “the old-world system of leasehold had little attraction in a society of freeholders.”101 Even more recent scholarly works on land, class, and the economy have given tenancy surprisingly little attention.102 John Clarke, in his extensive study on Land, Power, and Economics on the Frontier of Upper Canada (2001), quickly explains the alleged failure of clergy reserve leasing by stating that it “was simply not viable here [Essex County] or in Upper Canada as a whole since freehold land was what was sought.”103
There are other reasons for tenants’ invisibility in the story of Upper Canada’s past. As we shall see, tenants were so diverse in wealth, conditions, and aspirations, and so dispersed that no class consciousness developed. The same might be said of landlords. Furthermore, it is possible that tenancy was not a political issue because conditions were generally satisfactory to both parties. That said, two points require emphasis. Organized public protest may have been absent but people were talking about tenancy to their relatives, their neighbours, and their landlords in the farmyard, the agent’s office, and the courts. Finally, there is a world of difference between a society that believes in the value of ownership and one whose daily working reality rests upon it. Tenancy, as we shall see, was a vital part of that working reality.
part two Tenants and Their Lives
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3 Tenancy and Tenants
Tenancy was a functional part of the land system right from its early days. Despite what ideologues and politicians might say about the economic, political, and moral advantages of ownership, practical-minded persons knew that renting allowed settlers, who couldn’t afford to buy, access to land and assisted others in their initial adaptation. Tenancy appeared when the first white settlers began entering the province and reached an all-time high during the mid-nineteenth century, when about forty-three percent of all rural occupiers of land were renting. This placed Upper Canada, in terms of tenancy rates, between Prince Edward Island, notorious for its absentee landlords, and the other provinces (Table 3.1; all tables can be found in appendix b). Upper Canada maintained its relatively high tenancy rates throughout the rest of the century, though the proportion never reached quite the same magnitude. By mid-century tenancy had matured and acquired a complexity all its own. To some degree, tenants manifested the characteristics that one might expect in newcomers during the early stages of settlement. But they elude easy categorization. They varied widely in age, background, and type of household, and their rental contracts differed considerably in their modes of payment, security of tenure, and rights and obligations.
the prevalence of tenants In the first half of the nineteenth century, tenant farmers likely represented one-quarter to one-half of the farming population. Reliable statistics do not always exist for the early part of the century but government
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land records, the 1848 aggregate census, and individual township studies give us some sense of the changing magnitude of tenancy. Before there could be tenants someone had to make land available to rent and the government led the way in this regard long before the free grant era ended in 1826.1 Under the Constitutional Act of 1791, freehold tenure was established and each township was surveyed before settlement proceeded. One-seventh of the land was set aside as clergy reserves and one-seventh was set aside as Crown reserves.2 The Crown and clergy reserves, not the various other kinds of reserves that were created (military, school, and native reserves), are the subject of this study. The government had leased clergy reserves on an unofficial basis as early as 1799. Then in October 1802, it advertised that it was ready to formally lease the Crown and clergy reserves and the system was fully launched by 1803. From then until 1833 settlers were issued new leases, as distinct from renewals, on these lands.3 Though the clergy reserves were officially abolished in 1854 with the Clergy Reserves Secularization Act, existing leaseholders continued to reside on these lots and pay rent for many more years. From the beginning the reserves attracted tenants. Within the first few months of setting up the system in 1803, 173 leases were granted on Crown reserves and 140 on clergy reserves. By 1811 the number of clergy reserve leases had risen to 452 (Table 3.2 and map 3.1). Throughout the War of 1812 very few new leases were signed, but that soon changed. In 1827, just before the Crown reserves were given to King’s College, accounts showed 367 leases. Meanwhile clergy reserve leases had grown to about nine hundred and by 1837 R.B. Sullivan, commissioner of Crown lands, could report that 361,000 acres, or the equivalent of 1,805 leases, had been granted. This acreage represented about sixteen percent of the entire acreage originally set aside for clergy reserves of which only seventeen percent had been sold.4 It is important to understand, however, that the numbers of leases listed in official records are almost meaningless in terms of assessing the number of families settled on the land. In the early years, many of the leased lots were abandoned and the reported numbers likely overrepresent the number of families that had actually settled. Thereafter officials only counted the leased lots that had originally been granted, but over the years these standard two-hundred-acre lots, especially those in prime locations, changed hands several times as they were subdivided and transferred to countless other leaseholders. An examination of the account books and township papers makes this
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3.1 The Districts of Upper Canada in 1802. Based on a “Map of the Province of Upper Canada Showing the Original Districts of 1788 and the Districts of 1802” by W.R. Carroll (November 1947), first published in Spragge, “The Districts of Upper Canada, 1788–1849,” 35.
abundantly clear.5 So by 1837 Sullivan’s count of 1,805 leases grossly underestimated the actual number of families leasing reserves. After 1826, when the era of free grants ended, the opportunity to rent increased.6 Hoping to speed settlement and raise revenue, the Crown reserves were dispersed to other corporate landlords. The Canada Company, established by an act of Parliament in 1825, had the first option to purchase Crown reserve lots as the government put them on the market for sale, provided that the lots were not already leased and had been surveyed before 1 March 1824. The Canada Company thereby acquired 1,384,013 acres of former Crown reserves, mostly eighty- to two-hundred-acre lots scattered through nearly every township. These they received in addition to the 42,000-acre Halton block (around Guelph) and a-one-million-acre tract in the western part of the province known as the Huron tract.7 At first the lands were available for sale only. By 1842, however, the company introduced leasing.
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Sales were falling off because of the high price and remoteness of the land. Their leasing scheme eased the problem of credit for those who could not afford to buy and permitted thousands to locate on the company’s lots.8 Through the 1840s and 1850s, as Clarence Karr observes, the Canada Company’s leasing system became one of the most effective settling agents in the province.9 In the first year 44,541 acres were leased, in the following year another 63,907 acres. Thereafter leases continued to be eagerly sought out so that each year the number of newly leased acres far exceeded the number of acres that were purchased.10 Meanwhile, the remaining Crown reserves, some 226,000 acres, previously leased or applied for, were given to King’s College in 1827. King’s College now joined the Canada Company and the Clergy Reserve Corporation as a corporate landlord selling and leasing its land.11 Besides these corporate landlords, thousands of speculators and established farmers (whom we will meet in the next chapter) wanted to rent out their land. Combined with lessees on government reserves and Canada Company land, this greatly increased the opportunities of renting (map 3.2). Various local studies on landholding covering the period from the 1820s to the 1850s confirm that renting was common. Scholars who have taken the time to identify tenants (by matching individuals listed on the assessment with the land registry records to see if they were owners) verify that renting seems to have risen in the early decades of the century to a high at mid-century, after which it declined.12 In Essex County, the Western District, for example, tenants represented fourteen percent of all occupiers of land in 1825 and nineteen percent in 1852.13 In Malden Township, in the same district, tenants accounted for a startling fifty-two percent of all farm occupiers in 1847.14 Approximately twenty-five percent of rural householders in Peel County, Home District, were tenants in 1835; the percentage had risen to thirty-seven percent by 1842.15 In Elizabethtown Township, Johnstown District, tenant farm operators had risen to forty-two percent of all landholders by 1825 and held the same percentage in 1840.16 In Cramahe Township, Newcastle District, the prevalence of tenancy early in the century is also evident. In 1820 fifty-three percent of the landholders in Cramahe were tenants; by the 1842 census, thirty-eight percent of farmers who occupied land were tenants; and by the 1871 census that percentage had declined to twenty-nine percent (maps 3.3 and 3.4).17 These detailed examinations suggest that the aggregate figures from the 1848 census
3.2 The Dispersion of Crown and Clergy Reserve Lots, Cramahe Township. Simcoe allowed the reserve lots of townships established before or during 1791 to be located in the back concessions or in other townships entirely. In townships established later, such as Cramahe, the “chequered plan” of dispersed reserves prevailed. For the location of Crown and clergy reserves in Cramahe Township, ao rg 1 a-iv, vol. 12, clp, Crown and Clergy Reserves in Newcastle District 1803–5, and ao, g.s. 4727, the Abstract Index to Deeds, Cramahe Township.
3.3 Tenure of Occupiers of Agricultural Land in 1820, Cramahe Township. ao, Assessment of 1820; and ao, g.s. 4727, Abstract Index to Deeds.
3.4 Tenure of Occupiers of Agricultural Land in 1842, Cramahe Township. ao, Assessment of 1842, lac, Canada West Census 1842 for Cramahe Township.
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3.5 The Districts of Canada West (Upper Canada) in 1849. Based on a “Map of the Province of Canada West showing the Districts in 1849” by W.R. Carroll (November 1947), first published in Spragge, “The Districts of Upper Canada, 1788–1849,” 41.
are fairly reliable and do not grossly overrepresent the tenant population. According to the aggregate figures for the 1848 census, forty-three percent of the rural population in Upper Canada were tenants (Table 3.3 and map 3.5).18 Tenants were most numerous in districts bordering Lake Ontario, such as Home, Gore, Niagara, Midland, and Newcastle, and in the London District – parts of the province where land was good, wheat production the greatest, net farm output high, urban markets and immigrant ports most active, and the population at its densest.19 Several observers commented on the prevalence of renting in almost any part of the province.20 According to J.H. Von Thunen’s model of agricultural land use, one would expect tenancy to have been most prevalent in areas surrounding urban centres. Von Thunen, a farmer and amateur economist, developed a model in 1826 that was rediscovered by geographers in
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the 1960s and valued for its consideration of land, produce, and transportation costs in determining the use of agricultural land. Von Thunen’s ideas, however, were based on a theoretically spatial world and did not take into consideration the vagaries of landscape, let alone policy, politics, cultural preferences, and personal strategies. Michael Conzen, applying Von Thunen’s theory to nineteenth-century Wisconsin, argued that tenancy was most common near the city where the prevalence of speculators and the high turnover of small lots created opportunities for renting.21 Some of the evidence suggests that his conclusions might apply to Upper Canada. Those districts with the highest tenancy rates in 1848 were notable for their burgeoning urban areas. The Home District with York as its centre, for example, had a tenancy rate of forty-four percent. Places such as York and Hamilton received waves of immigrants who then made their way into the surrounding countryside, which had much to recommend it. At least one immigrant advice book at mid-century recommended renting near towns such as Kingston, Brockville, Toronto, Hamilton, Guelph, Niagara, Woodstock, or London, where one could avail oneself more easily of the social amenities and markets found in urban centres.22 They were excellent places for wheat production, being situated on relatively good soil, close to water transport and market centres. Case studies have shown high levels of tenancy near urban areas particularly in the early part of the century, but as transportation improved and settlement proceeded, land acquisitions, subdivisions, and tenancy spread to more remote areas.23 The implication is that tenancy moved outward from urban areas, though only further studies will verify this. Certainly, people were renting land well beyond urban areas in the early nineteenth century. The government policy of reserves determined spatially by township surveys and scattered further inland encouraged leaseholding in the backwoods. Some people preferred to settle their sons all around them on rented property in the less-expensive, lesspopulated backwoods despite the availability of lots near the city.24 By the 1871 census, tenancy rates had declined considerably to fifteen percent, though they remained at their highest in areas near Lake Ontario where they averaged twenty-three percent (Tables 3.3 and 3.4).25 Such rates were similar to those found in the neighbouring American Midwest.26 Tenancy was still a useful way to enter farming especially as land prices rose and mechanization, specialization, and commercialization increased costs.27 Farming also continued to be a mainstay of the economy. Some have argued that a shortage of good
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Tenants and Their Lives
land was forcing people out of farming by mid-century but more recent evidence shows that in 1871, farmers continued to be the largest and most rapidly growing occupational group in the province.28 In the old sections of the province, tenancy rates continued to be high as retired owners rented out their land for an income. Potential tenants, however, were beginning to have more choices. Renting a farm now competed with homesteading in the American West or wage work in urban centres.29 Tenancy reached its height at mid-century for a number of reasons. The first half of the century had witnessed tremendous population growth. Between 1840 and 1850 the population of Upper Canada doubled. Massive immigration and a second, even third, generation of residents who had come of age largely accounted for the increasing pressure on the land. At the same time it was becoming increasingly difficult to acquire freehold status. After 1826 no more free Crown grants were available. The amount of vacant new land was also declining, which encouraged new arrivals or noninheriting sons to consider moving on or renting.30 Tenancy, in short, rose as the population and land prices increased and the availability of cheap land decreased.31 It was not brought on by severe economic conditions. Instead, tenancy functioned comfortably within the land system in general as a normal and acceptable option for farm families.32
why rent? Though tenants themselves rarely left written records to explain their decision to rent, many practical-minded officials, emigrant-advice writers, and travellers who had spoken with the local population agreed on several key points, the main one being that renting was an economically rational strategy for settlers of limited means. Renting allowed immigrants and others to gain access to a farm quickly and get on with feeding their family and making their way in the world. The main advantage to renting was that while settlers had to pay rent, they did not have to buy land. Even in the free-grant days immigrants found it less expensive and more expedient to rent than take a government grant and pay all the associated fees and the cost of inland travel and scouting.33 Once free grants ended, renting was even more appealing. In 1840 land in Upper Canada sold for three to five pounds per acre, and mortgages were expensive and, for the newcomer, hard to get.34 Furthermore, experience showed that it took an
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additional one hundred pounds to set up a workable farm unit with cleared fields, house and barn, yoke of oxen, wagons, seed, implements, and enough livestock to support a family. This did not happen over night but took nearly a lifetime, especially for those who lacked capital.35 Immigrants and other settlers rented so as to have enough money left over to farm productively and buy good horses, stock, and implements that could be taken with them or sold when they moved on. Renting was, in a sense, an easy way to maximize the effectiveness of one’s own capital, securing the use of a fully stocked farm or several hundred dollars’ worth of capital without much financial outlay. In contrast, the interest on a mortgage, which could be ten to fifteen percent (when rent was usually under the legal six percent interest rate) was a heavy cost in addition to the purchase price.36 Prospective settlers were also likely familiar with the stories of countless newcomers who had attached too much importance to the “dignity of proprietorship” and ended up indebted and disillusioned.37 It was necessary, as W.H. Smith pointed out to his readers in 1851, to weigh the social reward of owning land against the economic returns. Buying was obviously the preferred route if one could pay the whole price but leasing to buy, purchasing in instalments, or making mortgage payments could be risky.38 His account of what befell those who bought in instalment when they should have rented is worth quoting as it was an experience conveniently overlooked by those clinging to the sanctity of the freeholding yeomanry. The man who has been accustomed all his life to rent land, the moment he places his foot on American soil becomes possessed with the mania for purchasing land: nothing will do but he must have a farm of his own – he must become a landed proprietor. The consequence is, that finding land easily acquired, he purchases a farm worth three or four, or five times the amount of his whole capital; pays an instalment on it, and then has not sufficient cash left to stock his farm properly. He is consequently compelled to purchase live stock of an inferior quality, and insufficient in number; he is unable to employ labour on his farm, when it would be profitable for him to do so; he is obliged to go into debt to the stores, and consequently must part with his grain the moment it is off the ground, in order to satisfy the demands of his creditors, and must take whatever he can get for it; and he has to struggle hard, for years, to provide the instalments on his land, as they fall due. This
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is perfect folly; and he might have saved himself the toil and anxiety of all these years, and have been in possession of a good farm much sooner, had he only been satisfied in the first instance to rent, instead of purchasing.39 In short, these operators achieved the status of ownership but sacrificed the short-term efficiency and high profit on their labour of having opted for tenancy and invested their down payment in equipment and livestock. For others the choice was not between buying in instalments or renting but between renting or labouring. In this case, renting had the advantage. First it provided more security for one’s family throughout the year than exclusive reliance on labouring jobs, which were seasonal and could require substantial travelling. Second, the tenant enjoyed the fruits of his or her own labour, the crops and livestock raised and the capital invested, whereas the labourer’s efforts went to his employer.40 Renting was also attractive as a way to learn about farming before buying. It was an informal apprenticeship.41 Tenants were not simply acquiring the use of a commodity or production unit but experiencing a whole way of life that meant balancing family needs and family labour, market and subsistence household production, self-provisioning and, on occasion, temporary wage work. Not every newcomer had experience of farming in a climate like Canada’s and few were familiar with land clearing. By renting one could still benefit from the “practice, observation, and conversation” that taught one the ways of the country, while avoiding some very costly mistakes.42 In this sense renting was also a form of insurance against the risks of initial adaptation. Besides learning the methods of farming, renting gave the newcomer time to check out land in the area, assess its relative value, and wait for a good deal. It made good sense for immigrants to avoid buying land in the backwoods, where they would face immediate toil and privation, and instead rent a partially cleared farm near town, help, employment, social amenities, transportation routes, and markets where they could be comfortable, increase their capital, and be in a position to hear of favourable locations to buy.43 There were other reasons why tenancy was a viable option. For one thing, it was familiar to immigrants, many of whom came from the British Isles where it was the norm. It could also be used to achieve a variety of family related goals. Renting allowed men and women to marry at an earlier age than if a man were a labourer or had to wait to
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inherit his father’s farm.44 Sometimes it was the only way to be close to other relatives who lived in established settlements; farmers’ sons might rent a farm in the neighbourhood while waiting to inherit, or parents might rent a farm in order to be closer to their grown children.45 Political status made renting the best option for others. Following the War of 1812, official British policy discouraged further immigration of Americans to the province of Upper Canada by denying them ownership of land, hence political rights and office, until they had completed seven years’ residence and taken the oath of allegiance.46 Meanwhile, renting was their choice. Aliens were allowed to lease the clergy reserves for that seven-year period until they were entitled to request a land grant.47 Renting, therefore, had many practical economic and social advantages in helping families settle on, and adapt to, the land.
characteristics of tenants Tenancy reflected some of the characteristics that one might typically associate with newcomers and early settlement. As noted earlier, tenancy rates were highest following high levels of immigration, then declined as the century progressed. Furthermore, the personal and family characteristics exhibited by tenants suggested that tenancy was a vehicle for successful adaptation and an entry into eventual ownership. Tenants tended to be immigrants.48 Studies conducted in the American Midwest and Upper Canada demonstrate this. In Cramahe Township in 1842, eighty percent of tenant farmers had been born in the United States or overseas (Table 3.5). Native-born Upper Canadians had a better chance of acquiring freehold status from their parents, or from the government for outstanding military and Loyalist claims. Immigrants, cash poor from travelling and inexperienced, were drawn to renting. This was especially true of Americans who showed a preference for share renting (see below), with which they were familiar, and leasing government reserves. The reserves were available to aliens and Americans were often familiar with clearing land in the backwoods. Europeans were less likely to embrace tenancy than Americans and when they did, they preferred an improved farm close to urban markets.49 Tenants tended to be younger than owners. This has been demonstrated elsewhere in several case studies.50 In Cramahe Township, tenants were almost twice as likely as owners to be under thirty years of age
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(Table 3.6). Share tenants were far more likely to be young men than any other kind of tenant. Young men with little capital or experience chose to share the risks of their first foray into farming with their landlords. Because of their youth, they had smaller, younger households than owners and other types of tenants, and they were more apt to have dependent children under the age of five and live in simple nuclear family units without servants (Tables 3.8, 3.9). Clearly the young and newly settled were overrepresented among the tenant population. Those under the age of thirty who had arrived between 1837 and 1842 represented 20.6 percent of the tenant population and as much as one-third of the share tenants, compared to only 14.6 percent of all owners (Table 3.7). To state that tenants were young, however, understates their heterogeneity. Men and women could be tenants at various stages of their lives. Some tenant families were young and newly formed, others were near maturity or well into their retirement years. In Cramahe Township substantial numbers of tenants were over the age of thirty. In part this was due to the arrival of older immigrant families.51 Tenants from overseas often had complex family units consisting of several generations and older children, reflecting the process of family and chain migration.52 Leaseholders also tended to be older, as their twenty-oneyear renewable leases encouraged them to continue renting for years, even for a couple of generations. As a result, their households looked similar to those of renters in that they often had complex families containing three generations, working-age children, additional relatives, and sometimes servants. In this regard they had more in common with owners, especially those with mortgages, than with share tenants. The number of single-parent households increased among renters and leaseholders as the vagaries of time took their toll in terms of spouses dying and couples separating (Tables 3.8 and 3.9). Three of the households under study were headed by widows, the only female tenants in the township. Married women were not legally allowed to hold, control, or dispose of property in their own name. No young single women were tenants either.53 In the over-sixty age category, tenants nearly equalled owners, reflecting the role that tenancy could play in winding down one’s career on the land (Table 3.6). Leaseholders, in particular, held onto their long leases sometimes throughout their entire lives as they worked to clear their land and turn it into a workable farm. Some owners, after handing over their property to their heirs, became tenants on smaller farms as a retirement strategy. In such cases tenancy did
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not reflect the settling in of an immigrant population but an aging generation of local farmers who had reached a stage in their lives where it now made sense for them to rent from younger members of their family or from the population at large.54 It is possible that tenancy increasingly became a young man’s tenure as the century wore on, immigration slowed, long leases ended, and the cost of buying a farm increased.55 But that takes us beyond the scope of this study. In general, it can be said that tenants showed a greater tendency than owners to be young foreign-born recent arrivals with smaller households and more dependent young children – characteristics associated with a lack of farming skills and capital and the initial setting-up period of the immigrant or young farmer.
the hierarchy and variety of rental arrangements Our preoccupation with ownership and the common way of referring to occupiers of land as either owners or nonowners has dichotomized our thinking about land tenure, distorting and oversimplifying the representation of the past. Ownership has always been more nuanced than is commonly held, and in place of the simple owner/tenant dichotomy a hierarchy of land tenure emerges that is startling in its complexity.56 In simplified terms, it ranged from indefinite verbal agreements to fully patented unmortgaged ownership with many variants in between. In many cases, as we shall see throughout the remaining chapters, there was little difference between leaseholders and mortgaged owners, yet a great gulf could exist between a share tenant and a fully patented unmortgaged owner. Some farmers were both owners and tenants at the same time, renting additional property to augment their acreage without making a huge investment.57 To understand this land tenure hierarchy one needs to begin by stripping ownership of some of its commonly held attributes. One cannot own land in the same way one own’s a shirt. Two points make this more understandable. First, unlike personal property, land cannot be physically removed from its natural setting. Second, in a technical and strictly material sense, no one owns the land except the Crown; instead people own an estate in the land, which confers specific rights. The possessors of private property in land acquire not a thing that they own in an absolute sense but certain rights and interests in the land. Freeholders, for example, have the right to the use, management, and posses-
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sion of the land forever and to dispose of it as they please. Leaseholders are entitled to a lesser bundle of rights. What emerges is a hierarchy of parties enjoying different bundles of rights to the land and claims on its produce, arranged according to who has the greatest or least interest or right.58 Settlers could choose from a wide variety of rental arrangements. Early autumn was the time tenants might begin shopping around for land since ploughing and sowing the fall wheat needed to be done. They wondered about location, what they could afford, how big and how much improved the farm should be, how long a term to take, and whether to pay their rent in cash or shares.59 In the older settled districts and close to towns, cash rents were common. In the backwoods where farming and markets were more uncertain, the rent was usually paid as a portion of the crop or sometimes by clearing a specified number of acres per year. Tenancies also varied in length of tenure. The least secure were tenants “at will” who were obliged upon notice to quit the land at any time. Following them were yearly tenants who were subject to removal at the end of the year. More secure were tenants who held “leases” for a specified number of years, anywhere from one to nine hundred and ninety-nine, for life or in perpetuity. A lease was a written agreement between parties that created a real interest in land. It gave exclusive possession to the lessee, defined the premises explicitly, and covered a fixed term. With a lease, a tenant had a real interest that he could transfer as an estate and that bound the landlord and the rest of the world. In 1845 the Real Property Act required that all leases be made by deed (signed and sealed in the presence of a lawyer) unless they were for under three years.60 Within this hierarchy of arrangements those at the bottom had the least security and faced the greatest risk of rack-renting (frequent rent increases), distraint (having their cattle or goods seized to satisfy rent arrears), or eviction; those at the top with long leases had as much security as owners of heavily mortgaged property so that the lines between tenancy and ownership were blurred in a material, not just a legal, sense. The most commonly found rental arrangements can be described in terms of mode of payment, and in terms of security. An arrangement known as a “clearing,” or “improvement,” lease was attractive to the able-bodied settler with no money who was willing to live in the backwoods. It was particularly suitable for those who had a trade they could follow in the early years when the working farm unit would be too small to support a family. The details could vary: sometimes the tenant
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cleared the land in exchange for use of the lot and was actually paid a sum for each acre cleared and fenced with which he could purchase food and shelter.61 In other cases, the landlord supplied the settler with tools, livestock, and provisions.62 The tenant got possession of the lot with the understanding that he was to clear a stipulated number of acres per year and farm what he cleared. On Chief Justice Robinson’s East Gwillimbury property, for example, tenants in the 1840s were to clear seven acres a year. The more they cleared, the more fields they could use for their own profit. Clearing, which usually entailed chopping down trees, removing underbrush, burning logs, and erecting good fences, occupied them for only certain periods of the year and in between they could hire themselves out as labourers. Robinson’s tenants were assured of a roof over their head.63 Others were not. Generally tenants sought to clear as many acres as possible in the first few years, then settle into farming profitably for the remaining years of the lease. The tenant farmer with a ten-year clearing lease along the Humber River whom William Thompson visited had thrown together a house of logs and brushwood. Already he had managed to clear two acres in four weeks and had another twenty-three acres to clear over the next decade.64 In some cases a small cash rent or share of the produce was also paid to the landlord, especially if the land was already partially improved and productive. If the lease ran for a long period, a progressive rental might be included, i.e., one that increased as the land was cleared and became more productive.65 The clearing lease was a product of the New World and fell outside of the common law of property based on English traditions. It suited the needs of owners hoping to increase the value of their property and the needs of settlers searching for a low risk form of tenancy. It was low risk for tenants in the sense that eviction was not based on failure to pay the rent but on whether the agreements had been met. Such improvements, however, became the landlord’s property and tenants were not compensated when they left as they often were under other rental arrangements. These aberrations from the norm and the common law meant that clearing leases entered the high courts for clarification.66 As the frontier of heavily forested land receded, so too did clearing leases and the necessity of interpreting them.67 Another mode of payment prevalent in newly settled districts was the share arrangement.68 Whereas wildland tended to be let on clearing leases where it was absurd to expect any surplus produce or profits within the first years, improved lands were let on shares. This was espe-
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cially true of the early years of the nineteenth century when markets were still poorly established in places and cash scarce.69 Part of the appeal of share renting to the young, poor, or inexperienced was that the risk of bad weather, uncertain harvests, and low prices were shared with the landlord.70 Instead of locking themselves into a fixed cash rental and shouldering all the responsibility of stocking and managing the farm, share tenants paid only a portion of that year’s produce and could be assisted by the landlord in supplying the materials and managing the farm. In this manner, share tenants shared the responsibilities and risks associated with farming and thus reduced the likelihood of falling in arrears or being distrained or evicted. Young and relatively poor families found share renting attractive as it was associated with smaller initial outlays, the avoidance of costly mistakes, and the chance of surviving the lean years. Land in the early part of the century was commonly let on one-half or one-third shares.71 If a landlord supplied only the land, then the tenant paid him one-third of the produce and was responsible for providing his own seed, implements, a team, and any other livestock. If the landlord supplied the land and perhaps some of the stock, implements, and seed, then the tenant paid him one-half or sometimes two-thirds of the produce depending on how much was supplied, the negotiating leverage of the two parties, and local custom. Two-third or even three-quarter shares were much less common throughout North America. They entailed the landlord supplying everything but the labour. As William Spencer, who held a farm on a three-quarter share in Nelson Township, reported to his friends back in England in 1833, he had everything supplied except his clothing.72 The terms varied considerably from one area to another and were determined to some extent by different kinds of farming, nearby markets for produce, and local customs concerning share arrangements. The Completed Emigration Questionnaire of 1840 provided a wide variety of responses. In the wheat-growing Home District tenants provided the stock and implements and paid their landlord one-third of the grain and half the hay. In the Western District tenants paid a third of their tobacco crop or wheat in sheaves or clean grain on the barn floor. In the Ottawa District, where the landlord usually provided stock and implements, tenants paid half their produce, stock, butter, cheese, and pork. These items no doubt found a market in the lumber industry. As we shall see in chapter eight, share contracts, especially those involving livestock, could become complicated. Share agreements,
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regardless of the particular amount paid to the landlord, usually covered one year, sometimes a longer term of three years, but rarely more than seven years.73 To some degree, the nature of rental contracts was also related to the more general economic development of the area.74 By 1840 emigration agents, the Canada Company, and other observers reported that share contracts could increasingly be found further away from reliable markets and on newly settled land where farmers were as yet uncertain about the productive potential of their lands. In contrast, cash rentals were on the rise on farms in and around urban areas, where money rents had become the norm. Settled for two or three generations, farmers in the Home and Gore districts at the head of Lake Ontario were now more certain of the productive capacity of the land and how to farm it profitably, and markets were more developed and cash accessible. In the early years assistance to tenants (in the form of shared risks) was at its greatest. As the population became denser and agriculture and markets more developed, cash as a form of payment grew in popularity. Tenants were attracted to cash contracts because they were considered to be more profitable than share contracts. Granted, the tenant had to assume the full responsibility for bad weather, fluctuating prices, and poor farm management, but for that reason they paid a lower rent and were entitled to a greater return on their labour than a share tenant. The landlord received a smaller rent than with a share contract, but he bore no risk or supervision costs. Sometimes the landlord supplied a fully equipped farm including livestock and implements. But in most cases tenants supplied and owned everything but the land. Any improvements that they made were their own to take advantage of during the lease. They could build up an excellent herd or purchase machinery that could be later sold or taken elsewhere, and they had the entrepreneurial freedom to decide what to raise and sell. This entrepreneurial freedom and the profit incentive had the potential to create richer and better-cultivated tenant farms and evidence suggests that this was indeed the case, especially in prosperous times.75 Secure tenure on the land, however, and not the mode of payment, was the key to high-quality tenure and good agriculture, at least in theory. Those with the least security, therefore, were at the bottom of the hierarchy of land occupiers and those with the most security were at the top.
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Squatters were the lowest on the hierarchy of land occupiers. Their low status stemmed from the fact that they occupied the land without official authority and therefore were not tenants and had no legal security. Within the reigning liberal ideology of landholding, squatters were easily equated with ignorance, immorality, and criminality, even though they were highly valued by practical-minded administrators for their usefulness in opening up new country. Squatting was reputedly fairly common, especially in the backwoods and on government land where one could go undetected, at least for some time.76 The status accorded to squatters was well below that of regular tenants. A Bytown storekeeper put it succinctly when he urged that squatters be given leases in order to create “a respectable and useful settler in place of the poor and wretched Squatters now generally infesting the lands acquired for the Rideau Canal.”77 Amongst tenants, those who held “at will” theoretically had the least beneficial type of contract. At-wills held the land with permission but for no fixed term.78 This meant that though the tenant might live on the land for years, the landlord had the legal right to raise the rent or end the contract any time he or she wanted, basically at will and without the standard six months’ notice to quit the land. This was a tenuous state of affairs for the tenant; nor could the landlord count on the tenants’ staying. Similarly insecure were tenants who held “year to year,” or from one year’s end to another, but who had no definite set term of occupancy. Such indefinite agreements were often verbal for whatever reason – trust, ignorance, or indifference – and in some cases simply lingered on indefinitely until the relationship broke down.79 Verbal agreements caused such havoc when parties fought and entered the courts that by mid-century even tenants who had their lots for a term of years but had no written agreement, witnessed and sealed, were thenceforth considered to be only year-to-year tenants.80 This was an unsatisfactory state of affairs. If there was no written lease outlining both parties’ rights, the term of occupancy, rent, and covenants, there was little to protect a tenant in a court of law.81 In contrast, written leases covering a fixed period, whether it be one year or longer, placed the relationship on firmer ground upon which more realistic expectations and plans might be entertained. Fixed-term leases varied greatly in length. The shortest were annual tenancies that had become increasingly common in the American Midwest and had been the norm in the British Isles since the second half of the nineteenth century.82 It has been argued by some scholars that
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annual tenancies gave the landlord the opportunity to get rid of bad tenants without delay or legal entanglements, and that tenants could profit and quickly move on. This kind of economic flexibility was supported by liberal thinkers and those who valued the industrial model of production with its controllable inputs and outputs and viewed land as a mere location, not an ecological entity. Proponents of annual tenancies, for example, did not take into consideration the longer term necessary for agricultural production or show any real interest in the welfare of the land itself.83 Annual tenancies did not give the tenant the security or control over the land that were necessary for crop rotation, experimentation, better breeding, tree planting, or the erection of new buildings. A one-year contract simply did not provide the incentive to invest in such activities if it meant that the next tenant would reap the benefit. Instead tenants tended to mine the land and take as much from the farm as possible during their short tenure. This led to friction, as tenants were inclined to exploit, not develop, resources and landlords reacted with the threat of eviction.84 Though annual leases existed in Upper Canada, short leases of three to seven years were reportedly the most common. They were available from private landlords in the old settled areas of the province on a cash or share basis.85 They gave the tenant more time to benefit from mixed farming and the freedom to move on if better opportunities arose. From an agricultural point of view, however, leases of this length still promoted a short-sighted policy regarding land maintenance. There was little incentive to improve the property if the rent was going to be raised at the end of the term or if a new tenant was going to move in. Private individuals rarely let out their land on longer leases but the government and land companies did. The Canada Company leased lots for ten- to twelve-year terms. The Crown and clergy reserves were let for twenty-one-year terms, and on occasion, private individuals such as Lord Mount Cashell on Amherst Island leased lots for fifteen or twenty years. Sometimes leases were granted for life, a common practice in eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Britain. In such cases a lease of one life or two or three lives ended once all the people named in the lease were dead. Until that time the rent remained unaltered. Thus a lease for one life lasted about twenty-one years, a lease for two lives lasted about thirty-one years, and a lease for three lives generally lasted more than fifty years.86 Even longer leases existed. The Six Nations people in Brantford Township, for example, leased their lands on the Grand River Reserve to white settlers for a term of 999 years.
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Land on the Saint Regis Reserve in Glengarry County was leased for ninety-nine years and renewable every ninety-nine years thereafter for one thousand years. In these and other cases the line between tenancy and ownership was blurred. Such leases differed from an outright sale of the land only in the annual requirement to pay rent.87 Long leases were attractive for the secure tenure they provided; as long as the rent was paid, the lessee could not be evicted and stood to enjoy the peaceful possession of the property for years. Rents were generally paid in cash and lower than those for short leases. A stationary rent established at the signing of the lease enabled a tenant to amass capital, since it remained fixed over the years while produce prices might rise. Landlords needed to offer these good terms to attract people in the early years of settlement when land could be cheaply acquired for purchase. A lease also conferred on the tenant the largest package of rights. It gave the tenant rights to the use, management, possession, income, security, capital, and transmissibility of the property. If the tenant had a long-term lease, he had a valuable interest in the property, one that he could sell, bequeath, or use as collateral.88 Of all tenant contracts, long-term leases ensured the greatest independence from landlords since the tenants owned a valuable interest in the land along with virtually everything they needed to work it, and they managed their own business operation for years. Security, stationary rent, and entrepreneurial freedom provided the greatest incentive for good, profitable farming. Tenants could invest in improvements knowing that they themselves would reap the benefit. In fact, both landlord and tenant stood to benefit as the value of the land was usually increased for the landlord while the tenant profited from good agriculture. Of course, it was possible, as one writer in The Canada Farmer complained, that “some ignorant clod-hopper who knows nothing whatever of good farming” might hold the lease for years and make the landlord a great deal poorer in the end.89 But generally agricultural experts considered that the long lease was best for the tenant, the landlord, and the land. They were often viewed in the early days of settlement as “developmental leases.” Tenants got them at a very low rent in the expectation that they would turn wild land into working farms. With a long-term interest in the land, tenants were less likely to exploit it and more likely to fertilize and rotate crops with a view to its future productivity. This resulted, agricultural experts argued, in a more peaceful landlord-tenant relationship as the interests of both parties
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converged and quarrels over negligence and mismanagement occurred less often.90
The wide variety of rental arrangements provided most tenant families with an option that suited their needs. Subsequent chapters will show how the rental contract affected the ease with which a tenant family could be ejected, their customary rights, and the kind of agricultural choices they made. In short, the diversity of rental arrangements translated into a diversity of experience. Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that tenants did not emerge as a united class with shared experiences and grievances.
ds heir and Lives the Landlord-Tenant Relationship
4 Their Landlords and the Landlord-Tenant Relationship
Though this study is primarily about tenants, in any relationship one cannot understand one side without understanding the others, in this case landlords. Whether a land company, retired farmer, indebted merchant, or absentee aristocrat, the landlord’s objectives and circumstances had a bearing on the development of the landlord-tenant relationship. Though infamous landlords such as Archibald McNab quickly come to mind, landlords were a diverse lot.1 Landlords tended to live in far less opulent ways than in the Old World. A practical point of view dominated. Physiocrats argued that land was the only source of wealth. Indeed, in the early settlement era when land was plentiful and accessible, there was every chance that farms would become increasingly productive and that future immigration would drive up the demand for land, hence the price of land.2 Despite some oscillations, the general trend in land prices from 1800 to the 1870s was upward, giving investors reason to expect a good return.3 Thus, most landlords viewed land as an economic investment, tenants as a useful resource, and capital gain as the main aim. Landlords pursued other kinds of returns too. Many embraced the spirit of improvement and took considerable risks in pursuing it. Others espoused the free market economy, but one that was tempered with their older ideas of paternalism. They assisted in the expansion of settlement and agricultural production and sponsored commerce and industry in an effort to create not only prosperous estates but also reputations as improving gentlemen, and social hierarchies with themselves at the top. Even Old World landlords, though they displayed elements of paternalistic colonialism, moved in the direction of liberalism and its associated desire for progress.
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Most landlords, however, were members of the general population of farmers. Detailed studies conducted in the American Midwest estimate that seventy to seventy-five percent of landlords were farmers or retired farmers. In Cramahe Township in 1842, private individuals accounted for sixty-two percent of the landlords. Only thirty-six out of ninetyseven tenants, or one-third, held leases directly from the Crown and clergy reserves. Of the fifty private landlords in Cramahe Township in 1842, only two could be considered large landholders: each rented out more than six hundred acres and had seven to eight tenants. The rest were mostly farmers who owned on average 129 acres and had one tenant each.4 In this chapter I categorize landlords and demonstrate how their circumstances and goals helped shape the landlord-tenant relationship. To begin with I shall examine “Old World” landlords, corporate landlords, and speculators – the very men whom Lord Durham blamed for holding back the development of the country. I shall end with those ordinary farmers of whom we know almost nothing.
old world landlords Any discussion of landlords in Upper Canada must begin with the original Tory government’s desire to create a landlord class. The Tories were convinced that a strong and loyal gentry was essential for maintaining a peaceful colonial population; had this existed in the Thirteen Colonies, they argued, the American Revolution would not have occurred. With this in mind, the government of Upper Canada deliberately set out to create a loyal aristocracy by granting large acreages to Loyalists, former army and navy officers, and gentlemen in an effort to attract men of capital who could provide the necessary investment and leadership for swift and effective settlement.5 The attempt to create a landed aristocracy, while ultimately unsuccessful, left a legacy of wellpropertied people. Some men of capital, such as Lord Mount Cashell (Stephen Moore) and Admiral Henry Vansittart, came to Canada with the express purpose of establishing tenanted estates. Investment overseas was attractive because on the virgin soil of North America one could start afresh and, with foresight and planning, make considerable profits.6 Tenants sped up the process of making the land valuable since a landlord could demand that they improve his land rather than rely on the development of neighbouring lands as other landowners might.
The Ideology of Landholding
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2.1 “Tenancy Is Detrimental.” The belief that tenancy weakened a community persisted into the twentieth century. Captions written in 1919 for these illustrations asserted that frequent moves depleted resources; tenant farms were not kept in good repair; tenanted areas had poor roads and schools; and a community of owned farms kept better care of roads and public buildings and participated fully in the spirit of progress. (Seymour, Farm Knowledge, 74, 79)
valuable land close to good markets – in exchange for something advantageous to themselves. Such a possibility represented a political and military risk.41 This worship of the freeholding yeomanry and its corollary, an ingrained disregard for tenancy, has distorted our understanding of landholding in at least two ways. First, ownership has not been as carefully scrutinized as it might be. Contemporaries and historians have criticized speculators who owned vast tracts of land and hampered its improvement. Their critique of ownership, however, has usually started and ended with this fixation on settling and transforming the landscape as a key measure of good ownership. They have yet to assess and compare the many kinds of ownership, outright purchase, lease-to-buy contracts, endowments, inherited and mortgaged land, to name a few, or tackle the ideology of freehold head on.42 Was freehold status, after all, a guarantee that the occupier would be industrious, wise, efficient, loyal, and improving? Was eviction just as likely at the hands of a mort-
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4.1 Rear Admiral Henry Vansittart (c.1830), landlord of extensive land in Victoria and Oxford counties, including Woodstock, Upper Canada. (Toronto Public Library, J. Ross Robertson Collection, jrr 1660)
Mount Cashell and Vansittart, like other Old World landlords, had particular aims and ran particular kinds of estates that helped fashion the relationship they had with their tenants. Both were men of position and privilege. Admiral Henry Vansittart was born in 1777, the fifth son of George Vansittart of Bisham Abbey, mp for Berkshire, and the first cousin of Baron Bexley. When he retired from the Royal Navy at age fifty-seven, he decided for the sake of his children to go to Upper Canada and take advantage of the land offers to officers on half pay.7 The imaginative and daring Stephen Moore, third earl of Mount Cashell, also saw Upper Canada as a land of opportunity. Born in 1792, he was a descendent of Thomas de Moore who had accompanied William the Conqueror into England and fought at the Battle of Hastings as one of the principal commanders. When the third earl succeeded to his father’s estates in Ireland in 1822, he held sixty thousand acres in the north and south of the country.8 In his mid-thirties, he began venturing in Upper Canadian lands as a speculative sideline to his Irish estates.
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4.2 Stephen Moore, the third earl of Mount Cashell (1883), absentee Irish landlord with extensive holdings in Ireland and Upper Canada including Amherst Island. (London Illustrated News, 27 October 1883)
Pecuniary interests, personal and political goals, even a sense of playful experimentation tempted these two men to invest in Upper Canada. Both wanted to create large landed estates where the return on their investment would take the form of a stable rental income. Experienced landlords and colonizers expected that it could take ten to twenty years before a landlord reaped returns of six percent (a competitive rate of return) on his initial investment. In the meantime, profits from lands in the old country were necessary to support the creation of estates in the new.9 The two men spent fortunes to transmute their Upper Canadian wildlands as rapidly as possible into English country seats that would become income-producing dynastic holdings. Colonial lands provided a solution to the problem of settling children when subdivision of land in the old country was restricted by entailments and
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primogeniture. Vansittart’s Canadian land was intended to provide his second son and main heir, Henry, with an estate since Henry stammered so badly that the family felt he would never succeed in business. Mount Cashell acknowledged that he too had purchased land in Canada in order to settle his younger sons. Besides these family aims, both men viewed their financial investment as a service to God, King, and Country. Mount Cashell envisioned his Canadian estate as a “Promise of Eden” where he could foster evangelical Protestantism.10 Vansittart was also interested in furthering the Protestant church in the New World and brought a clergyman out with him to bolster the influence of the church. Both men viewed their Canadian estates as adventures. Even though Upper Canada was a mere backwoods at the time, it represented a romantic primitivism, a far-distant corner that was most in keeping with the aristocracy’s love of the exotic. A.W.H. Rose, author of Emigrant Churchman in Canada (1849), said that Vansittart, whom he knew personally, “had so much money that he could afford to waste some upon a hobby.”11 For Mount Cashell, always anxious to impress others with his worldliness, position, and knowledge, colonization presented an opportunity to gravitate to the centre of power in a new land. To be deemed a “nation maker” was in keeping with both men’s desire to achieve dramatic success and historical importance. With these various aims in mind, Mount Cashell and Vansittart had a long-term interest in seeing that prosperous self-sustaining communities emerged, ones that would provide a stable rental income for themselves and their heirs. To that end they each purchased large acreages, set up local administrative structures, and invested in creating a local infrastructure. Vansittart, though still residing in England, purchased three thousand acres of wildland in Bexley Township, Victoria County, as early as 1826.12 In 1832 he sent Captain Andrew Drew to Canada to acquire land in Blandford Township, Oxford County, and to begin surveying the future location of Woodstock.13 In all, Vansittart acquired by grant and purchase twenty-four hundred acres of land in what would become the Woodstock area. The family sailed from England in the spring of 1834 to set up permanent residence in Upper Canada and stayed with Allen McNab in Dundurn Castle while their servants carried forty loads of furniture and household goods on wagons and sleds.14 Vansittart established the basic infrastructure of Woodstock, endowing the Church of England and providing a parson of his choice, a parish house, church, several public buildings, a school-
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4.3 The lease used by Mount Cashell on Amherst Island, 1853. (Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Moore Hill Papers, d.3817/1/2)
house, and the first hotel. He also served as the first president of the Oxford Agricultural Society.15 According to Anna Jameson who visited the admiral in the mid-1830s, he had spent twenty thousand pounds on improvements and purchases for his settlement.16 In nearby Eastwood, where he resided, he created a village with a schoolhouse, church, lumber mill, and gristmill.17 In the fall of 1835 he purchased an additional twenty-four thousand acres in Bexley Township and had his agent, Mr Rebridge, bring out thirty families from the old country the following summer.18 Meanwhile Mount Cashell purchased land in various parts of the province. Between 1827 and 1846 he acquired 21,107 acres, which included 7,330 acres in the counties of Middlesex and Lambton, 1,698 acres in the counties of Victoria and Peterborough, and 12,000 acres on Amherst Island, Lennox and Addington County. The western lands were largely vacant and unimproved. There he was, the stereotypical speculator – absent and unimproving.19 Amherst Island, in contrast, became the focus of his colonizing ventures. With centuries of Irish landlordism to draw on, he set up an administrative system with agents,
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4.4 Moore Park, Ireland. Mount Cashell’s “Lobo House” west of London, Upper Canada, was fashioned after his Irish estate, Moore Park. (O’Flanagan, The Blackwater in Munster, 63)
subagents, and bailiffs to create a hierarchy of accountability and reportage. The local subagent was responsible for overseeing the construction of a store, forge, wharf, and church on the island. He was also responsible for sending his lordship the rent, drawing up leases, maintaining the glebe house and wharf, and managing the timber reserve. As militia captain and later justice of the peace for the Midland District, he also represented local law and order. Besides having land agents on the spot and the basics of village life in place, Mount Cashell provided good rental terms that would encourage tenants to improve their property, hence the estate. A standard formal lease outlined the basic tenurial arrangements of long leases at low rents: tenants held their land for fifteen or twenty years and paid an annual cash rent of three shillings per acre. This rent represented between four and five percent of the assessed value of the land and was slightly less than the six percent that was generally believed to give the landlord his fair share and still be attractive to tenants.20 Tenants were responsible for any improvements and Mount Cashell compensated them for the value of their improvements at the end of the lease.21 Both Mount Cashell
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and Vansittart had brought capital, initiative, and leadership to the task of furthering settlement. They also brought Old World opulence to the backwoods. Central to their vision of a country seat in Upper Canada was the mansion and demesne farm. It was not just a dwelling place, it was a symbol of their family’s power and status, a theatre in which benevolence and deference were on display. Vansittart and Mount Cashell envisioned themselves as having a social role to fulfill and eagerly grasped the opportunity. In the hope of establishing a Moore dynasty west of the town of London, Mount Cashell erected Lobo House near Delaware. Locally known as “the Castle,” it was said to be one of the best houses in the province. It sat on a hill overlooking the River Thames and one thousand acres of land.22 Vansittart also established himself in the London area. When Anna Jameson travelled through the London district in the 1830s, she described Vansittart’s mansion as a “curiosity.” It consisted of several log houses of different shapes, the interior decor being decidedly nautical with “odd galleries, passages, porticos, corridors, saloons, cabins and cupboards; so that if the outside reminded me of an African village, the interior was no less like that of a man-of-war.” The drawing room occupied an entire building with a fireplace large enough to hold twenty oak logs at once. Superimposed on this masculine decor were items of luxury and comfort seldom seen in the backwoods – marbles, alabaster sculptures, tazzi, and miniature copies of the Vatican. The grounds of the estate consisted of one hundred acres surrounded by a park fence.23 This bastion of culture and sophistication was surrounded by woods still in the process of being cleared. When the house burned down, it was replaced by a white brick mansion with twenty-two rooms, complete with a pulpit in the kitchen from which the admiral read lessons on Sundays to his servants.24 In 1840 Vansittart also set up a seasonal residence as a gentleman’s estate on Balsam Lake, a log mansion, long the “curiosity” of Bexley Township, with two thousand acres. There he insisted on dressing formally for dinner and was never without champagne.25 While Mount Cashell and Vansittart indulged their pleasures, their estates, so much of the Old World, were not without their problems. Both landlords struggled with agents whose activities they disapproved of and became involved in costly lawsuits.26 The land itself sometimes proved difficult. Vansittart’s lands in Bexley were very pretty in their pristine wilderness but also very stoney. Most of the Bexley Township settlers had left by 1851 owing to the isolation of the place and its poor
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soil.27 The Woodstock estate was much more successful from the perspective of colonizing, but it had been a costly affair. John Robert Godley, visiting Vansittart in the early 1840s, reported that he had “spent a large fortune” but with little profit to himself.28 Mount Cashell encountered disappointments too. Tenants came and went with frequency as they purchased land elsewhere, and his dream of a Protestant settlement was compromised as Roman Catholics grew in number.29 Despite these shortcomings, Woodstock and Amherst Island generated their share of curious observers and admirers. Vansittart’s efforts were a topic of note among other gentlemen farmers such as the Langtons, high-ranking politicians such as Archibald McNab, and promoters of colonization such as Thomas Rolph, Robert John Godley, and A.W.H. Rose. He may not have made a fortune, but Woodstock had grown to 950 people by 1845 with a village of 180 houses.30 Reformoriented individuals at the time resented the admiral’s being called the founder of Woodstock, but subsequent local historians have considered him thus.31 According to most contemporary observers, Mount Cashell’s settlement on Amherst Island was a success too. Dr Thomas Rolph chose Mount Cashell’s island settlement as an example for other developers. He claimed, in Emigration and Colonization (1844), that “the system of leasing first successfully adopted by the Earl of Mount Cashell; and since partially pursued by The Canada Company, is worthy of great consideration.”32 The best proof of this, according to Rolph, was that Mount Cashell had increased the population threefold and increased his capital eightfold. By 1861 all the lots on Amherst Island were occupied and the land was much improved. Mount Cashell and Vansittart were able to use their Canadian estates to support their families, albeit in unexpected ways. Mount Cashell’s island property, purchased in 1835 for ten thousand pounds, was estimated to be worth eighty thousand pounds twenty-two years later, representing an annual return of nearly ten percent. Meanwhile, tenants gave him an income in the form of rent, which by the 1850s was worth seven hundred to twelve hundred pounds per annum. In the end, his island property was used to support his family, though not in the manner originally envisioned. The Irish Famine and other crises bankrupted Mount Cashell. Creditors seized his Irish property, and when it proved insufficient to pay off his Irish debts, they crossed the ocean in search of his Canadian assets. The island was sold in 1857 to a second cousin in order to pay debts owed to the family. His cousin, who gradually sold the freehold to tenants, reaped the rewards of a wise invest-
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ment; Mount Cashell did not.33 Vansittart was more successful in turning his estate into a valuable legacy for his own family. When Vansittart died in 1843, his estate, consisting of thousands of acres in the counties of Victoria and Oxford, urban lots in Woodstock, Kingston, and Toronto, as well as bonds and mortgages due to him on lands he was in the process of selling, were distributed to his children and his young widow.34 Admiral Vansittart’s wife was bequeathed a large income from these holdings throughout the remainder of her life.35 His second son, Mr Henry Vansittart, continued in his father’s footsteps on the Eastwood estate.36 As a long-term investment, their adventures in Upper Canada had been worthwhile. Admittedly, much of the success of these settlements resulted from the diligence and hard work of the settlers themselves, yet one cannot escape the influence of the landlords. Having an aristocratic landlord had some advantages. Critics in this era claimed that the landlord-tenant relationship in Upper Canada was in a deplorable state because merchants or retired farmers who became landlords had very little experience of estate management. Their leases were only loose verbal agreements and consequently both parties were continually shirking their responsibilities and grasping at fast returns.37 In contrast, experienced landlords such as Mount Cashell knew the importance of formal written agreements that clearly delineated responsibilities, yet allowed some flexibility. Furthermore, long leases, low rents, and easy covenants were all fashioned to attract and keep tenants – in short, to please them over the long term. In a further attempt to create a longlasting dynastic estate, landlords such as Mount Cashell and Vansittart brought much-needed capital into regions by establishing a local infrastructure. Speculators looking for quick financial returns would soon have grown frustrated with the costs of setting up an estate and the poor returns from low rents. Landed aristocrats, well aware of the vicissitudes of estate management and seeking honour as well as profit, were perhaps more willing and able to wait. The notion of landed aristocrats in a New World deemed to be egalitarian and democratic posed problems for some, especially those of a liberal bent. By the 1840s absentee landlords of large tenanted estates had become the target of anti-rent activists and a burning political issue in eastern New York State and Prince Edward Island where they were viewed by activists as parasites.38 In Upper Canada Lord Durham blamed the extensive grants of land to privileged individuals for retarding settlement.39 Old World landlords were clearly not in favour.
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Vansittart’s death was given due notice in the London Herald but the local Woodstock paper, now under the Reformers’ influence, was silent.40 The Historical County Atlases, published a generation later and dedicated to celebrating the achievements of the middle to upper classes, had little or nothing to say about the contributions of these landlords to the development of Woodstock and Amherst Island.41 Aristocratic landlords may have held appeal for Governor Simcoe in the late eighteenth century, but as the great rush for land ensued, as liberal ideas spread, and as the marketplace became more complex, they fell out of favour.
corporate landlords Corporate landlords, like Old World landlords, were interested in tenancy as a long-term investment with various interrelated benefits. The Crown and clergy reserves were primarily instruments of public finance; their goal was to establish leaseholders quickly on the land who would improve it until such time as its real value could be ascertained and the government was ready to sell. In the meantime, the government hoped to benefit from rental revenue and settling people who would be grateful and loyal, and who would not leave for the United States.42 Making the system work was a slow process and depended on attracting lessees who would take a long-term interest in the property and turn wild land into valuable working farms. Rental revenue was important to the government but the rental agreement had to be such that it would attract good tenants and encourage their investment in improvements. In short, rental terms on government land had to compete with freehold and what private landlords were offering. These conditions did not produce immediate or large rental returns, but they fostered a contented tenantry and rising land values. By British and North American standards, the twenty-oneyear lease of the Crown and clergy reserves was very advantageous to tenants. As noted earlier, long leases encouraged lessees to invest in improvements and practise good husbandry. The tenant had time to profit from his labours and the landlord benefitted from rising land values, if and when the lot was sold. The government calculated that long leases gave a semblance of permanence, thus weakening the attractions of freehold. It was also essential that rents be low. Tenants, hard pressed by high rents, would strip the property and leave or turn into a quarrelsome, disloyal, even rebellious population – something
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the government wanted to avoid at all costs. Low rents could endear tenants to the constitution, church, and state. The executive council of Upper Canada, in establishing rents, believed that they should be “such as to make the lease a beneficial one: that is, that the Lessee should have a better bargain from the King than he could obtain from any private lessor, and be bound by his interest as well as his gratitude to the support of a system from which he would derive advantage greater than he could expect from any other with respect to the duration of the lease, it seemed equally necessary that it should be for a term long enough to encourage improvement, but not so long as to make the Tenant forget the hand to whose bounty he owes it.”43 Beginning in 1800, the Crown and clergy reserves had a progressive rental set to rise at seven-year intervals over the twenty-one-year lease. Rent levels were raised in 1811 and 1819 and remained there until 1846, when they were raised again.44 Despite these increases, reserve rents remained some of the lowest available. Throughout the 1830s and 1840s, when rents throughout the province were generally five to fifteen shillings per acre, the clergy reserve’s progressive rental began at fourpence per acre for the first seven years and gradually increased to sixpence per acre for the last seven years. In other words, clergy reserve rents were at most a tenth of the price of the cheapest land rented by private individuals.45 Simply stated, clergy reserves gave tenants the best deal around. The Canada Company embarked on their leasing program in 1842 when settlers were more numerous; hence the company did not need to be as generous as the government had been. The Canada Company had shorter leases of only ten to twelve years. They were also more complicated and the conditions more exacting than reserve leases. Lessees were to pay taxes and make repairs, as were reserve tenants, but they were also subject to settlement duties of clearing four acres a year and erecting a dwelling. The annual rent was about one shilling per acre, the equivalent of six percent of the estimated purchase price and an amount equal to the rate of interest on land or a long-term investment. Some were required, according to locality, to pay one to three years’ rent in advance. This flat rent, unlike the progressive rental on the reserves, made no accommodation for those first few difficult years when the land was still largely in a wild state and unproductive. Lessees found it almost impossible to pay their rent from farm earnings in the early years.46 But if one had a bit of capital, one could anticipate this and benefit later from level rentals. To help them accumulate enough
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4.5 Canada Company Lease, 1843. Corporate landlords’ elaborate formal leases lent authority to the agreement. (University of Guelph, Archival and Special Collections, Goodwin-Haines Collection, xr1 ms a125058, no. 36)
money to buy their leased land, the company formed a “Settlers Provident or Savings Bank Account.”47 Clearly the Canada Company did not offer as beneficial terms as the reserves did, but their terms were better than what many private landlords were offering. The corporate landlord, compared to the Old World landlord, was an abstract, distant entity. The printed lease was the tenant’s most tangible representation of their relationship. Other than this paper tucked away in some safe place, the landlord’s presence was never felt. No local mansion marked his authority. Nor were tenants apt to sit behind him in church, request that he write a letter on their behalf, or work on his estate. No resident agent dealt with tenant enquiries and made decisions on the spot. The main offices for the Canada Company and the clergy reserves were in York (Toronto).48 A bureaucracy of agents and subagents, rules and reports, heightened the authority of the landlord and the difficulty of getting matters straightened out quickly. In the early years of the reserves, for example, just acquiring a deeded lease could be a complicated, lengthy, and costly affair. First the settler had to apply for a lease to the governor or administrator.
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This petition, an oath of allegiance, and surety for rent (bond of payment) were witnessed before the local Church of England clergyman and then sent to the governor or his administrator. The petition was endorsed with a number, and bore the petitioner’s name and purpose (if the petition was successful, the date of final recommendation and approval were added later on). The clerk of the executive council then received the petition and asked the surveyor general to search his records and to ascertain whether the lot was a reserve and whether it was available. On the basis of that report, the executive council, acting as a land committee, would reach a decision, and if it was yes, then it was signed by the chair of the committee and the governor. Meanwhile the surveyor general entered the proceedings numerically, alphabetically, and statistically into his records.49 A survey was conducted, a general description of the lot was drawn up, and a fiat was issued; these were sent to the provincial secretary and the registrar’s office, then the actual lease was drawn up and sent to the attorney general, who countersigned it and entered it in his register of deeds and leases. It was then sent back to the provincial secretary, and finally the deeded lease was ready for the settler. The lessee then had to travel, sometimes at great expense in time and money, to York to receive the lease in person.50 The whole process could easily take a year. After 1821 the bureaucratic structure of this “landlord” entity grew. The Clergy Corporation of the Church of England was established in 1821 to act as a land committee, a job formerly held by the executive council.51 Local agents, often Church of England clergy or sheriffs, now handled petitions and documentation, sparing lessees a journey to York. The Clergy Corporation administered all existing and new clergy reserve leases until 1834 when the job was taken over by a new secretaryreceiver, Thomas Baines.52 Until the demise of the clergy reserves in 1854 he was virtually in charge of leasing, and only particularly difficult cases or executive decisions were handled by the executive council, and increasingly by the crown lands department. The administration of clergy reserves in this era often came under attack. Baines acquired the dubious reputation of being the largest embezzler in the public service before Confederation.53 Too much also depended on the executive council, which had to attend to the details of the administrative machinery and were not competent or well informed. After the Act of Union, the clergy reserves’ administrative machinery became more effective and the bureaucracy more professional and more conscious of the concept of responsibility. By 1845 the Crown lands department
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was assuming the burden of routine and investigative work and acting as a liaison between the executive council and local land agents.54 Tenants, however, encountered very little of this bureaucratic apparatus. Once a year, they travelled to town to pay their rent, or an agent came to collect it. On rare occasions, they were surveyed by a representative of the Crown and clergy reserves regarding the details of their property and improvements. Otherwise, they had very little contact with the landlord or his agents. Having a distant corporate landlord could be a frustrating and alienating experience but it also provided a certain freedom from constant supervision. The official and bureaucratic nature of the reserves and the Canada Company established a framework for their operation, a sense of authority, and stability. But the logistical challenges of managing large acreages and a scattered population resulted in considerable laxity and inefficiency. The Crown and clergy reserves, for example, were notorious for their inability to collect arrears; in this respect the Canada Company showed considerable lenience too.55 Furthermore, regulations required interpretation and implementation. Where communication was difficult and headquarters remote, land agents and sheriffs who oversaw daily operations modified the way things worked, and lessees took advantage of the distance, interpreting rules to their own benefit, as we shall see in chapter 7. Corporate and Old World landlords shared a long-term interest in establishing a contented, stable, and loyal population. Their estates were, for the most part, serious business enterprises with administrative hierarchies, estate policies, and formal contracts. As a result, tenants had clearly defined and reasonably beneficial rental terms.
land speculators, land bankers, investors, and developers Many landlords might be described as speculators, acquiring land for the express purpose of selling it at a later date for a profit. The speculators in this section differed from corporate and Old World landlords in that they were not creating landed estates as their sole means of support: they were usually businessmen of diverse interests. They were distinguishable from the general farming population by the size of their holdings; landowners with more than four hundred acres had land well beyond what was necessary to support their family and are usually considered to be speculators by land scholars. Motivation also set them apart from the general farming population.56 Speculators, like corpo-
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rate landlords, valued land more for its unrealized capital, its potential increase in value, and its exchange value than for its dynastic or agricultural possibilities.57 But this distinction was a matter of degree and profiles of individual speculators make it abundantly clear that the term can only be used in a very loose manner as no single, clear definition works: some speculators improved their land, others left it in a wild state; some were absentee, others were intensely involved; some had large holdings, others did not; some bought and sold constantly, others held onto the land for a long time.58 Speculation was an age-old practise, but circumstances converged in the nineteenth century to make it particularly attractive. Speculators had a field day leading up to the institution of a sales policy in 1825; they finagled grants from the Crown and speculated in government land and other property they purchased from private individuals. Speculators usually bought first near established or anticipated future markets or along the main waterways, where they expected that settler demand would be the greatest and profits fast growing and high. As the land near water and markets was sold to farming families, new settlement, and with it speculation, tended to move inland.59 Speculators in Essex County made an average return of twenty-eight percent per annum. Such an amount was considered very good incentive to invest in land at a time when interest rates were six percent. But wide variations existed as the prudent and lucky made big gains and the errant or unlucky made equally dramatic losses. By mid-century, the number of speculators seems to have declined, at least in some areas.60 My interest in speculators lies less in the controversial issues of development, private property, and capitalism, which the topic of speculation inevitably embraces, than in speculators as landlords. Many different kinds of speculators chose to be landlords. “Quick flippers,” who readily bought and sold land, were not likely to be landlords since tenants could encumber their ability to sell quickly when the best opportunity arose.61 But “land bankers,” who purchased large tracts of land and hung on to it for a long time, found tenants very useful. So did “investing farmers,” or “would-be gentleman farmers,” who bought more land than they required, planning to sell parts of it and use the profits to improve their farming efforts.62 With captial gain as the main end, these speculator landlords generally let their land on a short-term basis, giving them some flexibility to sell when the appropriate time arrived. Speculators let out their land to tenants for a variety of reasons. It was one way to protect the land from squatters. Furthermore, the both-
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ersome responsibilities of paying land taxes and performing settlement duties and statute labour could be passed on to tenants. Wild land was taxed as early as 1803 and taxation was difficult to avoid after the Assessment Acts of 1819 and 1824 tightened up the system. Those holding large acreages could find taxes burdensome, especially if arrears began to mount. If a taxpayer was in arrears for eight years and had no seizable assets or belongings, the land had to be sold. In 1830 the first sales of tax-delinquent land occurred and one million acres in Upper Canada were put up for auction.63 If one had tenants, the problem might be avoided. By law, the landlord was responsible for taxes but he could pass the responsibility to the tenant by a covenant in the lease. If the tenant fell in arrears for taxes, the taxes were considered to be a personal charge on the tenant and a lien upon his interest only. This meant that the tenant would have his seizable goods removed to cover the amount owing, and if the value of the goods fell short of that amount, then the tenant’s interest in the land, not the land itself, was sold. Passing on the responsibility of taxes to tenants, therefore, had considerable benefits for the landlord.64 The performance of settlement duties and statute labour could also be transferred to tenants. After 1818 stiff new settlement duties were imposed requiring that all new grantees of land were to build a habitable house and clear five acres of every one hundred acres within twelve months of taking the land and before receiving a patent. After 1832 residence on the lot was also required. Such regulations were exacting and gave rise, not surprisingly, to much complaining and fraud.65 Having tenants could ease these duties. Convenants to build a house, clear the land, and perform statute labour were easily inserted into leases. Indeed, a “clearing lease” could look after settlement duties entirely.66 Passing on such responsibilities to a tenant freed up a landlord for other activities and helped secure his title to the property. More importantly, tenants provided a speculator landlord with an income from the land until it could be sold profitably. Emigration agent A.B. Hawke, for example, had large tracts of land in the Nottawasaga area but found that purchasers were not forthcoming when he needed them, so he leased out the land.67 In this way the speculator was acting much like a stockmarket investor who expected a capital gain some day but wanted dividends in the meantime. Tenanted land was often only one of his business ventures. Tenants also provided speculator landlords with a means of improving wildland that greatly increased the resale value of their holdings. Cleared land or, better yet,
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4.6 Honourable Zaccheus Burnham (1857), speculator landlord in the Newcastle District, Upper Canada. (Illustrated Historical Atlas of Peterborough County 1825–1875, 23)
a working farm complete with fenced fields, dwellings, and barns was very attractive to immigrants and fetched a better sale price than unimproved land. The Honourable Zaccheus Burnham and John Tucker Williams of the Newcastle District are examples of “land banker” speculators who arrived early, acquired large tracts of land, and held on to these lands for years, leasing them out to improving tenants. Having tenants provided them and their heirs with an income and capital gains when the land was eventually sold. Burnham was one of the first settlers in Haldimand Township, having immigrated from New Hampshire in 1789. Successful in politics, he was returned to the House of Assembly a number of times and became a member of the legislative council.
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Meanwhile, equipped with wealth, business acumen, and political connections, he acquired land in twenty-four different townships spanning Northumberland, Peterborough, Victoria, and Durham counties. As his children came of age and married, he gave them land. When he died in 1857, his remaining 21,523 acres were bequeathed to his children and grandchildren, and the residue left to trustees who were to manage the remaining estate and divide the income amongst his family. At that time, as many as seventy tenants had possession of parcels of his vast estate and had been given the option to buy.68 Similarly, John Tucker Williams, a commander in the Royal Navy, arrived in Canada in 1812. He later became Port Hope’s first mayor and sat in the legislative assembly from 1840 to 1848. In addition to his political career, he was a substantial proprietor and money lender in the Port Hope area and served as the local agent for the Canada Company from 1843 until his death in 1854, by which time he held over twelve thousand acres in eleven townships throughout Peterborough, Victoria, Northumberland, and Durham counties. At least 4,697 acres of these lands were farms of fifty to one hundred acres, which he rented out on short-term leases of one to five years. Williams had his tenants pay all taxes and sometimes he paid them to fence the land. By the mid-1840s, he was offering tenants the option to buy. After his death, his son Arthur continued in his footsteps as a gentleman farmer, politician, and proprietor of extensive rental property.69 Speculators also played the rural land market on the edge of rising cities. Here too, tenants were useful. In 1849 A.W.H. Rose urged his gentlemen readers that if they had more than five thousand pounds, they should invest it in buying ten well-improved farms of one hundred acres each near growing cities. Though Admiral Vansittart had attempted to create a tenanted estate out of wildland, in Rose’s opinion Canada was not advanced enough and the population moved too frequently for a gentleman to live solely on his rental income. Instead, Rose recommended that improved farms near cities could be rented out for two dollars an acre, thus securing for the owners a rental income of thirteen hundred dollars a year and a return on their investment of about six percent net of costs.70 Nearly fifteen years later, Chief Immigration Agent A.C. Buchanan quoted experienced, well-respected farmers who advised the same thing. John Dunlop of Woodstock, president of the local agricultural association, for example, advised that “capitalists could invest safely in landed property by judicious purchase of improved farms, which would readily let, yielding a clear rental of five percent on the
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4.7 Bellevue, the home of George Taylor Denison, speculator landlord to more than one hundred tenant farmers, north of York, Upper Canada. (Toronto Public Library [trl], Canadian Historical Picture Collection t11190)
money invested in the purchase, with a certainty of the farm annually increasing in value, if let to an enterprising agriculturalist.”71 And capitalists did just that. In the early 1830s when G.H. Hume published his observations on Canada, he remarked that in the neighbourhoods of Montreal and other large Canadian towns, “gentlemen of opulence” let their rural property holdings to tenants.72 They realized the full return on their initial investment when they sold the freehold – often to the tenants – while mortgage financing garnered them an additional percentage on their investment.73 The Denison family provides several good examples of landlords speculating successfully near a burgeoning urban area. John Denison, who arrived in York in the 1790s, eventually acquired land of great speculative value north of York where he established himself as a gentleman farmer. His son, George Taylor Denison of Bellevue, magistrate and York politician, inherited his father’s land and swiftly bought up other properties nearby, becoming one of the wealthiest landowners in Upper Canada. He rented to more than a hundred tenant farmers who provided him with an income and improved the land until such time as it was profitable to sell. His own house, “Bellevue,” a Georgian manor,
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stood as a symbol of his squiredom at the point where Denison Avenue merged with the receding forest. His son, George Taylor Denison ii of Rusholme, lawyer and entrepreneur, also acquired farms and tenants whose rents augmented his income. By mid-century, as the urban population pressed northward and westward and land values soared, the Denisons profited handsomely by subdividing their farmland into urban residential sites.74 Other speculators who have been called “would-be gentlemen farmers” or “investing farmers” found that tenants helped solve their labour problems. Often these farmers had acquired large acreages and then found they could not farm them profitably or afford their agricultural experiments because of the high cost of labour. Whether their aim was a profitable resale is not clear, but in the scale of their operations and their emphasis on marketable surpluses, profit, and capitalization, they were generally more like speculators than farmers. For these large-scale agriculturalists the cost of labour was a constant problem and tenants were the answer. For example, a Dundas County farmer purchased a well-established farm of five hundred acres at mid-century. There he employed the best labourers, implements, and stock but found he could not make a profit. So he subdivided the land and rented to several tenants on a share basis, making an annual interest on his property of ten percent.75 Noted agriculturalist George Miller of Pickering Township did much the same thing. He was one of the best importers and breeders of stock and was considered to have a model farm. It consisted of eleven hundred acres, three hundred of which he farmed himself; the rest was let to tenants.76 Others followed suit. In 1863 A.C. Buchanan sent out a call to farmers who had excess land and wanted to overcome the labour problem by renting out their land to incoming immigrants. George Craig of Southampton, Bruce County, replied that he could give more than ten families a start on fifty-acre lots and thereby improve the land for himself. He claimed that others were interested in doing the same thing.77 George Denison ii solved his labour problems by sometimes converting rents into labour services. Tenants painted his house, helped plant and harvest his crops, fixed fences, and drew gravel to city streets when he had a surfacing contract.78 At times, speculators clearly offered rental arrangements that were directed more at creating a cheap and stable labour force than establishing viable working farms for resale. The proprietor of six hundred acres along the Opeongo Road, Hopefield, Renfrew County, for example, advertised in 1863 that he was ready for forty families who
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could buy the property at the end of three years.79 This project was really an attempt to establish a labouring class in the neighbourhood as the sixty lots of ten acres each were an inadequate size for farms. Settlers were to begin farming at once and work for their more-established neighbours. There are other examples of tenancy thinly disguised as a labour arrangement. The Hamilton brothers, who owned a lumber company in the Ottawa Valley, leased out farms to tenants whose produce helped feed the company’s employees and who worked part time in the bush.80 As Clarke points out, the topic of speculators, like modern developers, elicited varied opinions. In nineteenth-century Upper Canada, they were usually depicted by land reformers as detrimental to the farming population, fostering inequities, and holding back the natural progression of settlement. These arguments have some validity, but speculators who were landlords often enticed immigrants to settle, supplied capital in regions where it was needed, sold to tenants on credit, and provided infrastructure and local leadership.81 Certainly this was the case with Joseph Abbott Keeler, the most prominent landlord in Cramahe Township. He exhibited many of the established characteristics of the speculator landlord: he was an early settler who combined speculation with other business and political interests, used tenants to improve his land, and held on to that land for years, eventually selling parts of it and bequeathing the remainder to his family. He was also a “town founder,” providing much of the infrastructure of the Colborne area in which his real estate interests lay. Joseph Abbott Keeler was one of three generations of Joseph Keelers who dominated the early settlement and business growth of Colborne from 1787 to 1885. He was the eldest son of Joseph Keeler (“Old Joe”) of Rutland County, Vermont, who reputedly was one of Cramahe Township’s first settlers and brought forty to fifty families with him from Rutland. Joseph A. Keeler (“Young Joe”) served in the War of 1812 and was rewarded in land for his services. By 1815 Old and Young Joe between them had acquired from the Crown or private individuals nearly all the lots making up the town of Colborne and extending westward. What they could not own they leased from the Crown and clergy reserves, eagerly purchasing the lots when they were finally put up for sale.82 The value of their property was enhanced when Young Joe provided the basic infrastructure of village life nearby. In 1806 he built the first flour mill in Castleton and settlement grew around it. He then turned his attentions to creating the village of Colborne.
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He founded the village in 1815 when he opened the first store and post office. He had the village surveyed, laid out the public square, and later built a road from Colborne forty miles north to Norwood, another area that he was developing. By the 1840s he was arguably the most powerful man in Cramahe Township – merchant, builder, and postmaster. He owned one of two wharves in Colborne, from which a busy grain trade was conducted. He established Keeler’s Mill on the Lakeport Road, Keeler Tavern on the Kingston Road, and a distillery. His involvement in the growth of the community went well beyond these business interests to encompass local justice, agricultural improvement, and religious and political life. He served as justice of the peace, grand juror in the Court of General Quarter sessions of the peace, and as commissioner of the Queen’s Bench. In 1829 he was one of the driving forces behind the organization of the Northumberland Agricultural Society. Though he was himself an Anglican, he gave church land to the Methodists and Presbyterians.83 Young Joe presented the outward appearance of an Old World landlord to his tenants, albeit on a much smaller scale. In the mid-1820s he built the Keeler House, which still stands on Church Street in Colborne. Designed by an architect, it was a fine example of neoclassical architecture. In the 1840s he began building a second house, Kelwood, high on a hill overlooking the lake and village of Colborne. It was equipped with sixteen rooms, a ballroom with a fireplace large enough to hold four-foot logs, servants’ quarters, wine cellars, a large octagonal hall with a coloured glass ceiling and frescoes, marble fireplaces, and bronze chandeliers. It took twenty years to build and cost thirty-five thousand dollars. The sale of several town lots beginning in the 1830s presumably helped to finance this endeavour. Much of Kelwood’s property had formerly been farmland rented out on a short-term cash basis.84 When Keeler died in 1855, his rental land and other properties passed to his son, “Little Joe.”85 The other speculator landlords in Cramahe were commercial men who viewed land as a relatively profitable and secure place to invest their wealth. Donald Campbell operated the other wharf in Colborne, just south of the village, and a mill in what would become Dundonald, further inland in the fourth concession. Known locally as a prominent farmer and businessman, he owned some valuable property on the waterfront and several properties further inland along the road running north through the township. In 1842 he rented out eight hundred and three acres of these lands to seven tenants, the majority of
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whom held the land on short cash-rental terms. Only three of these tenants rented land that Campbell actually owned; the other four were his undertenants on Crown and clergy reserve land.86 His intention was to sell the lease once the property had increased in value. Less prominent as landlords but speculators nevertheless, were James D. Goslee and John Steele, Esquire. Goslee was a successful timber merchant who owned land in the immediate vicinity of Colborne and rented the farms out to tenants on a short-term basis while he attended to business matters in town. When the opportunity presented itself, he divided and sold many of the lots as town lots.87 John Steele was a friend and business associate of Joseph A. Keeler. By the early 1840s he was well established in town as a merchant, large property owner, and secretary of the newly formed Colborne Harbour Company, and he was appointed warden of the Newcastle District in 1845. Some of the nearly three hundred acres he owned in and around Colborne he rented out to farm tenants on a short-term basis.88 These landlords, whether Old World, corporate, or speculators, were socially superior to their tenants with greater resources of wealth, knowledge, and connections at hand. They ran their estates as businesses with formal contracts and accounts. Whereas corporate and Old World landlords were interested in establishing a stable, loyal population and offered long leases to that end, speculators juggled several business interests and opted for short leases so as to be able to sell when the opportunity or need arose.
ordinary farmer landlords Most landlords were not absentee speculators, wealthy urbanites, or gentlemen agriculturalists but members of the general population of farmers. Locating information on farmer landlords is difficult as many were no longer actively farming and were not listed as household heads in the census. Nor would they necessarily appear in the assessments since the person being assessed was often someone else, such as their tenant. Farmer landlords were usually retired, or had more land than they could farm themselves, or needed an extra income. Less often they were widows, small businessmen, and local merchants. In Cramahe Township, they tended to be older than tenants, having acquired ownership through the benefits of early arrival, experience, and accumulated savings (Table 4.1). They also tended to have slightly larger, more improved, and more valuable farms than owners in general (Table 4.2).
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What is striking is that many of these landlord-tenant relationships occurred among people of the same class. The landlords were ordinary farming folk whose own hold on the land was sometimes insecure: some had mortgages and some were tenants themselves.89 Others changed their land status over the years. Some had been tenants at the beginning of their careers and at various times throughout their lives. Twenty percent of all landlords in Cramahe in 1842, for example, had started out as lessees on Crown or clergy reserves. Moreover, in nearly one-third of the cases, the landlord-tenant relationship was actually a family arrangement.90 In fifteen cases, Cramahe Township landlords and tenants shared the same last name and thus were probably related. In such cases, the rental contract was not between different classes but between different generations. Farm owners rented out their farms for several reasons. They might be seeking not only a short-term income but also a career on the land for their families over the generations. The decision to become a landlord was sometimes precipitated by a personal or financial crisis during which rental income helped tide the family over. Others rented out the farm as part of a family strategy designed to meet household needs, expand the available labour supply, and accommodate the exigences of the land market. Some were unwilling or unable to farm the land themselves but wanted to retain ownership for the security it would provide in times of trouble or during their old age. Some simply had a deep attachment to the old homestead, which they refused to break up.91 Families that had purchased property but, owing to heavy mortgages and other debts, had run into serious financial difficulty often rented out their land. The law books contain many cases of desperate landlords who had mortgaged their property and installed tenants on the land to provide much-needed income.92 Other kinds of financial difficulty could drive proprietors to rent out their farm. Thomas Spencer Niblock, despite his fumbling attempt to attain gentleman status in Delaware Township in the London area, struggled to keep his one-hundred-acre farm out of the hands of creditors. For a few years he was bailed out by a wealthy cousin in England; but eventually, fed up with Thomas’s rising debts and failure to make payments on his property, the cousin told Thomas to pay up or leave. Following the example of a neighbour, Thomas let his farm on a four-year clearing lease and left to try his luck at gold digging in Australia.93 Similarly pressed with financial ruin, John and Margaret Ianson, who had had one of the biggest farm operations in Reach Township, decided to rent out 270 acres
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rather than sell their 370-acre farm, after several suits in chancery greatly strained their resources.94 By renting, these farmers managed to maintain their equity, raise some income, and hold their homesteads together until such time as it was profitable to sell or they could pass the land on to their heirs. It was also common for widowed farm women to rent out their land, especially if they had no sons who were able or willing to work it. Some studies have shown that women landowners were more dependent on rental income than men.95 The widow Margaret Fowlie of Usborne Township in Huron County, for example, rented out the home farm in 1865 when her only son took up teaching as a career. Meanwhile her widowed sister-in-law, who had been left with four boys between the ages of five and twelve, decided to rent out her farm until her sons reached the age when they could farm the place productively.96 When Alexander Leask of Reach Township died in 1872 leaving his fortytwo-year-old wife with six children and more than six hundred acres to tend, Mrs Leask found tenants for the various farms and held the whole estate together for ten years until her son James inherited it.97 Then, as now, marital troubles could result in property wrangles and renting out the disputed property could provide a temporary reprieve. The aged Cramahe farmer Elijah Ketchum and the much younger Mrs Ketchum were burdened with marital problems. In 1838 she left him, and he forbade the community to harbour her or give her any credit on his account. Over sixty years of age with only one child, a teenage daughter, he rented out their two farms on the second concession to tenants on a short-term basis until he could get matters sorted.98 Particularly interesting is the case of a most unusual landlord – a baby. The child’s father (or perhaps stepfather) was the tenant. When the parents’ relationship fell apart, the mother of the child tried to evict her husband on the baby’s behalf.99 She used this legal mechanism to rid the household of her estranged partner. While some people rented out their farms so that they could exploit opportunities elsewhere, others did so as part of a careful family plan and commitment to farm life. The case of William and James Ianson of Greenbank illustrates how farmers might rent out their land at various times in their lives to support themselves, always holding onto their freehold title as insurance against a rainy day or support for their old age. William and James Ianson inherited their father’s farm in Reach Township and farmed it grudgingly until their mother died. Finally released from what they saw as an obligation to farm the homestead,
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4.8 Aged owner Thomas McMurray of Cramahe Township placed this advertisement in July 1845 to rent his farm. He died four years later and his sons inherited the farm. (Cobourg Star, 6 August 1845)
they rented out the place while they tried their hands at various business ventures. In 1893 they resumed farming, and later when they turned age sixty-three and seventy and could no longer farm the place productively, they rented it out again, retaining part of the property to support themselves.100 Others who temporarily left for work in urban areas might let out their farm, maintaining ownership for the home base and rental income it provided, and then sell the farm once the move to the city became permanent.101 As we have seen, renting out the farm was a sensible way of biding time until the owner or his heirs wanted to farm the property themselves. The young bachelor David Dougall, for example, of Usborne Township, Huron District, rented out his own farm and lived with his brother for a while. With the proceeds from custom thrashing, he was able to build a new house on his property, so that shortly after he married in June 1865, the tenants left and the newlyweds moved onto their own farm.102 Likewise, Thomas McMurray of Cramahe Township, aged and unable to keep his fine farm in good working order, advertised in The Cobourg Star that he would sell or let it. He rented it until his death in 1849 when ownership passed to his sons, who were now able to work the land.103 Letting the farm as a way of bridging the generations was quite common amongst the nonfarm population too. A writer for The Canada Farmer observed in 1872 that too often mechanics and trades-
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men bought land near town and found that they lacked the skill or capital to farm it, so they rented it out. Such property was sometimes just a speculative sideline, but at other times it was a way for people to establish their children on the land; and until the heirs were able to farm it themselves, renting made sense.104 O.J. Fowler, a potter in Colborne, had four sons in 1842, but none of them was old enough to farm; so while keeping five acres for his own garden needs, he rented the rest of his forty-two acres to a tenant.105 Another Cramahe farmer, Joseph A. Crandell, found that running his own sawmill left little time for working the farm, so he let out the part close to the mill on a half-share. There he could supervise its operation and maintain the family patrimony.106 Even unskilled workmen, on rare occasions, became landlords. They bought property, acquired a tenant who agreed to stock the farm, and then worked along with the tenant, acquiring agricultural skills and an income.107 Renting out one’s farm was often the only practical way to finance retirement. Francis A. Evans, in The Emigrants Guide to Obtain Lands and Effect a Settlement in the Canadas (1833), reported that often elderly people who had no children or whose children already settled made their old age comfortable by renting out their farms.108 In 1847 James Reid of Gore (near present-day Etobicoke), at the age of sixty-nine, had three of his sons settled on farms of their own and one daughter married. He rented out the home farm to his remaining son and namesake who had only been married two years. He said the farm could be rented to a stranger for eighty pounds but that he wanted James to “have it cheap” at fifty pounds. James Reid reported to his relatives back in Ayrshire, Scotland, that he and his wife were living very comfortably because of this arrangement. Nine years later their son had moved, and the Reids were renting out the farm to nonfamily for three times the rent. Thus they were able to live comfortably on their own farm in old age, as well as help set up a son faster and more cheaply than the boy would have been able to manage on his own. In such a situation, the short-term gains that might have been had by entering the land market were traded off against the long-term goals of establishing family members.109 Rental income also provided an important retirement income to widows of landlords. Elijah Ketchum of Cramahe, for example, bequeathed to his wife all his rental income.110 For one-third of the tenants in Cramahe Township in 1842, the landlord-tenant relationship was actually a family arrangement that existed outside the usual land market and played a central role in father-son
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succession.111 As owners aged, they rented out the farm to their son or sold the property to him and became his tenants. Farm owners in their fifties and sixties had reached an age when they could no longer rely on their own labour to farm their properties efficiently but required the help of the younger generation to maximize the production and income potential of the farm, from which everyone could benefit. Few had any savings tucked away for their old age or for setting up their children. They depended on the productive capacity of the land itself to support them or the power that property could yield in securing the help of others. In short, the time had come to transfer the responsibilities of active farming to the younger generation and look to their own security for old age.112 Father-son succession generally occurred in several stages rather than through a rapid transfer of authority, and in the process, renting served as an apprenticeship. The first stage was a testing period where the father owned the land and made all the decisions and the son contributed his labour. In the second stage, the son often established his independence on land he rented elsewhere. The third stage occurred when the father retired and the son rented the whole farm from him. The father contributed his labour but the operational control was now in the hands of the son. Finally, the son might inherit the farm.113 As the cases that follow illustrate, no one process prevailed, and parents and children came to a variety of arrangements. Renting one’s farm to a son with the promise or expectation of eventually handing over ownership was one way that landowners could satisfy the needs of both generations. In the early 1840s Nathan Gould of Cramahe Township rented out all one hundred and fifty acres of the home farm to his youngest son, Burr, who was twenty-six at the time and married with three children. Burr paid seventy-seven cents annually for the cleared acreage, which was very cheap given that cleared land in the area generally rented for a dollar to almost two and a half dollars per cleared acre. The expectation, though not stipulated in the will Nathan drew up at the same time, was that Nathan and his wife, Abigail, would live with Burr’s young family, and that if Burr paid the rent and saw to their needs he would inherit the whole farm. These intergenerational arrangements were quite common but not always satisfactory to either party. In this case, the restless Burr resented the arrangement and was increasingly dissatisfied with his father’s farm. To offset this, Nathan sold Burr one hundred acres of the farm in 1845. Hesitant to relinquish all of his leverage in the relationship, however, Nathan retained the last fifty acres and only bequeathed them to Burr after both Nathan and his wife
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had died. Finally released from his obligation, Burr left and acquired a farm that was more to his liking elsewhere.114 The cases presented above illustrate how farm owners rented out their farms as part of larger family strategies. By renting out the farms at appropriate moments, they could maintain their equity, raise some income, achieve the freedom to try their luck elsewhere, retain their status as landowners, and hold the estate together until they chose to sell or hand it over to someone else. Renting out the farm helped to keep it active and viable in between the periods when one generation had finished farming but the next had not yet started. Finally, farm owners used tenancy as a way of obtaining financial security in their old age. The farmer landlords discussed in this section differed in many ways from large speculators, land companies, and Old World aristocratic landlords. First of all, they generally had very little experience, if any, as landlords. Whereas land companies and landowners with vast holdings had often been landlords for decades, ordinary farmers viewed landlordism as a temporary status. Corporate landlords also had formal contracts and often let the land on long leases, but farmer landlords usually rented for only a short term until their financial, familial, or labour situations changed. Among landlords they were the most likely to have share arrangements with their tenants. Share tenancy allowed them a say in how their farm was worked, what crops might be grown, and how much livestock could be slaughtered. Such close supervision and the logistical complexities of dividing produce, collecting, and marketing it did not have much appeal for landlords with large tenanted estates. The share contract, however, appealed to farmer landlords who would return to the farm themselves or pass it to their sons and in the meantime wanted to maintain it in working order.115 A fixed cash rent might encourage tenants to exploit the farm, leaving exhausted soil, shabby buildings, and diminished livestock in their wake. Share farming ensured that both landlord and tenant encouraged the productivity of the farm unit. It was a particularly feasible arrangement when landlord and tenant were related or living in close proximity. Indeed, the landlord-tenant relationship could be very close – within the same class, the same family, and even on the same lot. As A.W.H. Rose advised his readers in 1849, if your farm only just paid its expenses, if you didn’t want to farm it yourself, or if you were afraid to go it alone, then rent out your farm on shares reserving for yourself the house, outbuildings, garden, and pasture for your own horses and cows.116 Under
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this and other arrangements already cited, landlord and tenant lived cheek by jowl, seeing each other daily and working together. John Gilmour’s landlord, for example, gave him a couple of days’ assistance in cutting down, hauling, and preparing logs for a house raising on his rented property.117 When landlord and tenant were relatives, work and social relations were further blurred. The connection might be peppered with the kindness and support expected of families, or complicated by dysfunctional, highly explosive relationships. Informal, indefinite verbal agreements were often the result of such physical proximity, trust born of close social relationships, lack of literacy, and worldliness. Intergenerational rental arrangements often relied on familialism – a sense of equity, mutual responsibility, and cooperation – rather than on a formal contract. Family and community censure tied the parties involved to what was considered to be proper family conduct; otherwise, disgruntled individuals entered the courts. Contemporary observers believed that informal tenancy arrangements were the main cause of acrimony between landlord and tenant. As Justice Gwynne complained after one court case, the agreement upon which he had to base his decision was an “inartistically framed instrument, which appears to have been drafted by the parties themselves, so as of necessity to lead to litigation.”118 The Gleesons of March Township, near Ottawa, learned of the problems associated with such arrangements the hard way. Prior to 1875 Michael Gleeson, in an unregistered agreement, turned over his land to his son Joseph for a rent charge. Joseph soon fell badly in arrears and Michael refused to hand over the property to him. The whole affair had to be settled in chancery.119 In many cases, there was no written document. Samuel Harrold, for example, made a verbal agreement with his sons in the presence of his brother-in-law.120 Mr Lynde and his tenant did not even bother with a witness.121 As early as 1833 farmers were being advised to consult a lawyer in drawing up rental agreements.122 But the advice was not always heeded. Surviving court records make it clear that in the absence of a deeded lease (one that was written, witnessed, and put under seal by a lawyer) the tenant was vulnerable in the courts. With no such document to clarify the tenant’s rights and responsibilities, judges tended to side with the landlord.123 It was in the tenant’s best interest, therefore, to have a formal agreement. In 1846 one tenant from Portland Township went so far as to sue his landlord for failing to put their verbal agreement into writing as he had promised.124 Other pressures combined to make formal agreements increasingly the norm. An act of
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Parliament passed in 1849 stipulated that henceforth leases that were not sealed by a lawyer would be construed as year-to-year.125 In 1851 this was replaced by a more severe act declaring that henceforth only deeded leases were valid and that all others were void, making tenants vulnerable to ejection.126 Cases brought before the high courts involving farmers and their tenants reflected the circumstances of the landlord class. Sometimes landlords were desperate for extra cash; some held insecure title to the land in that they had fallen behind in their mortgage payments, or had alienated the property to others. In other cases, disputes arose because the landlord had no formal lease and was inexperienced or naive in legal matters. The case of Doe Dem Lynde v. Merritt offers one such example. In April 1844 Mr Lynde, aged and unable to work, verbally agreed to lease his farm for four years. The very first autumn Lynde decided that the tenant was not farming the way he wanted. He visited the tenant, telling him that he now wanted his son to have the farm. The tenant verbally agreed at that meeting to leave in ten days, but the following spring he was still there and refused to give up possession. Throughout there were no formal agreements or notices given and the case ended up before the Queen’s Bench.127 The events leading up to legal action demonstrate the fleeting and insecure nature of the landlord-tenant relationship as it could exist under the supervision of the general farming class. In addition to the naivety of both parties, the relationship was often shaped by the need to keep the farm in good running order to meet the landlord’s financial and familial requirements.
Landlords were a diverse lot with diverse aims. For corporate and speculator landlords, capital gain was the main aim. This was less so for Old World landlords who also desired personal honour and dynastic holdings than for farmer landlords who wanted to maintain the farm in good working order through various family situations. But all landlords took considerable risks in their choice of land, agents, and tenants, and in their participation in a complex and changing land market: a strategy that was effective during a time of fast-rising expectations could prove disastrous after a cyclical crash. Knowing what kind of people became landlords and when, why, and how they administered their estates brings the proprietor’s perspective to the landlord-tenant relationship and sheds light on the context in which tenants lived. Old World aristocrats, corporate landlords, and
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speculators were more professional in the management of their estates than farmer landlords, having formal agreements, estate rules, and a hierarchy of agents and bailiffs. The relationship between these large landlords and their tenants was more distant than that between farmer landlords and theirs as they were separated from the tenants by geography, wealth, education, and social status. With connections to the state at its local and provincial core, they operated within networks of power and authority against which tenants were ill equipped to protest. Yet perhaps fewer situations for protest arose. Aristocratic, corporate, and speculator landlords might have been more tolerant of tenants in arrears since any one tenant’s rent was just a small part of their income. A farmer who depended on his tenant to pay his mortgage could not afford to be so lenient. Furthermore, corporate and aristocratic landlords were more likely to offer the most beneficial terms, namely long leases, as they were interested in creating a contented semipermanent tenant population. The cases presented here demonstrate that the big landlord operators combined private interest with a sense of public duty, viewing property as a commodity and propriety: the managers of the Crown and clergy reserves wanted to settle the countryside with a loyal population; and Lord Mount Cashell and Admiral Vansittart wanted to create country seats over which they would preside as men of influence and honour. Several of the speculators were also interested in creating thriving villages and developing reputations as town founders. These landlords contributed, in varying degrees, to the local economic infrastructure and social context experienced by their tenants. This sense of playing on a larger stage, of public duty, was not a responsibility the general farmer landlord carried. Responding largely to family and financial circumstances, their concerns were more private in nature and dictated by short-term expediency. At the same time, they generally had more in common with their tenants than the big operators had. Such closeness had the potential to make them more empathetic to the vicissitudes of their tenants’ lives or to seriously complicate the landlord-tenant relationship.
heir Lives
5 Their Rent
Rent takes us straight to the centre of the landlord-tenant relationship. Rent values, more than any other measurement, reflected the leverage, implicit or real, wielded by each party. This chapter begins with a simple evaluation of rent levels throughout the province, and contemporaries’ advice on how to achieve a rent that gave both parties a just return, furthered agricultural development, and maintained peaceful relations. Simply stated, rents appear to have been low. Explaining why is difficult but one factor stands out: the ideology of ownership that disadvantaged the tenant in many respects may have worked to their benefit when it came to rent. Rent prices had to compete with freehold prices, and the prejudice against tenancy helped keep rents low. This chapter, then, examines the complex reality of rents, which varied according to a host of factors. Rent levels reflected the local supply and demand for farms, and the individual negotiations of tenants and landlords who planned according to their family circumstances, their willingness to assume risks, and speculations about which way various variables, for example crop prices, might be moving. Setting rents was complicated because it was not only an economic calculation but also a social and political process.
evaluating rent levels One basic fact raises its head immediately upon tackling rents: they are very difficult to evaluate. There is no systematic body of evidence for rent over the years. As a result, it is almost impossible to establish a trend in rent levels as scholars have managed to do in Ireland and England, for example.1 Instead, rent values are scattered through many sources.
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5.1 “Wanted to Rent.” This advertisement was placed by a prospective tenant looking for a small improved farm in the Cobourg area, August 1848. (Cobourg Star, 8 November 1848)
Sometimes the evidence refers to general rents in a township, and sometimes it refers to a specific rent exchanged between individuals. Furthermore, rents are given in various currencies and it is not always clear whether the stated rent was a rent per acre, or rent per improved acre. Consider the rent figures given in the 1842 census for Cramahe Township. We do not know how the enumerator interpreted the category “Average Money rent of farm,” but the figures only make sense if they are viewed as an estimated (not actual) rent per improved acre.2 Elsewhere rent was generally calculated solely on the number of cleared acres, which included pasture, meadow, and tillage. Wild land, at least in the settled areas of the province, was often considered to have very little income-earning potential.3 It could, however, be valuable for its timber and in such cases, rent was calculated on the entire acreage and not just cleared land.4 It must also be pointed out that the rent values used in this chapter only pertain to cash rentals and do not include those that were even more difficult to evaluate, for example, rent paid by a share of the produce, labour, or some other form of payment. To compare rents to freehold prices, as I attempt below, compounds the problems as sale prices were subject to similar inconsistencies and confusion. Nevertheless, some evaluation of general rent levels seems necessary. Even as qualified and flawed as that evaluation may be, it does suggest certain conclusions. Rents increased in the era under study but rents were reasonable, even low, compared to the income-earning potential of the land and its market value. Every year the rental market was particularly busy in the autumn, when most old leases ended and newcomers wanted to acquire land in
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5.2 This advertisement was placed by an owner wanting to rent out his large, highly improved farm in Otonobee Township, 1842, until such time as a buyer could be found. (Cobourg Star, 25 May 1842)
time to plant fall wheat. Advertisements were posted in public places and appeared in the newspapers describing what landlords had to offer or what tenants desired.5 From the 1820s to the 1870s, rent generally increased threefold to fourfold in value. This general upward trend mirrored the trend in freehold prices, which, despite yearly oscillations, rose at a much greater rate. A particularly high volume of freehold sales occurred in the 1840s and 1850s with prices increasing dramatically from 1842 to 1877. In the decades thereafter prices seemed to stabilize or decline.6 It is likely that the rental market was particularly active in the 1840s given the rise in both demand and supply of rented farms as immigrants flowed in and the Canada Company joined the government in its leasing policy.7
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Agricultural experts in the nineteenth century recommended two ways to calculate rent in order to provide a just return for both landlord and tenant. One way expressed rent in terms of the wheat yield, the other in terms of the resale value of the land. Those who believed that wheat, as the main agricultural export, was the best basis upon which to calculate and evaluate rents argued that the price of land was related to its potential productive capacity and earning power. The farm was, after all, an income-earning asset. The main difference between renting a house or a farm was that the latter provided not only a place to live and do business but a major portion of the capital required to make a living. The ideal farm to let, according to this viewpoint, was a farm well positioned for the wheat trade – a “cleared farm” of thirty to eighty acres, cleared of all trees, ready for cultivation, with some timber for fuel, and located close to a market town.8 Everyone understood that the income stream of the farm represented more than just wheat but it was an agreed-upon indicator. It was believed that a “corn rent” (in this case wheat) ensured for the tenant an income that was based on a commodity of “real and enduring value,” though the actual price of it might fluctuate.9 Rent, it was argued, should equal one-third of the average value of the wheat yield. So if the average yield for wheat was six bushels per acre and if six bushels had a market value of six dollars, then the rent should be two dollars.10 The one-third rule owed its inspiration to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, though landlords and tenants must always have taken productivity into account whether they had read Smith or not.11 The intent of the one-third rule was to give the proprietor his or her just return on capital invested without pressing the tenant too hard. Clearly some, including the government, viewed this as a legitimate way to calculate rent. The problem of basing rent values on the price of wheat in early Upper Canada, however, soon became apparent. The price of grain fluctuated wildly in response to imports from the United States, changing domestic demand, unstable export markets, varying weather conditions, and the quality of wheat.12 In the early years there was no grain standard or stable market price upon which both landlord and tenant could agree. Instead, the executive council, responsible for establishing Crown and clergy reserve rents, believed that money was the steadiest article between nations and the most general and convenient representation of value. They recommended as early as 1800 that clergy reserve rents be a set money rent that did not derive from the corn standard. Indeed, the executive council recommended that when
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clergy reserve tenants paid in grain, the amount would be the quantity of grain equal to the set money value and valued at the market price at the time of the signing of the lease.13 An increase in money values, not wheat values, would determine an increase in rent. Grain continued to be acceptable on government reserves since rent paid in produce was a necessity in a cash-short society, but it was an amount of grain equal to a set money rent.14 The practice of using cash and wheat interchangeably continued into the 1830s and even longer in some places. In Notes on North America (1851) J.F.W. Johnston told readers that land in the wheat-growing region of the Gore District rented for two dollars (ten shillings), or about two and a half bushels of wheat per acre.15 Even though money was the main representation of value, commentators continued to assess the level of rent in comparison to wheat prices and believe that the two were connected. After travelling through Upper Canada in the early 1840s, John Robert Godley informed his readers that “rent is as yet generally low in proportion to the produce.”16 Table 5.1, which compares rent with wheat values between 1820 and 1879 in Upper Canada, suggests that Godley was correct as rent values were generally less than one-third of the market value of wheat. A more precise sense of the impact of wheat prices on rent levels, or on the ability of tenants to pay their rent, remains unclear. We do not know, for example, to what extent farmers relied on wheat income to pay their rent. Nor do we know the precise relationship between wheat prices and rents. Reuben Lee of Vaughan Township reported to the Canada Farmer in 1864 that rents had risen to very high figures as an indirect consequence of the Crimean War (1854–56) and the consequent rise in wheat prices.17 But Clarke found that wheat was not a significant factor in determining the price of freehold land in Essex County; there, wheat prices were pursuing a downward trend while land prices moved upward.18 In any case, it is important to remember that while wheat may have been in the forefront of agriculture, a wheat economy did not reign uniformly or supreme in early Upper Canada, so understanding rents according to the market price of grain is problematic.19 Other contemporaries were quick to point out that the productive capacity of the land was not as much of a determinant in setting rents as the resale value of it.20 The other recommended way to calculate rent, therefore, was as a percentage of the freehold value of the land. Experts held that rent should be equal to the current rate of interest on the land or on a long-term investment, which was legally set at six
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percent throughout the nineteenth century.21 Rent was to equal six percent of the aggregate value of stock, implements, cultivated land, and buildings. This formula appears to have gained popularity by the 1860s as wheat receded in importance and land had proven itself as an investment, though it may have been used much earlier. Some variation was to be expected once one took the actual quality and location of the land into consideration. Agricultural experts advised landlords that six percent on poor land might actually be too tough on the tenant, but that even twelve percent on good land was bearable. Less than six percent should be charged if the tenant was making improvements as the owner could look to the unearned increment for part of his eventual return.22 According to this way of assessing rents, prices were reasonable. Table 5.2 compares rent with freehold prices during the years 1820–79. It shows that, while rents increased fourfold between 1830 and 1879, the purchase price of freehold land increased at a much greater rate, anywhere from eightfold to seventeenfold. Rents as a percentage of the purchase price, therefore, declined over time.23 It is perhaps useful to note that rents as a percentage of the purchase price seem high in the early decades but this was because purchase prices were so low. Over the next few decades, freehold prices rose dramatically, rents did not. Judging from the calculations discussed here, it seems that rents were generally low. Why? Likely because renting was never as desirable as freehold. John Robert Godley, who travelled through Upper Canada in the early 1840s, reported that rents were generally low because of “the prejudice that exists against the tenure.”24 Rents had to compete with freehold prices: when land was readily available to buy, landlords could only hope to attract and keep good tenants if they kept rents low.25 Rents were low relative to freehold purchase prices because settlers may have been prepared to pay for the independence they believed ownership conferred. Several other factors may explain why rents were low and why they declined relative to freehold prices. First, interest rates fell during the nineteenth century, reducing the user cost of land and probably rents. Second, if capital gains became more predictable as more became known about what the land could produce, the anticipation of capital gains might have been incorporated into freehold prices; landlords expecting capital gains upon selling land might not have requested as much in rent. Third, if the ability to borrow on the security of land (and tenancy conferred less-formal
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credit-raising potential) became more important as the century progressed, it might also help explain why the ratio of rents to freehold prices fell.26 These points all merit further inquiry; but some of the expected benefits of ownership such as capital gains could be captured by tenants too as they used their leases in the variety of formal and informal ways detailed in chapter 7. Finally, after mid-century, the demand to rent farms may have declined as opportunities began opening up for those who might previously have become tenants. A generation of early settlers had grown old and were now ready to bequeath or sell their land.27 And those who couldn’t afford to buy could now move out to the American West or to the burgeoning cities to earn a living. Then this is the simple conclusion – that rents were low. Beneath this generalization lies great complexity.
rent levels complicated At any one time there was a considerable variation in rents.28 Local factors of supply and demand were an essential consideration in settling rents and explaining the variation. In 1850 William Haw reminded his readers that “land in Canada is valued, not generally according to its quality, but according to its locality.”29 In 1833 Francis Evans noted in The Emigrant Guide that rents ran from seven-sixths to fifteen shillings per acre near cities and large towns where the demand for land was high, and only five to ten shillings beyond ten miles.30 A similar difference existed in Cramahe Township in the early 1840s where rents in the front concessions near the town of Colborne and along the main road ranged from ten to twenty-nine shillings per improved acre, and those in the back concessions ranged from six to fourteen shillings per improved acre.31 By mid-century the differences were even more marked. In Smith’s journey from Belleville to Toronto in the early 1850s, he noted that even though plank and gravelled roads were tending to equalize rents along the main roads and the front concessions, prices diminished considerably as lots receded. The main advantages of farms along the main roads were the greater density of settlement, availability of neighbourly assistance, social amenities, better-quality roads, the shorter distance to market, and greater competition among the buyers of grain, which drove the price up.32 Sometimes the land further back from the lakes was actually of better quality but at a disadvantage when it came to these commercial and social resources. In 1867 it was reported in The Canada Farmer that rents were dispropor-
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tionately high near cities and that the land was less productive from years of overcropping. The reporter believed that while being near a city might fetch higher produce prices, they were not enough to justify the difference in rent.33 Values also varied according to the extent of improvements and the general state of agricultural development. William Smith noted that from Toronto to Woodstock good land that had poor buildings rented for five shillings per acre while a first-rate farm rented for fifteen shillings.34 Thus, the high demand for prime agricultural land in the Niagara region, where farmers engaged in intensive fruit and vegetable growing, raised rents to twenty to forty percent of the purchase price.35 Prices were much lower in the newer counties such as Haliburton, Muskoka, and Parry Sound, where one-half to three-quarters of a farm might still be in “bush” condition.36 These local factors affecting the price of rent influenced freehold prices too. Proximity to central places and transportation routes, agricultural improvements, and the demand for land combined with its declining availability drove up prices. So did affairs of the wider economic and political world. Reciprocity with the United States after 1854, the railroad construction boom, industrialization along the Eastern Seaboard, expanded agricultural markets during the American Civil War, and escalating wholesale prices in England and the United States appear to have affected freehold land prices and may have influenced rents as well.37 Certain factors, however, were exclusive to renting, such as the type of rental contract: tenants who had long leases were in a more advantageous position than those with short-term contracts; those who paid cash were in a more advantageous position than those who paid shares. Long leases cost less than short-term contracts. For example, while much of the settled regions of the province in the 1840s had shortterm rental contracts with rents that were about eight to fifteen percent of the purchase price, long leases on Amherst Island kept rents at two to four percent of the purchase price for much of the nineteenth century.38 Long leases usually had a stationary rent, one that remained the same for the duration of the lease and did not rise every year or so to keep pace with rising land values as a short-term rental contract did. This was beneficial to the tenant as long as land and produce prices rose. As the number of productive fields and livestock increased, a tenant’s income could rise but his rent remained the same and became less burdensome. Long leases could also be found with what were known as progressive rentals. A progressive rental broke the lease
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down into specific terms of years each with its own rent that increased as one term ended and another began. Under the terms of the Crown and clergy reserves, for example, the twenty-one-year lease was broken down into three terms of seven years, with the rent increasing at the end of every seven years. Starting in 1800, the first seven-year annual rent was ten shillings for a two-hundred-acre lot; during the second seven years the annual rent was twenty shillings (one pound) per lot, and during the third seven-year period it was thirty shillings (one pound ten shillings).39 The Canada Company began its leasing plan in 1842 with a progressive rental that began at two pounds for a hundred acres and increased at regular intervals to £16.10s by the twelfth year of their twelve-year lease.40 The object of a progressive rental was that the first term should be so inexpensive as to attract settlers, but by the end of the lease, the rent would have risen in value so as to keep pace with rising land values. Progressive rentals on the Crown and clergy reserves were advanta eous to leaseholders despite rent increases over the years. Rents on clergy reserves increased fifty percent for all new leases signed after 4 April 1811. They more than doubled again in 1819 as the government anticipated that old leases would soon be due for renewal, and land values and immigration rates rose.41 Crown and clergy reserve rents stayed at these levels throughout the volatile political atmosphere of the 1830s and 1840s as any increase would have been politically risky. Though lessees no doubt disliked any increase, it must be pointed out that prices fell well below general rent levels. Crown and clergy reserve lessees paid only fourpence, or one-third of a shilling, per acre (Table 5.3), when other tenants generally paid five to fifteen shillings per acre for land. Crown and clergy reserve rents were low for another reason: rent levels could not be so high as to cut into the lessees’ right to their improvements. Across the province, rents for short-term contracts were usually based on the aggregate value of the land (i.e., all buildings, fences, and other fixed improvements). This was not the case with Crown and clergy reserves. Those with long leases had often taken the land in a nearly wild state and wrought substantial improvements over several years. Their labour needed to be recognized.42 When their leases were renewed, therefore, the value of the new rent was not raised to the actual improved value of the land but kept at rents as they were established by regulation and in accordance with the value of the land in its “unimproved” state. Lessees, in short, were to have the advantage of the improvements that they themselves had accomplished over their
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long tenure.43 Clergy reserve rents were therefore very low compared with other rents and illustrate the advantage of a long lease and a corporate landlord over a short-term contract when it came to rent. Cash rents were usually lower than rents paid in labour, in shares, or some combination thereof.44 Tenants with clearing leases paid their rent in labour, clearing a stipulated number of acres a year. On occasion, the equivalent cash value was given. For example, in the 1840s Chief Justice Robinson rented out one-hundred-acre lots of wild land to tenants on his East Gwillimbury estate for ten years; in exchange the tenants had to clear and fence seven acres a year. The work was valued at £3.10 per acre making the annual work equivalent to five shillings rent per acre.45 Rent in this case was the equivalent of wages paid for clearing and, when compared with general rent levels, was a reasonable amount for uncleared land.46 Share tenants paid a premium to divide the risks of bad harvests and management of the farm with the landlord, and to compensate the landlord for higher negotiation, managerial, and enforcement costs.47 Tenants who paid cash and assumed all the risk avoided these extra built-in costs. Share rents were calculated in proportion to the amount that landlord and tenant invested, whether that was land, livestock, seed, implements, cash, or labour. Generally, in the early years, a tenant paid one-half of his produce if the landlord supplied the land, buildings, livestock, implements, and seed.48 By mid-century this arrangement was more likely to cost the tenant more than two-thirds of the produce.49 This increase in the share suggests that share rents kept pace with the rising value of the land. But share portions could vary considerably from these generalities and reflect local practice.50 In Saltfleet Township, Gore District, for example, the practice in the early part of the century was for the tenant to hand over two-thirds of the produce, if the landlord provided a team and two-thirds of the seed, paid for wear and tear, and gathered in half the grain. In the 1850s in Dundas County, the most common arrangement was the half share: the tenant supplied all his own implements and stock and half the seed; the landlord paid for half the expense of threshing the grain.51 As we shall see in the chapter on tenant agriculture, share arrangements became even more complex as farm operations expanded and diversified. Rent reflected the sharing of risk and the higher level of negotiation, management, and enforcement costs incurred by landlords in these complicated contracts as opposed to the simple contracts requiring an annual cash rent.
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The time of year that a landlord took his share and whether produce prices were high or low could alter the money value of the share and cause ill feeling. A clergyman who rented out a sixty-acre glebe lot on shares in the 1840s tried to avoid “all dispute and uncomfortable feeling” by taking his share of the produce from the tenant throughout the year at that year’s average market price.52 But while this might seem straightforward in theory, in practice it was much more difficult. After visiting the Woodstock area in that same decade, John Godley reported that share tenancy was troublesome “as it is nearly impossible to obtain a bona fide valuation of the produce, and a correct average of the market price each year, both of which are necessary to its operation.”53 The type of farming involved could also influence the perceived fairness of the arrangement. Whereas the share to be given by the tenant to the landlord might seem tolerably equitable on a farm where the main products were hay and grain, that same share could seem outrageous on a mixed or dairy farm where the tenant laboured more intensively. Dairy farmers who had agreed initially to a share contract soon felt annoyed when they did all the work and got only half the income.54 Given the logistical challenges of share tenancy, it is likely that cash rents grew in popularity over the nineteenth century as other transactions generally shifted to payment in cash rather than in kind.55 Even in the early days of settlement, cash was the main method of paying rent in the older settled areas, especially on good wheat land near town, or in areas where cash was available. Landlords preferred an annual cash payment. It was a better yardstick for measuring returns on investment and was easier to collect and keep accounts on than varying kinds of produce arriving at various times during the year. Furthermore, by demanding cash, landlords could insulate themselves from declining produce prices and avoid getting involved in the management of the farm. As tenants gained experience in farming, they had less need to share the risk of early settlement and preferred the greater freedom from landlord supervision and the knowledge of a set rent that cash renting provided.56
Having discussed the major factors affecting the price of rent, it must be admitted that determining how rents were actually set is almost impossible. There was no widespread agreement or understanding of how they were determined. Establishing a precise amount, moreover, was not just an economic calculation based on the forces of supply and
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demand but also a social and political calculation. Explanations given in this chapter about rents thus far have been economic in nature, treating land as capital and rent as an annuity paid to the owner based on its income-earning potential. But rent was a conduit through which the power relations between landlord and tenant flowed. It was a social and political phenomenon. Rent might be established by the landlord and set at a rate considered to be judicious, such as those suggested above by the experts, or it might be settled upon at an open competition between tenants, or after lengthy and difficult negotiations between tenant and landlord. In the latter case, much depended on the leverage each party wielded given their particular situation and their ability to bargain about risk and responsibilities. Several other factors beyond the purely economic also influenced price. The landlord’s desire to promote good farming was one: high rents could result in tenants mining the land; with a low rent, tenants were more likely to practise good husbandry. A landlord also had to consider his reputation among his peers and tenants: if he charged low rents, he was likely to be seen as a benevolent and improving gentleman; high rents might earn him a reputation as a rapacious parasite. Rents could also directly affect the level of contentment, complaints, ferment, and disloyalty amongst tenants.57 Determining rent was clearly more than just a simple mathematical calculation. Rents were subjective and controversial and therefore difficult for the historian to objectify. Opinions varied greatly as to their fairness. As Sung Bok Kim points out in his study of tenancy in New York, “What seemed a low and modest rate to the landlord was exorbitant to the tenant; what seemed a fair and mutually agreeable arrangement at the time of initial contracting soon became a matter of contention between the two parties.”58 Landlords yearning to earn more from their property might soon feel that they were not getting enough if tenants let fences and barns fall into disrepair or indulged in unauthorized cutting and selling of timber. Tenants might resent paying rent if the forces of demand and supply had driven up the initial price beyond what they could comfortably handle, or if intervening factors such as family illness or crop failure made a once reasonable rent unreasonable. The conflict between capital and labour could become blatant. As a writer in the Farmer’s Advocate explained, from the landlord’s point of view “the trouble generally is that the tenant fails to attach sufficient significance to the part which capital plays in the arrangement. He loses sight of the fact that the farm represents the accumulated earning
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5.3 A rare photograph of a landlord’s agent, William Henry Moutray, at work in his office. Moutray became Major Robert Perceval Maxwell’s agent on Amherst Island in 1871. (Courtesy of Elizabeth Lindsay)
of the proprietor for several years, and begins to think in small circles.” From the point of view of the tenant, however, “the proprietor, who does no work on the farm, should not be entitled to so large a percentage of the profits as he, the tenant, who does all the work.”59 To a large degree, the perception of fairness depended on the tenant’s ability to pay. In absolute terms the rents represented in the tables in this chapter might seem fair, but as Clarke reminds us, “the figures are unsatisfactory because they are unrelated to the capacity to pay.”60 What was considered an outrageously high rent by one tenant was attractively low to another, depending on their financial circumstances. Rarely has enough local information survived to ascertain the burden of rent or the percentage of a tenant’s surplus production paid in rent.61 The perceived fairness of rents also depended on comparison with neighbouring tenants. Yearly tenants, whose rents were evaluated annually
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5.4 Rent receipt for Captain Hugh Glenn, Amherst Island, signed by agent W.H. Moutray. (Courtesy of Ruth Glenn)
according to current prices, might feel unfairly pressed compared to leaseholders, whose rents were set for years at a time and often underrated. Much also depended on the method of arriving at a fair price and the lenience in collecting rent. Tenants renting from the government or large landed estates had to accept a standard regulation rent and collection of rents was a public affair at the local hotel, estate office, or sheriff’s office. Agents with their offices, regulations, and standard ledgers lent a certain official and public element to the process. Others renting from small-time landlords, neighbours, and family may have had a greater opportunity to negotiate their agreement and “squeeze” the landlord down. Their rent negotiating and paying process operated in a more private and familiar, even familial, context.62 Finally the perception of fairness could be influenced by the big difference that might exist between the rent levied and the actual rent collected. This leads us to the thorny problem of nonpayment of rent, distraint, and eviction.
heir hin aLives Legal Framework
6 Their Lives within a Legal Framework: Distraint and Eviction
In February 1850, Edward Farrell braved blizzard conditions as he travelled back and forth between Renfrew County, Ottawa, and Perth preparing his defence. At the courthouse in Perth, lacking education and worldly sophistication, he tried unsuccessfully to defend himself against his landlord, the former member of the legislative council for Russell County and Bytown, who was trying to evict him. Five years later on a crisp fall day, a tenant farmer, upon completing his business in a Brantford shop, found that the bailiff had seized his horse and wagon in full view of passers-by for nonpayment of rent. These and other cases of conflict will be the subject of this chapter. Whether landlords and tenants abided peacefully within the prescript of the law, tried to settle their differences informally, or sought recourse in the courts, legal sources reveal the conflict associated with their relationship and its resolution. In particular, this chapter examines distraint and eviction, the changing nature of the law on these issues, and how parties settled their grievances out of court or worked their way through the system. It also seeks to explain why the reform of landlord-tenant law never became a burning political issue in Upper Canada when such issues as the abolition of distraint were passionately seized upon elsewhere as part of the struggle for human liberty. It is important to place a study of tenancy firmly within the framework of common and statute law, yet few studies do.1 Landlord-tenant law in Upper Canada was that of English common law, which had evolved over the centuries. Starting in 1792, Upper Canada received all of England’s common law as well as all parliamentary statutes that were created prior to the institution of its own responsible government. The Upper Canadian legislature could only adopt statutes to
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amend common law if local circumstances warranted it or if the English Parliament adopted such amendments itself.2 Thus, the legal conception of the landlord-tenant relationship was set and the framework provided for enforcing bargains and resolving conflict. How landlords and tenants used the legal system and how they tried to avoid it reveals much about the landlord-tenant relationship and reinforces the impression that their relationship consisted of a considerable degree of self-regulation, latitude, negotiation, and a variety of forms and expressions. Clearly, most landlords and tenants found the legal process costly, time-consuming, and potentially embarrassing and went to considerable lengths to avoid it. Nevertheless, the law had an impact even on those who avoided the courts. We operate in “the shadow of the law”; it defines how we negotiate within it and sets the terms of our informal self-regulation. Some laws gave parties a degree of self-regulation and others were more coercive in nature. Just knowing that one could be evicted for nonpayment of rent, for example, encouraged regular rent payments. For those who entered the courts, the law had more tangible meaning. It decreed that the tenant was the less-powerful party in the legal relationship with more limited access to the legal process. The law also determined who could initiate an action, what issues could be discussed, and what the outcome would be. Reviewing statute law is also important for what it says about land reform in these years and its role in the creation of a liberal state. Landlord-tenant law would remain largely the same over the nineteenth century but small changes were made to bring it into line with the liberal vision of improvement and the complex marketplace that had evolved. Reform mirrored the revision of American and English land law in the first half of the century and was not revolutionary; it never questioned the basic structure of property law but was piecemeal in nature.3 Nevertheless, a certain express pattern and attitude was discernible. By the end of the eighteenth century, land law in England had become so complex as to be almost incomprehensible. This was not compatible with liberalism’s participatory vision with its emphasis on improvement. Nor did it meet the practical needs of a commercializing society. Leading thinkers such as William Blackstone, Adam Smith, and Jeremy Bentham advocated that the larger interests of society relied on the free transfer of land and on intelligible laws to give investors confidence. Land as an essential material for creating a stable, hierarchical social order was giving way to land as a commodity to be freely bought and sold. In Upper Canada, this meant that reform of
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landlord-tenant law focused on simplifying land law to make it more accessible and intelligible, standardizing and formalizing contracts and procedures, protecting tenants’ working capital, and increasing the speed with which badly indebted tenants could be replaced with new ones.4
landlord-tenant law, the courts, and legal sources Though it gradually became common to think of the landlord-tenant relationship as a mercantile one, legally it was different.5 From English medieval forms of civil procedure, the common law of property was divided into two categories: real (land) and personal (all other forms of property). This distinction still governs the way property is categorized in common law. Though the landlord-tenant relationship is created by contract in the form of a lease, the law does not treat it like a contract for the continuing supply of a thing, for example, nails. It is a different kind of contract, an “executed contract” in which the effect of the sale is total and “complete.”6 Once the lease is signed an “estate” in the land – a package of rights to be held for a certain duration – is transferred, and dealings between the parties are over. In a practical sense, of course, this is not true.7 The legal conception, however, had consequences in terms of how the parties were governed in what was, for all practical purposes, an ongoing relationship. It meant that the legal actions that were available in relation to land were different from those that were available for all other forms of property. It also meant that if problems arose over what was being delivered, the tenant was in a curious position. The purchaser of nails could refuse to accept them if they were not to specification, and the law would allow him to get out of the obligation to pay. In contrast, if a farmer signed a lease and found that the land was exhausted and the house dilapidated, he could not legally refuse to pay rent. This was because it was an executed contract; the bargain had been completed at the signing of the lease and there was no ongoing contract to be breached. Unlike the nail buyer, the tenant could not cancel the bargain if some part of the deal was broken, but he had to continue paying the rent even if the buildings burned down.8 At the same time, however, the executed contract served the tenant in one particular way. Once the property was transferred to the tenant, he or she had the absolute right to exclusive possession for as long as the lease provided and could not be deprived of
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possession as long as the rent was paid. If the relationship broke down and the parties wanted to seek redress through the courts, they did not have equal access to the process of law as they did in a mercantile contract. The landlord could bring an action against a tenant, but the tenant was limited to a reactive position. Given the potential conflict of interests in the relationship and the nature of property law, it is not surprising that the landlord-tenant system came under attack elsewhere by proponents of the broad struggle for human liberty. Though Upper Canadian tenants did not join in this larger political movement, they must have been aware of their disadvantage relative to their landlords before the law. Common law was made by judges who expressed the values of the powerful social groups to which they belonged. The special nature of property law limited the range of actions tenants had at their disposal to seek redress. They had to wait until they had suffered wrongful distress or eviction before they could stand up for their rights. The legal process, moreover, was a costly one that few tenants could afford. How many could gain access to legal representation is unknown. They could also be disadvantaged in terms of education, connections, and worldly sophistication. Furthermore, those sitting in judgment were, without exception, freeholders and, on occasion, landlords. Chief Justice J.B. Robinson, for example, who presided over many of the landlord-tenant cases that entered the high court, was a landlord with several tenants on his East Gwillimbury estate. Juries that heard landlord-tenant cases in the assize court were also freeholders. Landlords and tenants in Upper Canada entered the court system to sort out their differences in the following manner. When landlords wanted to take tenants to court or tenants wanted to dispute their landlord’s right to eject or distrain, they applied to the district court. District courts were held four times a year and covered actions in debt valued from forty shillings to forty pounds.9 The King’s Bench (its name was changed in 1839 to Queen’s Bench to reflect the new monarch) was the court of appeal for landlord and tenant cases.10 Established in 1794, it was a central court, held in the capital, manned by one chief justice and two puisne justices who held court four times a year. To begin an action in the Court of King’s Bench and bypass the lower courts, the plaintiff and defendant had to decide on what issue was to be considered. If it was a point of law, then the Court of King’s Bench would consider it; if it was an issue of fact, then the action would be set for trial at the assizes. The local assize court was held once a year in each district of the province. There actions on issues of fact regis-
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tered in the Court of King’s Bench were tried by one of the King’s Bench judges and a jury consisting of twelve male freeholders.11 Each of these courts generated a series of records. Unfortunately, the records are too incomplete, sporadic, terse, and vague to be of much use. Landlords and tenants appear in judgment rolls and case files but they are not indexed, so individuals cannot be easily traced; nor are the records organised by type of case such that ejectment, for example, could be easily located. Vital bits of information, from a researcher’s point of view, are missing, such as the township in which land was held.12 The case files also contain very little narrative detail. When ejectment books have survived, it is not clear whether they stem from arrears of rent, or from issues of debt and title arising from mortgage debts or the wrongful possession of a freehold.13 The judges’ benchbooks in which judges summarized cases appearing before them on the King’s Bench could be useful for narrative detail except that the notes of such prominent judges as Chief Justice J.B. Robinson are illegible.14 Even the ledgers, daybooks, and letters written by sheriffs, those men responsible for serving writs of ejectment and carrying out the judgment of the courts, provide very little information on landlords and tenants that can be used for systematic analysis.15 Other legal sources, such as statutes and the law reports, are more useful. The courts adjudicated conflict according to the principles of common law and the terms of statutes. It was a constitutional obligation for the judges to be faithful to the common law, and they generally were, out of “loyalty, habit and convenience.” They saw themselves as administrators of the law and rarely seized the opportunity to change the rules to fit Upper Canada’s needs. The legislature was the law-making power. The government had the legitimate power to express specifically Upper Canadian opinions and act on them. Sometimes it amended common law doctrine but more often it established rules that did not exist in common law or were beyond the power of the courts to create (e.g., standard lease forms).16 These statutes are one way of gauging inadequacies in the common law, particularly tensions between it and what politicians perceived as the economic needs of the province. The law reports are also very useful sources.17 They contain the particulars of unusual cases, often (but not always) appeal cases that could not be quickly sorted out in the lower courts, situations in which there was an absence of English precedent, and cases where it was important to record the clarifications and applications of the law for future reference. They give the judge’s ruling, the evidence that he
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found useful in reaching his conclusion, and factual details such as the date, location, and type of property. Unfortunately, limitations do exist. Very few cases were reported. Cases stemming from nonpayment of rent are underrepresented in the law books because common law was straightforward on the issue. Other issues that were novel or more complex in the New World are overrepresented, such as cases involving taxes, clearing leases, and improvements. The law books, furthermore, are often devoid of the rich rhetorical flourishes and narrative detail that were, in legal terms, irrelevant but so useful to social historians. They concentrate, instead, on points of law using terse legal language. As a result one rarely gets the full story: the names of the litigants, their personal details, and extenuating circumstances are often left out. The larger social, political, or economic issues that brought the parties to court or discussion about whether the law was just are absent from the account. The very fact that such cases were abnormal in some way makes it hard to relate them to everyday practice. Nevertheless, these various sources enable us to reflect on the changing nature of land law and why changes arose when they did.
land law reform in general Legislation in Upper Canada generally sought to bring land law into line with the liberal vision of progress and the land market as it operated in the New World. This manifested, first, in the drive to simplify, order, and make intelligible the law; and second, in the desire to ensure free trade in land. Making land law more systematic, better consolidated, clearer, and more rational met several objectives of the state. It increased the state’s authority as legislation extended standardized ways of dealing with conflict and controlling land matters over a diverse, mobile, and far-flung population.18 This process complemented trends in schooling, for example, where greater standardization was believed to increase the liberty and wealth of the population. “Legal housecleaning” also created a more stable, orderly, and predictable way to resolve conflict. The development of markets increased the interlocking character of society and people’s need to rely on each other’s performance. In the case of the land market, the state set the framework for dealing. Regulations and standardized procedures created a greater sense of security, which was essential for investor confidence – an important component of economic dynamism. In fact, land
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law came to be viewed as a tool for economic development. In Britain, the United States, and Canada, legislators attempted to liberate owners from the frustrating obstacles that hampered the free transfer of land.19 To this end, old laws encouraging static property and supporting an old landed aristocracy, such as entail, primogeniture, and perpetuities, came under attack in favour of creating a land market that was more open and dynamic.20 Commerce relied on credit and credit relied on the alienability of land. Free trade in land, like free trade in goods, was viewed by classical economists and nineteenth-century liberals as the foundation of a prosperous agricultural, commercial, and industrial society. It freed the population to respond to the market and other opportunities and promoted economic competition, social mobility, and free enterprise. The result, they argued, would be greater equality, prosperity, and democracy. Legislation specifically aimed at landlords and tenants in Upper Canada fit this broader pattern of land reform. The timing of legislation reflected the government’s sensitivity to the needs of a commercial economy and the growing strength of reform-minded politicians. It is fair to say that up until the 1850s, landlord-tenant legislation, which related to all such relationships and not specifically to farms, was a very minor concern on the legislative agenda.21 Very few statutes were passed in the 1830s. The 1840s were characterized by good weather, rapid settlement, improvements in transportation, and growth in domestic and export markets. Relatively good economic times, combined with the assembly’s preoccupation with the politics of union government, meant that tenancy was not an issue. In the 1850s, however, the situation changed, at least briefly. A number of circumstances converged to increase the attention tenancy received. The increasing volume of property transactions partly accounts for the outburst of legislation.22 Equally important was the major commercial crisis of 1857–58 and the depression that lasted until 1859. Markets crashed, credit tightened, land values dropped, wheat prices fell, and harvests were poor. Strategies and agreements that seemed wonderfully promising in an era of fast-rising expectations now seemed almost impossible to fulfill.23 Hard times increased the likelihood of debt, distraint, and eviction. In some cases, desperation set in as expectations of future income and wealth plummeted, landlords and tenants faced ruinous commitments, and everyone scrambled to save something. A shift in the leverage between landlord and tenant was also occurring. With the growth of population, landlords no longer needed to worry about their
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land lying vacant if they evicted indebted tenants but could pursue arrears, distraint, and eviction more vigorously. Litigation increased and legislation was needed to speed and clarify the legal process.24 In addition to this cyclical crisis and demographic shift, the political scene was changing. An era of reform surfaced with the rise of the democratically inclined Clear Grits. In 1850 George Brown and the Grits adopted the enfranchisement of the rural leaseholder as part of their platform. In the election of 1858 tenants voted for the first time and the Clear Grits, reorganized as the Upper Canadian Reform Party, won a majority in Canada West in the Brown-Dorion ministry. Though only in office for two days, this new liberal force drove the legislation when the Cartier-Macdonald ministry returned to power.25 Topics such as representation by population, federal union, and the intercolonial railway dominated debates, and tenancy appeared for the first time as an issue. The parliamentary session of 1859 was the busiest for landlordtenant legislation in the period under study; of a total of 132 acts passed that year, nine of these concerned tenancy. It is not entirely clear which party – landlord or tenant – benefited most from this legislation, but landlord-tenant law was clearly being brought into line with the economic situation and the liberal vision of progress. Some laws were facilitative in nature, giving parties a degree of self-regulation. Legislation to standardize leases, for example, provided landlords and tenants with guidelines for realizing their wishes, security that their contracts would stand up in a court of law, and protection from legal action. Most legislation, as we shall see, dealt with distraint and eviction. The rules of distraint were modified so as to leave the tenant with some working capital after arrears had been met. Eviction procedures were expedited so that land could be more easily bought and sold or transferred to new tenants. All this legislation went a considerable way to clarify the legal rights of both parties, reduce misunderstandings, and lessen the likelihood of the courts being bogged down in cases improperly carried out. It helped provide certainty and regularity, preconditions for the successful planning and management of property transactions and farming. In the end, statute law did little to promote what political philosophers and radical land reformers elsewhere deemed to be the “natural rights” of tenants to independent ownership or equal access to the process of law, but it did increase the freedom to compete and prosper.26 In contrast to the bitter, often bloody protest against landlordism elsewhere, modest reforms in Upper Canada stimulated little or no
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comment in the newspapers or agricultural journals of the day. Writers in the farm magazines attempted to place relations between parties on a better plane by advocating long leases and clear covenants regarding agriculture, but their discussions of tenancy never broached the burning issues of land reform or distraint and eviction legislation. In fact, most farm journals and newspapers had nothing to say about tenancy. The Canada Farmer (1864–76), owned by George Brown, was the only agricultural journal to run a number of articles on the topic, but none of them addressed the legislative measures that were under discussion concerning the law of landlord and tenant.27 Legislation seems to have been driven more by those concerned with the volume of seemingly trivial cases that clogged the courts following hard times and the desire to expedite land transfer than by any sort of organized grassroots movement or sense of burning injustice. A closer look at arrears, distraint, and eviction will shed light on the various issues and arguments regarding the nature of landlord-tenant law and on how parties operated inside and outside the courts.
arrears Distraint and eviction arose out of the problem of arrears of rent. Evidence gathered from a wide variety of sources, however, suggests that arrears were generally tolerated and landlords preferred informal negotiations over the more costly, public, and complicated processes of distraint. Old World landlords, corporate landlords, and big-time speculators who needed to cultivate lasting good relations with their tenants were likely more tolerant of arrears than those who accidentally or temporarily became landlords and, having no long-term interest at stake, needed to be more exacting concerning rent collection. Arrears, therefore, need explanation. A number of conditions in the early settlement years made arrears a common, even accepted, part of estate management. The reasons why tenants did not pay their rent varied. Sometimes failure to pay had nothing to do with inability to pay. Even though rents were low, arrears grew because sparse settlement, long distances, travel costs, and inefficient administration made it difficult for landlords to collect rent. Tenants, especially those whose landlords were absent or had vast holdings, came to expect a certain laxity concerning rent collection and may have relaxed in their own attempts to pay. Some came to view the system as renting on credit.28 On occasion, tenants refused to pay their rent as a form of passive resistance.
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Clergy reserve leaseholders in the Niagara District, for example, refused to pay their rents in the early years of settlement until they had received proper patents.29 More frequently, failure to pay rent was a sign of temporary crisis. Though the lease might say the rent was due on a certain day, tenants could not count on making enough cash for that predetermined date or might use their money for other purposes. W. Hands, sheriff of the Western District, for example, reported that he and his local sheriffs had been unable to collect clergy reserve rents during the War of 1812 “not for want of inclination on the part of the Lessees, but for the want of means.”30 In some years, unfavourable weather, infestations, low crop prices, and irregular markets made the prompt payment of rent difficult. On Amherst Island in 1858, for example, sixty percent of the rents were owing following the commercial collapse of 1857 and a string of local crises. Leaseholders usually sold their grain at Bath on the mainland or shipped it to Kingston. Starting in the fall of 1857, however, no one wanted to purchase grain and the lake did not freeze until February, making trips to the mainland impossible. Then in the fall of 1858, the steamboat temporarily stopped calling at the island wharf. All this seriously hurt tenants’ ability to pay their rent.31 Similar crises hit other places. Insects attacked the wheat crop in Vaughan Township in 1863 and 1864, so that tenants claimed they could not pay their rent.32 In such cases, landlords had the legal right to recover arrears of rent by distraining goods. Too much emphasis on the law, however, and not enough on the practical constraints exercised upon landlords can skew our understanding of the past. Landlords had to be patient with tenants in arrears. Economic realism prevented them from being otherwise. Taking away a tenant’s cattle, for example, reduced his or her ability to make an income the following year. The competition between landlords for good tenants and the bargaining strategies of the tenants themselves had also to be borne in mind. Moreover, a landlord’s reputation in the community as an honourable, moderate, and benevolent gentleman could be ruined if he treated his tenants harshly. Landlords feared the mass exodus of tenants if they pursued arrears too vigorously. This was especially true in the early settlement years when wild land was readily available to rent or buy. Distraining could be time-consuming and self-defeating, so that as long as tenants made some effort to pay up and their improvements were valuable enough to bear the debt, landlords tolerated arrears.33 When clergy reserve tenants in the Western District fell in arrears through the War of 1812, for example, Sheriff Hands
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explained to the government that he had been lenient because “had coercive measures been adopted, the rents would not have been paid so soon.”34 When landlord Major Maxwell questioned his solicitor about the heavy arrears on Amherst Island in 1857 and 1858, his solicitor advised him to be lenient, otherwise the tenants would strip the property and leave, and Maxwell would be hard pressed to find others who would be willing to lease such property.35 Likewise, the writer describing conditions in Vaughan Township urged landlords to show forbearance, for “distraining an honest, hard-working tenant for rent is the last thing that any rational landowner would attempt, and ... the very few who did so last year have the pleasure and profit ... of working the land themselves this year.”36 Landlords, therefore, found it in their own best interest to tolerate arrears in hard times. Those with vast holdings were often lax about arrears in general. The absentee Mount Cashel, for example, accorded Amherst Island tenants the customary Irish “hanging gale,” a sixmonth period during which arrears could lapse. His rental for 1835 shows that fully thirty-nine percent of the tenants were in arrears beyond the six-month grace period, and two individuals had four years’ rent owing. Preoccupied with events on his Irish estates, he may have lacked the inclination to see that his agent ran affairs efficiently on the island. Such debts may have been too insignificant to his overall estate, which encompassed more than 85,000 acres, to be worth the hassle of collecting. Though he was faced with arrears throughout his subsequent twenty-two years of ownership, there is no evidence that he embarked on distraint or eviction proceedings.37 The clergy and Crown reserves were also notorious for their administrator’s laxity concerning arrears. From the beginning the logistical problems of early settlement conditions, a weak administration, and competition with the free grant system beset sheriffs who tried to collect rents.38 Arrears soon became the executive council’s and then the Clergy Corporation’s most serious and constant problem. By 1811 only twenty-five percent of the rent due on Crown and clergy reserves had been paid; seventy-five percent was still owing.39 The war years were particularly bad for rent collection. Only two lessees in the entire District of Newcastle submitted rent in 1815.40 In the postwar era, it continued to be difficult and expensive to enforce the payment of small sums from people scattered across the province.41 When sales were adopted on the clergy reserves in 1827, rent was collected more vigorously because all arrears had to be paid before a tenant could
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purchase. But debts continued: good rent-paying lessees converted to freehold status, paying the small arrears they had accumulated; those who had accumulated heavy arrears continued to rent.42 In 1835 Thomas Baines, secretary of the Clergy Corporation, submitted a survey of the situation. He anticipated an annual rental income of about £3,000. Of this £1,421 had been paid and Baines believed that those tenants could be counted on to continue to pay their rents regularly. For that and previous years tenants were in arrears for £15,035. Baines estimated that three-quarters of the rents owing might be recovered but that the other quarter was irrecoverable as those who owed it had no intention of fulfilling their obligations.43 Indeed, one of the reasons no new leases were made after 1833 was “the difficulty of collecting rents and the inexpediency of enforcing their payment by distress or ejectment.”44 Throughout the 1840s and 1850s the percentage of the outstanding rental dropped a little, but no effective action was ever taken against those in arrears right up until the clergy reserves were abolished in 1854–55.45 As Alan Wilson pointed out in his analysis of the clergy reserves, such “indulgence-by-default,” could favour the tenant but it won the clergy reserve system neither respect nor gratitude.46 Even when reserve administrators decided to pursue arrears they often went to considerable effort to avoid the quagmire of distraint proceedings. Threats, entreaties, and warning letters, if they had survived, would likely far outnumber the cases of distraint. Rather than distrain, the Clergy Corporation let arrears slip entirely, or accepted payment on other terms. Sometimes if cash was not available, a promisory note was accepted. Third-party payments were also common. In these instances, someone else paid the tenant’s rent as a way of repaying debts to the tenant, or that third party paid the rent and then became an assignee of the lease.47 Extensions were also granted. Garrett VanWicklan, for example, who had been on his clergy reserve in Cramahe Township since 1802 and had accumulated decades of arrears, was granted a special allowance by the Clergy Corporation. Though he had accumulated over ninety pounds in arrears by 1842, Thomas Baines, secretary of the Clergy Corporation, agreed in 1848 to forgive some of the debt and accept sixty pounds in full; VanWicklan was only able to pay twenty-two pounds. Several years later in 1861, rent was still owing on the lot.48 Nor were Old World and corporate landlords the only ones to be flexible. The landlord of a field of grass near Goderich accepted a tenant’s promissory note for back rent; the note was dishonoured, but he accepted a
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second note for the current rent. Only when the exchange of notes became incredibly complex and the rent was still outstanding did the landlord enter the courts.49 But not all small-time landlords could afford to be as lenient. Indeed, the law reports suggest that most court cases arising originally from distraint involved ordinary farmer landlords who were so financially pressed that they could not tolerate arrears. Desperate owners, burdened by mortgage payments, sometimes rented out their land as a way to pay off the mortgage. When the tenant could not pay the rent, the landlord could not meet his financial obligations and he initiated distraint proceedings.50
distraint Distraint, or distress – the taking of cattle or goods to satisfy rent in arrears – was the most common source of confrontation between landlord and tenant. Distress was an ancient and powerful way for landlords to recover unpaid rent. It was an arbitrary power, a private action that used no legal process. In contract law, creditors must use the courts to enforce payment of debt, but under landlord-tenant law, the landlord could quickly and without ceremony enter the premises and take the tenant’s goods and sell them to meet arrears. Limits on the kinds of property and regulations regarding the process were defined by common law and statute law, but the process itself existed outside the courts. Only if distress failed could the parties then proceed into the courts. In theory, distress was a formidable power in the hands of the landlord and a process fraught with potential conflict. The process, after all, was conducted not by an unbiased party but by the landlord or his appointee. Because it was a private procedure and not an execution of a decree given by the court, no constabulary were present. Gaining entry to the premises from which goods were to be seized could be a tense, even violent business, as tenants locked and fortified their houses and landlords sometimes tried to fight their way in. In 1852 a distraining landlord in Toronto, finding the premises locked, kicked and axed down the door while the tenant, huddled inside with his wife and three children, threatened to break the landlord’s head.51 The seizure of goods could prove problematic too, as for example when a tenant near Picton loaded the goods he thought his landlord was going to distrain onto a wagon and was stopped right on the highway by the landlord’s bailiff, who seized the goods in public view.52 Then again at
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sale time, confrontations could rise. In 1832 tenant Enos Stone fell into arrears and absconded, leaving his wife and two children on the farm. The landlord tried to sell fifteen acres of Stone’s wheat at public auction to cover arrears, but Stone showed up at the auction threatening anyone who wanted to buy it. In the end the landlord himself purchased the crop for only half its value, then sent his workmen into Stone’s field to harvest it. There further confrontation occurred.53 Each of these cases ended up in the courts. For although distraint gave landlords considerable power in theory, in practice it was onerous and risky, particularly if landlords did not follow legal procedure in every detail. The landlord brandishing the axe was tried at the Toronto assizes for trespass, the landlord who seized his tenant’s goods on the highway was tried in the Court of Common Pleas for replevin, and Chief Justice Robinson sided against the landlord who took Enos Stone to the Queen’s Bench. The rules of distraint were complicated and specific. By law a lease became void if rent was still unpaid after sundown on the day it was due. Distress could not be made until the day after the rent was due, after sunrise and before sunset. Distress also had to be carried out within six months after the end of a lease. The landlord had to give a warrant in writing to the bailiff to distrain goods. The tenant could lawfully remove goods anytime before that and those could not be distrained. Landlords or their bailiffs had to enter the premises in a legal manner, meaning that they had to be accompanied by a witness who stayed with them throughout the entire proceedings. They could not break locks or open gates. Indeed they often had to hire someone to spy on the property and wait for a chance to effect a legal entry, hoping that the tenant would either open the door willingly or leave the front door unlocked by mistake. The landlord or his appointee then had to inform the tenant of the amount of distraint and display a warrant for such purpose. Landlords could only distrain for the amount necessary to cover the arrears, nothing more, though they could not be expected to know the precise value of the goods they took. A written inventory of the goods, only those that could be legally distrained, had to be compiled. Landlords, for example, could not distrain work animals that were currently in use (i.e., tied to a cart), or tools in the hand, or tools of trade. They could only take such items as grain, hay, straw, fruit, and any goods and chattels on the premises.54 Upon seizing an item, the landlord had to show the tenant what he was taking and for what sum of arrears. When the inventory was complete, the tenant had to be
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given a copy. A constable and two disinterested appraisers then evaluated the goods, and if the tenant was dissatisfied with their calculation, arrangements had to be made to sell the goods at public auction six days after seizure and leaving sufficient time for advertising. If the process was unlawful in any way, the landlord could be charged with trespass. If the tenant came forward with the rent at any point in the proceedings before the sale, the process was stayed.55 The process, clearly, could embarrass, embitter, and impoverish tenants and frustrate and annoy landlords. It certainly became an issue of contention elsewhere. Throughout the 1830s in Prince Edward Island armed crowds turned out to assault bailiffs when they came to seize farm goods. The Tenant League that later emerged in the 1860s pledged to resist distraint as part of its broader campaign against landlordism.56 In Ireland tenants resisted and obstructed the distraint process too; they warned of the bailiff’s approach, hid and sold their goods, and resisted seizure fiercely, even violently. So fed up with the process were Irish landlords by the 1850s that distraint had fallen into disuse.57 In the United States, distress was deemed such an extraordinary remedy that by the 1840s several state legislatures had abolished it and by 1880 nearly every state had done so.58 In Upper Canada, various attempts were made to modify and eventually abolish distraint but in the end they had a limited effect. No details about the introduction or passage of these bills were recorded, nor do they seem to have been discussed, which indicates the marginal character of tenancy in the minds of politicians. Legislation did little to reduce the arbitrary power of landlords but elaborated on the limits of their lien and on the debtors’ exemptions. We can only assume that these acts were implemented, in part, to keep pace with British law and to reduce the number of cases crowding the courts. The nature of legislation suggests that it was meant to preserve a nucleus of capital so that once distraint was accomplished the tenant would not be hampered in meeting his or her commitments in the following year.59 A statute of 1837/38 protected tenants and landlords against the unreasonable fees and wrongful actions of constables, bailiffs, or others levying distress.60 In 1844–45, a statute limited distraint to one year’s rent; to obtain arrears in excess of this amount, a landlord had to go to court as a creditor.61 In 1852–53 the period of time before goods could be sold was lengthened, giving tenants a few more days to come up with the rent.62 In a flurry of statutes passed in 1859, limits were set on the lien a landlord could have on an insolvent tenant’s property, costs for distress
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were clearly established to protect tenants against crooked bailiffs, and recourse was given to tenants who had been wrongfully or improperly distrained.63 In 1880 an act was passed to protect the goods of subtenants, lodgers, and boarders from distraint.64 Despite this legislation, the unequal legal nature of the landlord-tenant relationship remained. The 1880 act, like many others, followed the familiar pattern of allowing what the tenant alleged was wrongful distress to occur before the tenant had the right to assert his or her objection. Tenants had to endure the inconvenience and costs of entry, seizure, and sale before they could file an action against their landlords. In the wake of the Division Courts Act of 1859, tenants had to pay court costs in advance if they took their landlord to court for wrongful seizure of goods.65 Such legislation may have been introduced to reduce the number of tenants taking action against their landlords for small formal errors, and certainly the law reports show that tenants did pursue their landlords through the courts. Starting in 1884, several bills to abolish distress altogether were introduced by Mr Hamilton Parke O’Connor, Liberal mpp for Bruce South, and supported by other reform politicians. Supporters argued that distress gave the landlord too much arbitrary power; they noted that it was outmoded and had been abolished in the United States. The legislature, however, was not ready to take such a drastic measure and the bills all failed on their second reading.66 Then in 1887 “An Act Respecting Distress for Rent” was passed, signalling a new era of concern for the right of tenants.67 The act was a compromise: it addressed the concerns of those pressing for the abolition of distress while still giving landlords the right to collect arrears. In the tenant’s favour, the act sought to limit the arbitrary power of the landlord by exempting certain goods from distraint and by protecting subletters from distraint levied against the head tenant. If the tenant was insolvent and pressed by other creditors, the landlord could only get one year of arrears. In this case, the landlord’s right to distrain was partially removed. The opportunities for the tenant to challenge the distress were clearly outlined. And if the landlord owed the tenant any money for improvements, it could be subtracted from the arrears. Many of these measures were intended to preserve a nucleus of the tenant’s working capital so they could settle their debts and get on with farming. Given these restraints on the landlord’s power to distrain, politicians deemed it prudent to make it easier for landlords to distrain when it was within their rights to do so. For that reason, landlords no longer had to give
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notice of distraint. This prevented tenants from evading distress by hiding, selling, or loaning their goods to others. Furthermore, tenants could no longer sue their landlords for technical errors in the distraint process. And tenants could only be exempt from distraint on certain goods if they gave up the premises. These measures were intended to reduce entanglements, speed up the process, and encourage badly indebted tenants to leave. Reaction to the act was mixed. No doubt the courts were pleased at the prospect of hearing fewer cases that were based on small formal errors. Some heralded the act for curtailing the landlord’s right to distrain, but supporters of abolition felt that it did not go far enough in reducing the arbitrary power of the landlord. It was clear, O’Connor argued, that land ownership in Canada was sacred given that a contract concerning property was not accorded the same impartial treatment in a court of law as a contract concerning a butcher’s bill. He went straight to the heart of the matter when he told readers of The Globe that “the wrong lay in the fact that in a case in which he was interested, the landlord could be judge, jury, plaintiff and bailiff. The landlord who might be only the nominal owner of the property had the right to issue his own warrant to his own bailiff to distrain the tenant for any amount he pleased, leaving the tenant to take the initiative and set the action aside in some way. This was not true in any other class of cases.”68 Though reporters deemed this an important piece of legislation, several of the concessions had already been given to tenants in preceding years, as we have seen, and the act did little substantially to alter the positions of landlord and tenant before the law. Instead, it followed the trend of previous legislation, regulating distraint more strictly so as to reduce conflict and protect tenants in a relationship that was, for practical purposes, ongoing. Throughout the period under study, tenants facing distraint were able to find a remedy in the courts if it could be proven to be either irregular, wrongful, or excessive, in which case they took the landlord to court on an action of replevin, trespass, or trover.69 Cases of irregular distress abounded in the lower courts but rarely made their way into high court. One of the exceptions was the case of Ferrier v. Cole in 1858. The tenant owed $115 in rent on a farm outside of Brantford, and fourteen days after the rent was due, the landlord’s bailiff was sent to distrain. The bailiff, obviously not very experienced in such matters, happened to see the tenant in Brantford. While the tenant was conducting business, the bailiff siezed his wagon and a pair of horses tied up in the street. The ten-
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ant, upon finding that his property had been taken, immediately sued for a writ of replevin and regained possession of the horses and wagon. At the trial in Brantford, Justice Burns sided with the tenant. But the landlord appealed the case, arguing that he should not be responsible for the ignorant and incompetent bailiff he had hired. Since the landlord had not sanctioned the bailiff’s actions, Chief Justice Robinson discharged the previous ruling. This left the tenant without a cause of action against anyone. He could not sue the landlord because the landlord had not sanctioned the illegal distress, and he could not sue the bailiff because the bailiff was not in possession of the goods.70 Perhaps it is worth recalling at this point that there were arrears and that the distress had simply been conducted improperly. Cases of wrongful distress were more likely to make their way to the high courts. The classic response was to sue the landlord for wrongful distress if the landlord’s title to the property was in question, or if no rent was owing. The cases below show that tenants could use the courts to their benefit. Mr Castle, for example, disputed the fact that he owed any rent on a farm in Gore Township. In his eight-year lease he had promised to build a new stable and chimney and make other improvements starting in April 1849. In exchange, he did not have to pay the first nine months’ rent. If he failed to fulfill his promises, the landlord could repossess the farm. Nine months after the lease was signed, the landlord found that Castle had left the house to live with his father. No stable had been built. No floor had been laid in the barn. The fences were out of repair. Work to the house had not been completed, and what little had been done was done in a manner different from that stipulated in the lease. There were no cattle on the property and only wheat was being grown. Angry, the landlord tried to gain entry but found the premises locked. With only a couple of chairs and a table in the house, there was insufficient distress. So he took grain, manure, wood, clothing, and some farming utensils as distress for a half year’s unpaid rent. He then repossessed the property and rented it to someone else. Castle retaliated by suing his landlord on three counts of trespass. The judge sided with him since the lease had not stipulated that the jobs be completed within nine months, and so no rent had been owing.71 A tenant, Mr Bickle of Hamilton Township, went even further than Mr Castle, suing his landlord on nine different counts. Bickle’s lease stipulated that his landlord, Mr Beatty, could sell any part of the farm and make a reasonable deduction in rent. But when Beatty sold part of the property to the Grand Trunk Rail Company, he did not make a
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6.1 Evicted tenants in Ireland emotively depicted by an illustrator in 1880. (Illustrated London News, 20 March 1880)
deduction in rent. When Bickle refused to pay the full rent, Beatty distrained. Confident in his rights, Bickle then went after Beatty for trespass, excessive distress, wrongful distress, breaking the covenant for quiet enjoyment, and a host of other charges. Bickle won the case and was duly compensated.72 Thus, to reiterate, while distraint gave landlords arbitrary power in law, in practice the process was so mired in red tape, bad feeling, and uncertainty that it was best avoided. Most landlords preferred to tolerate arrears and give informal warnings since tenants had recourse to legal remedy and used the courts with some success.
eviction If distraint was a complicated process ripe with conflict, eviction was even more emotive. A family thrown out of its home with no place to go after years of working the land is a picture that still pulls at the heartstrings.
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Compared to distraint, eviction was a relatively simple and swift process that required the court’s sanction. Whereas distraint presupposed the continuation of the landlord-tenant relationship, eviction brought it to an abrupt end. A peaceful re-entry, as distinct from eviction, was possible and was, like distraint, a private action involving no legal process, a sort of self-help remedy.73 In this situation a landlord was entitled to end a lease prematurely if it contained a forfeiture clause to the effect that if the tenant was in arrears, broke the covenants, underlet, etc., the landlord had the power to re-enter. The law, however, made it difficult for landlords to re-enter for nonpayment of rent, as they had first to make a formal demand for rent, whereupon the tenant could terminate the proceedings by paying arrears or applying to the court successfully for relief. Furthermore, a peaceable re-entry might occur, but if landlords used any force they could be criminally liable under the Forcible Entry Acts.74 In contrast, eviction was a formal process. Generally a tenant could be evicted if the rent was one year in arrears and there was insufficient distraint; if the lease explicitly stipulated that on nonpayment of rent or failure to abide by the covenants the landlord could repossess the property; or if the agreement had no certain duration, and if after the expiry of six months’ notice to quit the tenant still refused to leave. The process was carefully detailed and regulated by statutes. If the lease or agreement was for a specific term, the tenant could not be evicted until after that term had ended. The landlord then had to enter and demand rent on a proper day, or send to the deputy clerk of the Crown in the district where the land was situated for a writ of ejectment and statement of claim, which was then served on the tenant by the district sheriff. The tenant had to appear in court to say why he or she had not paid the rent. If the agreement was for no specified term, then it was interpreted to be a tenancy from year to year, and the landlord had to give the tenant six months’ notice to quit. Where tenants refused to leave of their own free will, the case went to court. If ejected for nonpayment of rent only, the Court of King’s Bench would stay the proceedings at any time before the actual eviction took place if the tenant came forward with the arrears and costs. If the tenant was evicted not for arrears but for another reason, for example overholding (staying after the lease had ended), then the tenant had to appear in court, and the process could only be stopped if the landlord dropped the case or the tenant vacated the property. If the court agreed to eviction, the sheriff gave the landlord possession and the actual eviction was carried out by the constabulary, if necessary.75
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But was eviction common? As already established, the sources are not clear enough to provide a precise measurement. The current opinion among scholars of Irish history is that in the nineteenth century, though eviction loomed large in the popular mind, it was rare.76 If this can be argued for Ireland, a country ravaged by famine and poverty, then it is likely true for nineteenth-century Upper Canada. Eviction, after all, was a drastic and provoking public measure. Threats of eviction, notices to quit, warnings, and negotiations were probably resorted to far more than actual eviction. Landlords no doubt held eviction in reserve, hoping to avoid bad publicity, embarrassing incidents, and extra expense. An evicted tenant would leave arrears unpaid, and chasing tenants through the courts could be time-consuming and fruitless – something to be avoided if possible. Landlords and tenants had several ways of settling out of court. Tenants would on occasion simply abscond.77 Tenants escaped the humiliation and expense of a court case and could start afresh elsewhere. In this way landlords were rid of tenants but had no way of recovering arrears and were often left with property stripped of its timber, manure, and other valuables. Naturally, they preferred to make a deal that allowed them to recover some arrears. Tenants might sell their improvements, for example, which was an easier way for landlords to collect arrears and be rid of tenants than proceeding in the courts. This compromise was standard practice on the Crown and clergy reserves.78 There are numerous instances of leaseholders, unable to pay mounting arrears, selling their interest to others, settling their account, and moving on. This arrangement was much preferred by landlords over the expense and uncertainty of proceeding with eviction through the courts. The case of Edward Farrell and William Stewart is illustrative of a landlord’s reluctance to enter the courts, and of a tenant’s vulnerability once the conflict reached that stage.79 Stewart had risen in the world by running and supplying timber shanties and engaging in land speculation, farming, and various community activities. An original Bytown councillor, and an mla for Russell County and for Bytown, he was a well-educated and well-connected man of considerable repute. In 1848 Stewart was leasing his Horton Point property in Renfrew County to a tenant, Edward Farrell. Farrell lived at Horton Point with his wife, four children, and two male servants and used the property primarily for its firewood. In January of 1848, Stewart decided to sell the Horton Point property because of pressing debts. In March Stewart renewed
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Farrell’s lease but included a clause explaining why cancellation would occur later that year. At the time considerable haggling occurred over the rent. Stewart believed the firewood was worth fifty dollars; Farrell tried to bargain him down. Stewart also asked Farrell to pay his arrears. Three weeks later, Stewart politely reminded Farrell, for the second time, about the back rent he owed and explained that he had labourers who needed to be paid. The following fall Stewart found a buyer for the land, but Farrell tried to prevent the transaction by telling the prospective buyer that Stewart was transferring his claim to him. When the purchase took place, Farrell showed no sign of leaving. Stewart suggested that they enlist the support of a neighbour to explain the situation to Farrell, hoping that “a little neighbourly interference could settle the affair amicably.”80 At the end of November, Stewart notified Farrell that his term had expired. But weeks later Farrell was still there. At suppertime on 10 January 1850, Stewart served Farrell with a notice to quit the premises. At that point informal negotiations ended and legal proceedings began. Farrell did not budge and a month later a trial was set at Perth for 19 February. Up to that point, Farrell knew he could haggle, stall, pressure, and defy Stewart to get his own way. Once the case entered the court, however, it went beyond Farrell’s reach. He had neither the money, education, nor sophistication to play the game on equal ground. In preparation for the day, Farrell drove from Horton to Bytown and back again, and then to Perth in a terrible snowstorm for the trial. There, in order to keep his expenses down, he conducted his own defence. Stewart, of course, had a lawyer represent him. The verdict was in Stewart’s favour. The understanding was that in ten days the sheriff would give Stewart legal possession. But in July 1850 Farrell was still at Horton Point. By then Stewart had lost all sympathy for him and he was evicted. Farrell was clearly in the wrong. For some time he had played on his landlord’s reluctance to enter the courts, managing to forestall his eviction. In the end, however, some informal compromise with Stewart might have been preferable to entering the courts. In 1851 Farrell was farming twenty acres nearby in somewhat reduced circumstances. At mid-century a number of factors converged to expedite eviction procedures. The liberal desire to encourage the free transfer of land melded with high immigration levels to give landlords the incentive to replace indebted tenants with solvent ones or buyers. Particular points in land law were clarified to facilitate eviction. Some legislation was
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aimed at clarifying the parameters of legal tenancy. Rent-paying tenants with deeded leases (those sealed by a lawyer) had little to worry about, but people whose leases had ended or who had only vague or verbal agreements were put in a vulnerable position.81 In 1834 a statute was passed whereby a landlord wishing to be rid of an overholding tenant could avoid the delay and trouble of bringing an action of ejectment and simply obtain a writ of possession from the Court of King’s Bench.82 Then in 1849–51, a number of acts were passed standardizing eviction procedures and further limiting the definition of a “technical” tenant. By 1851 only leases made by deed were valid and all others were void. This meant that if landlords wanted to get rid of people without deeded leases, they could bypass the usual procedures and quickly sue or eject them. Those without deeded leases would now be considered to hold year to year with no fixed term and would no longer be entitled to six months’ notice to quit the premises.83 The courts were left to work out how the new statutes would apply in complicated situations where the nature of a person’s tenure was uncertain. The case of Houghton v. Thompson was an example. In 1861 a tenant signed a written rental agreement with Mr Henry Becher of Metcalfe Township for one year. From 1862 until 1864 the tenant remained on the property, paying an annual rent, but no new agreement with a fixed term was put in writing. A misunderstanding emerged: the tenant believed he still had a one-year term annually renewed while the landlord considered that the tenant was now holding for no fixed term. The issue came to a head when, in 1865, the tenant asked to have his lease formally renewed. Becher refused because he was selling the property. The tenant refused to leave unless Becher paid for his improvements. Becher demanded possession. The tenant claimed he was entitled to six months’ notice to quit. Becher claimed he had no such right since he held year to year and with no fixed term. At the local assizes in London the following spring, the judge sided with Becher and the jury sided with the tenant. When the case went to the high court for consideration, the judge ruled that no notice to quit was required.84 Two years later another act concerning overholding tenants clarified the issue. Now a landlord could bypass the common law if a lease was of an indefinite term, for example, for several years to be ended by notice. The landlord could simply apply to the county judge for ejectment. The tenant had then to appear at an inquiry, and if he or she failed to appear, default judgment would go to the land-
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lord. The act simplified proceedings in the county courts and saved landlords the expense and inconvenience of actions of ejectment. There was very little objection to the bill.85 The Common Law Procedure Act of 1856 was clearly in favour of easing the transfer of property: it made it easier for landlords to re-enter and to evict. The act dispensed with the need for landlords to make a formal demand for rent before re-entry if the rent was a half year in arrears and distress was not sufficient.86 Default judgments were established whereby if a tenant did not follow procedures set out in the new act, the court could rule in favour of the landlord. The same act ruled that where tenants were wrongfully ejected, their only form of compensation was restitution – i.e., they would receive any money that the landlord made from the land while the tenants possessed it.87 This was clearly not fair to tenants as they had by then incurred the costs of moving their family to another dwelling and had lost any profits from the land. The same act barred tenants from taking further legal action against their landlord unless certain conditions were met, such as the tenants providing the money to proceed in court. Landlords, on the other hand, were explicitly not barred from further action against their tenants. In contrast to distraint, therefore, where legislation to clarify and regulate the process seemed to offer tenants some protection in a relationship that was to continue, changes in the laws of eviction favoured landlords in their desire to rid the property quickly of tenants they viewed as troublesome and transfer it to more suitable ones.
why would tenants join the movement to end landlordism? In other places in the nineteenth century, the landlord-tenant relationship became highly politicized. But it was never a burning issue in Upper Canada. Both parties might fight over the specific terms of their contract or try to gain specific advantage but rarely did they attack the principle and propriety of tenancy itself. No grassroots movement for reform or abolition of landlordism arose out of a sense of injustice. There were no voluntary associations, crowd action, or appeals to politicians, the press, or the political process. There are several reasons for this. We know from previous chapters that the ideology of landholding amongst politicians and reformers – those with the political power to spearhead the call for tenants’ rights – predisposed them to downplay
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the very existence of tenants. Lack of public debate over land reform legislation reflects the marginal character of tenancy in the minds of politicians and social reformers. Tenants themselves did not unite to resist paying rent or call for the end of landlordism, in part because they were so diverse in background and experience. Their landlords, likewise were, not easy to identify as a uniformly oppressive class but were in many cases similar to their tenants in economic and social standing. Furthermore, though property law did not favour the tenant, economic conditions did. The economy and demographics of the province, especially in the early years, were such that rents were reasonable, even low, and therefore not destined to be a perpetual burden. Besides these essential points, this chapter has demonstrated that when conflict over rent did occur, it was in the landlord’s best interest to tolerate arrears, negotiate informally with the tenant, and proceed with distraint or eviction only in unresolvable cases. As long as the landlord could afford to be lenient such conflicts did not often break into public view. The government and legal system, moreover, were fairly responsive to the concerns of tenants. Part of the problem in Prince Edward Island, New York, and Ireland was that leasehold was the predominant system and associated with a long history of political and economic oppression. In Upper Canada there was no such historical grievance over tenancy, and settlers had access to inexpensive land that could be purchased. Tenancy, therefore, was not a permanent status but often a temporary one, and landlords had to offer good terms to compete with the attraction of freehold. Though the government was inspired by a liberalism more concerned with ensuring a free land market than protecting the rights of tenants, it brought in legislation that clarified and simplified the law, ameliorating some of the issues concerning tenancy, preventing grievances from mounting, and, to some degree, protecting tenants. Even though property law doctrines clearly disadvantaged the tenant, what evidence remains suggests that the law was not applied in an unduly harsh manner, jurists favoured neither landlord nor tenant, and tenants used the courts to address their grievances and defend their interests. Finally, though this chapter has highlighted conflict in their relationship, it must be pointed out that landlords and tenants were not always pitted against each other. Previous chapters have shown how in social and economic terms their relationship could be mutually advantageous. This symbiosis could sometimes be seen in legal matters too. Outside the courts, landlords and tenants sometimes came to each
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other’s assistance. In disagreements between settlers, tenants would call on their landlords to add weight to their claims. Thus, in 1833 Roger Bagly of Cramahe Township asked his landlord to prevent Peter Irish from taking advantage of his property and save Bagly the trouble of a lawsuit.88 Tenants occasionally protected their landlords too. After one Mr McKinnon of Mariposa Township fell in arrears and assigned the property he rented to a Mr McPherson, he wrote to his former landlord warning him that McPherson was a scoundrel who could pay the rent but was planning “to run the place down” and then assign every distrainable possession on the place to his father-in-law. “So you look out for your rent in time while it is on the place,” urged McKinnon, “and seize the crop before it is harvested and sold.”89
The law, therefore, provided a framework for sorting out rights and resolving conflict in the landlord-tenant relationship. Land law remained much the same over the era under study but piecemeal legislation clarified and formalized the legal aspects of the relationship, making them more accessible and better regulated; this in turn gave the relevant parties greater self-management of their affairs in keeping with liberal ideals and the practical needs of the land market. At the same time, the common law provided the fundamental legal definition of their relationship. In principle it was unequal, but in practice it was complex, evolving, unpredictable, highly varied, and sometimes surprising.
heir d Customary Lives Rights
7 Their Legal and Customary Rights
The landlord-tenant relationship and our understanding of ownership is complicated by the fact that tenants had rights whose foundation lay in law and in custom.1 The financial, social, and ideological implications of customary rights and the legal right to sell the lease reveal much about the landlord-tenant relationship and different views of ownership. According to E.P. Thompson, English social historian and political activist, custom was the interface between the law and agrarian practice. A custom comprised time-honoured practices, norms and sanctions, and inherited expectations that were of practical value to people. Thompson describes it as “ambience,” a complex entity based on oral knowledge and rarely definable in factual and clearly delineated terms. One might consider it to be a “living law” of the people. Unlike the universality of the common law, custom was valued for its local particularities and its responsiveness to changing circumstances. Customs varied from place to place and over time according to the agricultural economy, demographic pressures, nonfarm opportunities, tolerant or hostile landlords, strict or lax courts, and a host of other factors particular to a specific landlord’s estate, a local community, or to the stage of land settlement in general. In some places a custom might have acquired legal sanction, in others it might exist by myth or assertion. Custom could acquire the force of law when it could be shown through long continued usage, to be an approved and locally recognized way of doing things. Regardless of the status it had acquired in the eyes of those in authority, a custom was held together by individuals who, by their participation in the transaction, gave it legitimacy. Custom tied people together in agreement about expected and appropriate behaviour in the present and its
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claims often included the history of previous generations on the land. Thus it was a fluid entity, a social and moral force that existed over time and, for the most part, outside the formal law.2 In several profound ways the customary and legal rights of tenants expand the way we generally view tenancy. First, they divert our focus from the vertical ties that linked landlord and tenant in terms of the contract and the movement of assets in the form of rent, to the horizontal links between tenants. Two practices in particular, the sale of improvements and the sale of the lease, involved the exchange of large sums of money between tenants, which oriented them toward the market and away from the preservation of a feudal relationship of hierarchical and reciprocal obligations.3 Landlords had little control over these horizontal relationships and the flow of capital that resulted. Their toleration of the practices involved highlights the limits placed on their power and the distance between their wishes and the realities of newly settled land. Second, in contrast to the legal rights of freeholders, which relied on courts, a system of documentation, and a spate of professionals for their orderly operation, customary rights depended on the voluntary cooperation of tenants and landlords. Responsible behaviour, local market forces, and a careful weighing of financial interests, justice, social pressure, and public prestige governed this area of the landlord-tenant relationship, making it even more complex, more strained yet flexible, than we have previously understood it to be.4 The rights discussed in this chapter also challenge the prevailing ideology of landholding. According to the master narrative of Upper Canada’s settlement, only a deed conferred ownership, but customary rights to sell improvements and the legal right to sell the lease reveal a hidden system of private property, an alternate form of ownership that challenged the freehold ideal. Tenants were part owners of agricultural property and small capitalists in their own right.5 Sale of a lease was in some cases the most significant financial exchange concerning rented property, larger than the rent itself. This transaction and others were not only economically important but also ideologically suggestive. Negotiations to sell improvements and leases were not only about a material entity, a barn or the number of years left in the lease. They were also about past possession and the tenant’s right to compensation for their transforming powers in the larger project of creating a farm out of the wild. According to tenants, particularly those with long leases, continued possession and their labour had transformed useless
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wilderness into a material asset and this “historicity” and “productive usage” of the land entitled them to certain property rights.6 The practices discussed in this chapter were accepted norms that governed the departure from, and taking over of, an agricultural holding and protected the tenant’s invested labour and capital. Common in the old country, they took on new life in frontier North America. North American landlords, faced with the difficult task of attracting and keeping good tenants when land was easy to buy, found they had to tolerate customary rights.7 Whether in sixteenth-century New York State, eighteenth-century Maryland, frontier Quebec, or the Canadian West during the homestead era, tenants sold their improvements and interest in the land. Though some landlords challenged their right to do so, they generally acknowledged the practices as inescapable.8 Participants found them useful in reducing social rifts that might emerge in the communities if outgoing tenants felt they had not been duly compensated for the labour and capital they had invested in a property. Three rights were particularly important in this regard: 1) emblements, or the right of outgoing tenants to re-enter a property and harvest crops they had planted prior to their departure, 2) the right to sell improvements that they had made, and 3) the right to sell their leasehold interest. While they existed outside of official channels and without documentation and regulation, these rights created an economic structure and social process within which private property in a classical economic sense could operate. Older ideas of possession were sometimes used to support them, but they were primarily a claim to the fruits of the labour and capital tenants had invested in the property. In this they hit a responsive chord within the emerging liberal creed of progress. The courts, politicians, and opinion makers in general believed that improving productivity was in the public interest and that it was to be achieved primarily through private initiative, property, and a market economy.9 Emblements sat most uncomfortably with this larger mandate. Landlords knew that allowing the outgoing tenant to harvest his crops could smooth the transfer of land between tenants, but the courts, anxious to promote the speedy and simple transfer of land, were against it. Compensation for improvements was sanctioned, however, because it encouraged tenant investment in barns, fences, drainage, etc., all of which benefited the landlord, the tenant, and the larger economy. Likewise, selling a lease fostered productivity as it encouraged tenant investment and free trade in land. It also fit well
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with the liberal faith in private initiative, agricultural improvement, and progress.
emblements The complex question who owned the grains still growing in the field at the end of a term was compounded by contradictions between what the law and custom deemed as the tenant’s rights. The issue of emblements centred on whether the growing crops were the tenant’s personal property. When a lease ended, tenants had the legal right to remove their belongings but what constituted personal property on a farm was complicated.10 Urban tenants merely resided on land; farm tenants made their living from land. Their relationship with it was therefore more involved and profound. Naturally, furniture, clothing, and moveable agricultural goods such as livestock, implements, and vehicles were considered to be their personal property. But beyond such possessions the issue became more complicated. For example, whereas tradesmen were by law allowed to remove any machinery and fixtures they had erected for the purposes of pursuing their trade, farm tenants could not legally remove the barn, carriage shed, or other buildings they had erected for the purpose of pursuing agriculture. Manure, a valued commodity, presented an interesting case. Generally it was considered to be real estate and not personal property as it was the by-product of grain raised on the property. If, however, manure was made from grain raised elsewhere and not on the farm, it was considered personal property and tenants could dispose of it as they chose. So who owned the grains still growing in the field? According to property law, the right to emblements went with the land. This meant that when land was transferred, the growing crops were transferred also and became the property of the landlord or the new tenant.11 Tenants only had a right to emblements if they held for an uncertain term (i.e., at will, or if theirs was a lease for lives) and if the term ended unexpectedly and through no fault of their own. Only then could they re-enter, harvest, and remove the crops they had planted. Tenants believed, however, that it was their customary right to enjoy the fruits of their labour regardless of the nature of their contract. No tenant wanted to plough and sow the land only to have some stranger benefit from their toil and expense. It was common practice, therefore, in both the Old World and Upper Canada, for the person who had worked the land to re-enter and reap his reward. Since leases
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were most apt to exchange hands in the autumn in Upper Canada, just after the fall wheat had been sown, the issue was particularly relevant. The reclaimed wheat helped tenants to feed livestock and family and, if sold, could help pay arrears or assist in setting up elsewhere. It was, in short, a practice worth defending. Several cases that entered the high courts revolved around landlords asserting their legal right to the crop and denying tenants their customary right. One precedent-setting case, Burrow v. Cairns et al., provides a rare window on the conflict between common law and customary rights in Upper Canada. In 1846 Chief Justice Robinson ruled that Mr Cochrane of Brantford Township had no right to re-enter the property in the spring and harvest the wheat he had planted the previous fall prior to the expiration of his lease. Considerable argument had preceded this ruling. The tenant claimed that it was the “custom of the country” for him to re-enter and harvest his wheat crop. The tenant’s lawyer noted six other court cases in which the custom of the country had been granted legal status such that the landlord had had to compensate the tenant for the labour, tillage, sowing, and materials he had invested in the land in the “awaygoing year.” He argued that, while it was impossible to talk about “time immemorial customs” in a new country, it was a “usage” that was generally acquiesced to and acted upon, and such customs had just as much right to exist here as in the Old World. Even the incoming tenant believed he had no claim to the crop and implicitly supported the practice. To the tenants the transaction seemed fair and eased the transfer between parties. But Chief Justice Robinson would not acknowledge the custom for three reasons. First, Robinson’s ruling reflected his adherence to the prevailing ideology of landholding, which denied the relevance of tenancy in the New World. Though Robinson could only cite one case where custom had been dismissed, he argued that tenancy in Canada was neither prevalent nor ancient enough to have given rise to any practice that could rightly be considered a custom.12 Second, like other Canadian judges, he desired a standardized form and believed that his main responsibility was to administer the common law rather than to deviate or initiate change to suit the context of a new country.13 Finally, in the eyes of authority, rationalizing this custom ran against progress; it might slow down the transfer of land and raise obstacles to getting a more efficient occupant.14 Henceforth this particular case was cited to prove that, concerning emblements, no custom of the country would be given the force of law and that the legal terms of the lease would override any such customary
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rights. It and later emblement cases demonstrate a hardening of attitude toward customary rights by mid-century.15 Though public sentiment sided with the tenant, legal authority rooted in textual power would henceforth win over traditional ways in court. This is not to suggest that such practices came to an abrupt end. They continued as a parallel system existing outside the law or were transformed. In some cases, the right to re-enter was transmuted into a payment whereby the new tenant paid the outgoing tenant for growing crops. In 1862 Canadian Agriculturalist ran an article on “Farm Capitol” explaining how a new tenant could expect to pay the outgoing tenant for crops in the field, seed, manure, and livestock.16 Landlords and tenants were also increasingly careful to stipulate in written leases that either “all lands were to be delivered up at the expiration of the lease” (i.e., no right to emblements existed) or that the tenant had the right to emblements. For example, James Prentice of Lincoln County made a handwritten addition in 1874 to the standard printed lease he used, stating that Kirby Zimmerman, at the end of his five-year lease, would “have the priviledge [sic] of harvesting and dividing the fall crop put in before the close of the term.”17 This measure clearly established tenants’ legal rights and reduced the problem of trying to argue for custom. The right to emblements may have received some support among landlords but the courts were clearly not going to accept custom as the origin of law. Nevertheless, the law, in supporting even a limited right to emblements (for those holding for an uncertain duration), recognized past labour expended and the unexhausted returns on it. Emblements, therefore, while a relatively small issue, provided an intellectual link with other rights of greater financial importance.
improvements Despite the strict legal claim that all fixtures and improvements became part of the property and hence the landlord’s, it was the custom for tenants to be compensated for the labour and capital they had expended on improvements. In the British Isles, compensation for improvements grew in economic and political relevance in the 1840s because of its association with high farming. It was considered to be a mechanism for promoting tenant investment and essential to intensive, scientific agriculture.18 In Upper Canada and other parts of frontier North America, compensation for improvements was relevant because of its association with early settlement. Tenants often made the
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7.1 Stage One in Improvement. Tenants often “made the farm,” their improvements sometimes being more valuable than the land itself in its unimproved state. The three stages of development depicted here illustrate this point. (Hardy and Spence, Emigration)
farm, effecting improvements that turned what was deemed an otherwise useless piece of wildland into a workable farm unit. Tenants transformed resources into commodities with their own labour, and that labour made such items rightfully theirs. In the first half of the nineteenth century, cleared land was the most valuable improvement in terms of the process of capital creation; more than cash crops or livestock farming, it increased the capital value of a farm. A clearing of fifty acres could take more than thirty years to make but promised a comfortable living and upward social mobility.19 Improvements, therefore, were a valued asset. R.B. Sullivan, the commissioner of Crown lands, reported in 1837 that settlers’ improvements were often more valuable than the land in its wild state.20 This statement is borne out by other evidence. In the early 1840s each Crown and clergy reserve across the province was surveyed and detailed information gathered concerning the value of improvements.21 Those considered worthy of valuation were cleared land (cut,
7.2
Stage Two in Improvement. (Hardy and Spence, Emigration)
7.3
Stage Three in Improvement. (Hardy and Spence, Emigration)
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logged, and fenced), log and frame houses, barns, and wells. On the clergy reserves in Cramahe Township, one-quarter of the lessees had made improvements exceeding the value of the land in its unimproved state by £158.22 John McFall, for example, whose Crown reserve was on the main road near Colborne, had cleared one hundred acres and built or acquired four frame buildings, several barns, and more than one well. To deny tenants the chance to sell their improvements was believed by settlers and government officials to be unduly harsh and detrimental to the advancement of settlement and improvement of the country. Sullivan informed the governor that lessees sold their buildings and clearings as private property. He went on to explain why the government had accepted this practice and not taken a harsh legal stance. “When I consider the very great value of improvements, in proportion to that of wild land, I am convinced that there is much of equity in the course which has been pursued. To insist on strict legal right and claim the property in fixtures and improvements would be unduly harsh to tenants.”23 Sullivan explained that it was necessary for settlers to sell these improvements. They wanted to realize their labour in cash, and they needed this very important source of capital to purchase land elsewhere.24 The practice was allowed since it was crucial to keep tenants satisfied and loyal to the government, and it was important in the settlement of the province.25 In a number of ways the clergy reserves and other corporate landlords officially recognized the lessees’ right to their improvements. When clergy reserve leases were renewed, for example, the new rents did not include the tenant’s improvements and if the land was sold, the tenant’s improvements were not taken into account in the purchase price.26 When the Canada Company began its lease-to-buy system in 1842, it followed the example of the Crown and clergy reserves by allowing outgoing tenants to sell their improvements to incoming tenants, or if the land was sold to someone else, the Canada Company compensated the tenant for their improvements.27 In the 1850s the issue of compensation became more pressing as old clergy reserve leases expired (1854) and the reserves were officially ended (1855). In the rush of legislation after tenants got the vote, an act was passed in 1859 giving tenants on the land of religious institutions the legal right to be compensated for their improvements.28 The legal right to compensation did not exist elsewhere unless it was covenanted in the lease.29 It continued, however, to have the force of general acceptance and be an understanding between landlord and
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tenant. Arrangements were informal and varied. Two acts passed in the 1850s to standardize the meaning and form of leases did not give guidance on the issue of improvements but provided for the addition of any express qualifications.30 This allowed localized practices to continue. Landlords likely allowed tenants to sell their improvements to each other, or reimbursed them themselves. Improvements were, after all, a symbiotic aspect of the landlord-tenant relationship: the tenants could convert their labour into cash and the landlord’s property rose in value. If a tenant received no compensation where it was due, a landlord ran the chance of getting his farm back in a worthless, stripped condition. Tenants, for example, might remove rail fences, manure, and lumber used for recent renovations. Evidence from court cases and surviving leases provide examples of the terms concerning improvements that private landlords made with their tenants. Various arrangements existed, since the law did not stipulate who was responsible for making improvements or whether they should be compensated but left it up to landlords and tenants. Chief Justice Robinson, who had little use for custom in property law, did not compensate his tenants for improvements on his East Gwillimbury estate. They had leases for ten years on the condition that they cleared a certain amount of land annually and, in essence, paid their rent in improvements.31 Some landlords agreed to finance or provide the material for all permanent improvements at the time tenants were instated and not reimburse them on their departure.32 Others allowed their tenants compensation but tried to limit the price, fearing that high prices paid for improvements by incoming tenants would result in a poorly run farm and arrears of rent.33 They might agree to compensate the tenant for specific improvements as long as they did not exceed a certain sum.34 Or they might deduct all “reasonable” improvements from the rent.35 Other landlords were more careful, stipulating in the lease that they would pay for improvements once they had been properly valued by two disinterested persons.36 Resorting to an umpire made the process of compensation less contentious and more viable, in the absence of legislation. All the above arrangements were between landlord and tenant but the exchange usually took place outside the landlord’s purview between incoming and outgoing tenants. Ownership of improvements gave tenants a valuable financial asset which they used in a variety of ways. Tenant families passed their improvements from one to another and down the generations, thereby giving several branches of the family the means to farm and gradually
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increase their capital. The Cox family of Cramahe Township provides such an example. Essentially, the Cox family created two small settlements of rented farms – one on the waterfront of the township and a second further inland. As the needs of individual branches of the family changed, they moved between these properties, gradually increasing their improvements while keeping them within the family.37 The incentive to keep the farm in good repair and make improvements was high as the family could benefit from their current use and either pass them on to the next generation or sell them in the future. The Crown and clergy reserve records and private estate records indicate that tenants were in the habit of selling their improvements and moving on to better their position. They also sold their improvements to pay off creditors and avert family crisis. Improvements, for example, could be seized for distress, and if they were sufficient to cover arrears, the tenant could avoid eviction.38 Tenants also used improvements as a bargaining tool particularly in the early days of settlement. They might refuse to quit the property or sign proper leases until the landlord had compensated them for improvements.39 In the contest to prove title to land, the settler with the greatest improvements had an edge. In the scramble to get clergy reserves, for example, squatters called upon the value and extent of their improvements to verify their claims to acquiring a formal lease, and leaseholders did the same in verifying their claim to parts of a contested lot. On occasion, they would even go so far as to seize and destroy each others’ improvements in the competition to prove title. Deborah Thompson and Peter Valleau had both settled on the same clergy reserve lot in Sophiasburgh Township. Thompson informed clergy reserve officials in 1825 that Peter Valleau had “interfered with her improvements and molested her.” The agent replied that Valleau’s lease would not be renewed for his section of the reserve until he had compensated her for the injuries, and that once they could ascertain all her clearings she would be given a lease.40 As noted above, when it came to improvements, the landlord-tenant relationship was symbiotic. The tenant benefited through the immediate returns that cultivated fields and farm buildings provided, and through the equity they acquired in improvements that could be bequeathed or sold. Ownership and control over their improvements gave tenants a sense of justice and contentment with their rental contract. Meanwhile, most landlords were pleased to have tenants who, instead of running their property down, actually increased its value.
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The customary right to improvements, therefore, was important to the settlement process and economic development of the province in general, whereby forest was transformed into farms. It fit comfortably with liberal aims to foster a market economy and progress.
selling the lease and rights beyond the lease Generally more valuable than improvements, and more difficult to understand, was the tenant’s right to sell the lease. Tenants with long leases had a legal interest in the property just short of actual ownership. Indeed, one could say that the landlord and tenant were both owners – the first of the freehold and the second of the lease. The landlord had the right to the rent and the legal title to take back the land after the lease expired. The tenant had the legal right to the use, management, possession, income, security, capital, and transmissibility of the property that ownership of the lease conferred. The law declared that landlords could sell their freehold and that tenants could sell their lease.41 Statute and common law, however, were silent on the matter of guidelines for the process of evaluation and sale, letting the forces of supply and demand and local practice take their course. When one looks carefully, a thriving complex practice that had the force of general acceptance was clearly in place. Just what was being sold in the transaction? A document signed by Hugh Alexander of the London District in 1805 stated that he was buying the “estate, right, letter, interest, term of years yet to come” for the remainder of the twenty-one year lease.42 This was the accepted legal understanding of what could rightfully be sold. Rarely, however, did documents detail what was being sold, and how parties gave these assets a monetary value is also more difficult to discern. Tenants sold the years remaining in their lease, acquiring some of the future profits that could be expected if agricultural prices rose while rents stayed the same. In other cases involving long leases, the lease was sold for near the fee simple value of the property itself and the price may have represented the discrepancy between the actual rents (which often remained stationary for the duration of the lease) and what the landlord might have charged as land values rose. In this situation, it represented a capitalization of the uncollected rental; viewed in another light, tenants were able to capture most of the unearned profits from rising land values. The value, therefore, had some relationship to opportunities in the local economy, which could
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raise or lower land values; to population pressure, which created a market for leasehold; and to rent levels, which, if raised, could reduce the uncollected rental. The value of the lease cannot be fully explained in hard economic terms but depended on softer variables too. The right of possession, for example, was considered by some to be one of the chief values of a lease, as it protected the tenant against legal ejectment.43 Much also depended on the character of the landlord. If tenants, for example, had the assurance and security of knowing that the landlord had a good reputation and would likely continue his policy of low rents, infrequent evictions, and toleration of customary rights, then they would be willing to pay a higher price for the lease.44 Such was the case with the clergy reserves where there was a thriving business in the sale of leases. Equally intangible was the perceived right to something beyond the legal understanding of the leasehold interest, something that persisted after the lease and legal title had expired. The most enduring expression of this was the claim that tenants had the right to possess the land beyond the lease’s end. Such a right undercut the very basis of the legal lease – the fact that it was for a limited duration. Leaseholders defended their right to continued possession (i.e., renewal of the lease) with arguments from an older era, based on their long attachment to the land, and more modern arguments that their invested labour over the years gave them a right to stay.45 Landlords seem to have complied, at least tacitly. Where land was new, freehold available, and the population sparse and highly mobile, landlords may have found rhetoric stressing previous lengthy attachment to the land, loyalty, and improvements persuasive. Thus, in 1834 Jacob Killman of Stamford Township, Welland County, petitioned the government explicitly pointing out that he had been one of the first settlers in the township; that he had resided on the lot for twenty-four years and cleared one hundred acres; and that now in old age he wished to “leave to his children the fruits of his toil and labour.”46 The government was reluctant to create a sense of perpetuity on the reserves lest tenants forget their debt of gratitude to the government, but renewals were nearly always granted.47 Renewals were easy to attain on the Canada Company land too, especially if the tenant had made improvements.48 The likelihood that one could remain after the lease had ended was a valuable assurance to families who had improved their lands and felt at home on them. The right to something beyond the lease increased in monetary and symbolic value when the clergy reserves were opened for sale in 1827.49 Lessees had
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no legal right to convert to freehold and hence prolong their tenure, nor did the government ever promise them this right. It became the custom, however, that persons who could prove they were the legal possessors of the leasehold held the “favour” to convert. This right of preemption, as it was called, meant they had the first opportunity, before all other applicants, to purchase the freehold of the property when their lease expired, if and when the government decided to sell. Their leasehold interest thus increased in value as lessees now sold not only the lease but something beyond the lease contract – the right of preemption.50 The same practice emerged on Crown reserve and Canada Company land.51 Just how the practice of selling the lease operated was equally varied and complex. Where an estate was large enough to have a policy concerning sale of the lease (even if the policy was to ignore it) then the practice that emerged amongst tenants had a quasi-official framework. The regularity and predictability of a common process gave buyers and sellers confidence in the market.52 Clergy reserve leases, for example, were frequently advertised for sale in the local newspapers.53 Interested buyers were asked to contact either the local land agent or the tenant. In some cases, landlords allowed “free sale,” which meant that the tenant could sell to the person of their choice, likely the highest bidder. In other cases, such as the Canada Company, the tenant had to get the consent of the company before the transaction could occur.54 Presumably this was so that the Canada Company could monitor the new tenant and the sum exchanged and record the transfer of title. Transfers of Crown and clergy reserve leases were recorded with some degree of official recognition.55 The two parties involved in the transaction appeared before a witness and signed a written transfer. In the early years, this often meant that the two parties got a neighbour to witness the signing of a handwritten document that stated their agreement in simple language. Unlike the transfer of freehold, no formal registration process was ever required. By mid-century, however, verbal and informal assignments were increasingly replaced by more formal ones on printed forms, witnessed by a lawyer, and put under seal to prove their authenticity.56 Leases were paid for either with cash – in instalments or a lump sum – in kind, or in exchange for a service such as paying arrears. When Mr Hopper of Amherst Island sold his lease to Daniel Fowler in 1843, they met at the registry office at Napanee and Fowler handed over the entire sum. In this case, the price was broken down into one hundred
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and fifty dollars for the lease of fifty acres and three hundred dollars for the new barn Hopper had just built. Paying the whole price at once was unusual.57 Samuel McCracken paid for a lease in Cramahe Township in 1849 with a cow, cash instalments, and the promise to clear land and pay back rents.58 Jim Donnelly of Lucan Township paid for his lease, valued at four hundred dollars, with a down payment and the balance in instalments.59 The money went straight into the outgoing tenant’s pocket, the landlord did not receive a percentage. A lease could be very valuable in monetary terms. Tables 7.1 and 7.2 show the changing value of leases on the clergy reserves in Cramahe Township and on the privately run estate of Amherst Island. The most striking point about these tables is that the lease was a valuable commodity. On average, it sold for the equivalent of ten years’ rent in the 1840s and may have increased in value in the 1850s. Leases sold for anywhere from thirty percent to over ninety percent of the assessed value, or the freehold price. The tables also show that the value of a leasehold changed over the years. Starting in the early decades, the value of a lease increased as rents remained low but the actual assessed or freehold value rose. Prices then soared in the 1840s as immigration pushed up land values in general. When the commissioner of Crown lands announced in 1856 that land was running out, the clergy reserves became even more valuable.60 What happened thereafter is less clear; the records are sparse. But leasehold values may have evened out or declined depending on the state of affairs on each estate. Certainly by mid-century a brisk trade for buying and selling leases had developed as immigrants poured in and the economy expanded. The Township Papers and other land records indicate that leases throughout the province were frequently transferred.61 Since the transaction was rarely recorded except on government reserves, and then not consistently, a precise estimate of the frequency of sales is impossible. Surviving records for Cramahe Township suggest that tenants on valuable lots near urban centres and main roads behaved much like speculators and sold their interest after five or ten years to new tenants. The trade in leases was particularly active in the 1840s and 1850s (Table 7.1). The case of Isaac Welton’s lot in Cramahe Township illustrates the turnover. Welton lived on lot twenty-seven in the second concession near the town of Colborne and in 1854 tried to clarify the history of his lot for government officials.62 The first lease on the two-hundred acre lot was taken in 1802 but held for only two years before the lessee left the country. Over the next forty years, the lease
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was transferred at least six times. William Dorris, the original lessee, sold his claim to Hodges who then sold it to Dr Kent, who sold it to Isaac Welton. In 1827 Isaac Welton purchased the freehold of the southern half of the lot from the Crown and applied for a new lease on the northern half but never received the lease although he continued to possess the lot. He then sold his lease to the northern half to Caleb Purdy, George Ray, and Levi Welton, who sold their claim to Simeon Hilton and Richard Haynes, further dividing the property. In the 1850s Hilton sold his quarter to Dr Powers who got the patent from the Crown in 1866. In that same decade Haynes sold his quarter to J.M. Merriman, who sold to William Colton, who got the patent from the Crown in 1856. The subdivision of the original lot, the ensuing histories of each section, and the vagaries of leases lost or never received were typical of reserve lots, especially those that were well located. Tenants further inland and less well located sold their interest less frequently, tending to keep it within the family for years, sometimes generations, and selling it only when a specific need arose.63 Aggregate figures do not capture the considerable variation in the value of leases at any one time. Some truth can be seen in the old adage “location is everything.” In the 1840s, for example, leaseholders in the front concessions of Cramahe Township (broken front to concession four) had leases valued at thirteen to twenty-three years’ rent, whereas those in the back concessions (concessions five to ten), even though their land was in a similar state of improvement, had leases valued at three to seven years’ rent. Obviously access to roads, mills, and markets was important in determining the price. So was the quality of possession that was being transferred. Within a three-year period, 1844–47, three Cramahe tenants sold their leases for very different amounts. Joseph Porter’s leasehold sold for well below the average price at five shillings per acre (3.4 rent years) when the township average was twelve shillings per acre (ten rent years). A poor location and an uncertain title to the land may account for this. Though he had cleared thirty acres on what was considered fair land and had improvements worth £105, Porter was located on the sixth concession, six miles from the nearest mill. As a result, his land was valued by the government land agent at only fifteen shillings per acre in its unimproved state. Furthermore, clergy reserve records do not record a formal lease, though apparently Porter had some sort of paper from Mr George H. Markland, secretary-receiver of the Clergy Corporation in 1828–33, and had been there ten years. In contrast, Elisha Porter, whose
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improvements were similarly valued (at £110) got thirty-three shillings per acre for his lease, well above the township average. He lived only one mile from Colborne on property valued at over thirty-seven shillings per acre in its unimproved state. He also had a registered transfer of the original lease from 1803 to prove his legal title to the land. Alvin Dudley got forty-five shillings per acre for his lease, which far exceeded the township average. Though he was in a rather remote location on the fourth concession, seven miles from the nearest mill, he had a registered transfer for his lease and the government had agreed in 1840 to sell him the freehold. This made the right of possession that was being sold more valuable than in the previous two cases.64 Dudley was, in short, selling his lease and something beyond it. Selling the lease was financially important to tenant families. Surviving records for Robert Finnegan of Amherst Island show that his lease, which he had originally signed in 1833, was valued at three hundred pounds in 1858. Such a figure represented fully ninety-two percent of the assessed value for taxes (£318), giving Finnegan nearly all the unearned profits from the rise in land values. Put another way, over the years he had paid a total of £272.10.0 in rent. The sum offered by another Amherst Islander for Finnegan’s leasehold interest more than reimbursed him for all the rent he had paid, so that in effect his land had been rent-free.65 Not surprisingly, landlords had several complaints about the system. The limitations placed on rent levels was one, as any attempt to raise rents when leases expired was seen as an encroachment by tenants on the value of their leasehold interest.66 Landlords also worried that tenants who used their leasehold interest as collateral would lose their farms to third parties and that other debts, not rent arrears, would have first lien on the tenant’s interest in the farm.67 Loose accounting was another problem. In fact, so active and poorly recorded was the market in transferring leases on the clergy reserves that R.B. Sullivan complained in 1839 that trying to sort out who held title to the lease and hence the right to preemption was “one of the most onerous and difficult of my duties.”68 When tenants had to prove their title to the lease, a great flurry of activity ensued as they rummaged through trunks and searched under floorboards for their assignments, receipts, and leases and travelled the neighbourhood looking for neighbours who could vouch for their character and actions. With verbal assignments or destroyed or misplaced documents, it was not always clear who was responsible for the rent or who had the right to sell their lease or
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convert to freehold. Everybody wanted the right to the lease, even tenants who had no leases but held their land at will. In these cases myth, assertion, and trickery replaced prescriptive right. Tenants on Amherst Island whose leases had expired tried to sell them anyway.69 The behaviour of Jim Donnelly, one of the infamous Black Donnellys of Biddulph Township, exemplifies the worst case. Donnelly couldn’t pay subsequent instalments on the sale price of his lease, fell in arrears of rent to the Canada Company, and ran down the property. The Canada Company evicted him in 1873 and sold the property to a newcomer, Joseph Carswell, who offered to pay Donnelly for his improvements. But Donnelly demanded the full sum of his leasehold interest (which no longer legally existed since his lease had ended with his eviction), demanding a price near the freehold value. When Carswell refused to pay that amount, several misfortunes followed. Over the next five years, he was framed for stealing wood, then his barns, haystacks, and crops were burned, his horses had their throats and bellies slit just before harvest time, and his reaping machine was smashed. In the spring of 1878 Carswell fled the township.70 A nightmare for the newcomer, it was also a bad situation for the landlord who had a good tenant chased out by an insolvent criminal. Naturally, landlords wished to control the sale of leases but such control was either limited or thwarted. Maxwell tried to ban the sale of leases on Amherst Island where no such legal interest existed, but it is unclear whether he was successful.71 Landlords in New York levied fines on the sale, taking up to one-quarter of the price as an alienation fee, but no evidence has been uncovered to suggest that landlords in Upper Canada were able to claim any portion of the money exchanged between tenants.72 Landlords in Ireland tried to regulate the price of the sale by prohibiting bidding and limiting the price to some mathematical formulae based on the number of years left on the lease or a percentage of a professional valuation.73 Upper Canadian landlords have left no evidence of doing this either. They were fearful, perhaps, that setting prices or taking a cut for themselves would anger existing tenants and repel prospective ones. The most common response amongst Upper Canadian landlords was to gain veto power over the purchaser. This was really the only way they could be sure of achieving their main objective – finding a solvent, improving newcomer to take over the lease. By the 1840s leases for Canada Company land and the standard lease form recommended by the government contained clauses that the tenant could not assign without written consent from
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the landlord.74 But even this could not by itself invalidate an assignment, as the tenant’s estate was alienable property.75 In the end, landlords tolerated the practice because it was in their best interest not to meddle. They had very little control over a transaction that was legal and if hampered would simply continue in a clandestine manner. Clergy reserve officials constantly urged the government to accept the selling of leases as it had come to be interpreted, since any threat to the leaseholder’s right to preemption might quickly sow the seeds of vexation and disloyalty. As Sir Charles Bagot wrote to the Colonial Secretary, Lord Stanley, in 1842, “No Government here would risk the consequences of a system which would drive the possessors of land from it after they had made it valuable and rescued it from the wilderness.”76 The most landlords could do was to manipulate it to suit their needs. It could be a useful tool in estate management especially when distraint and eviction were so expensive, cumbersome, and ineffective. Landlords, for example, had security for arrears as long as tenants could sell their leasehold, and they could be rid of unwanted tenants if they let them sell their interest even where they legally had none.77 Finally, landlords were motivated by a combination of self-interest and humanity. In a rare example of correspondence over the sale of a lease, we see one landlord carefully weighing his financial interests against considerations of justice, social pressure, and community interests – a sort of moral economy at work. Tenant Robert Finnegan had leased a lot on Amherst Island for more than twenty years. When he drowned sometime around 1855, the issue of selling the lease arose. Major Maxwell, an absentee Irish landlord, had only recently become the island’s proprietor and hoped to sell the freehold to tenants. He was familiar with the practice of selling leases in Ireland and forbade it on his estates there. Had he been able, he would have ended the practice on his newly acquired Canadian estate. Finnegan had no legal right to sell his lease as it had expired and he had been living at will. But such sales had been tolerated by the previous owner. Already a contest to buy the lease was brewing so that the price had reached three hundred pounds, or ninety-two percent of the tax assessment value of the farm. Maxwell’s agent on the island felt that this would be a crippling amount for a new tenant to bear and that it was “out of all reason,” but his solicitors warned him to keep his tenants happy or they would strip the land and leave. In the end, Maxwell asked his agent to do what he thought was best for the property but also just. As a result,
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the administrators of the Finnigan estate sold the lease to James Finnigan, a relative with a large family who already lived on the island. He paid only half the market price for the lease and received in return possession of the farm with its improvements. He was not given another lease, however, but was to occupy at will. Justice to the late tenant was served as the farm and improvements stayed in the family. Justice to the local community was attained, at least in part, by recognizing local practice. And the property was protected from being stripped by an outgoing tenant, exhausted by an impoverished incoming tenant, or left vacant as tenants who lost confidence in the market for leases sold theirs and moved away.78 When one considers that the sale of leases, which involved so much property and such high sums, was carried out without any legal guidelines or written rules of procedure, it is truly a remarkable phenomenon. Equally fascinating is how tenants were able to use their leasehold interest in their strategies to achieve long-term family goals in much the same way that owners used their freehold interest. They were able to make equally complicated and varied dispositions but with less formality and expense. They speculated in the leasehold market. They used their leasehold interest as collateral. They assigned part or all of their leasehold interest to deal with financial and family troubles. Such actions suggest that tenants viewed their property as a commodity, a form of wealth that could be exchanged in the marketplace. But they also viewed it as propriety, a means to create the kind of society where kin could reside near each other in comfort and security.79 They participated in the land market in a liberal way but for reasons that often had their basis in the family economy. They supported the next generation by willing the lease or through pre-death transfers of the lease. They even, on occasion, employed their leased lots for the purpose of maintenance agreements to support the elderly. In short, the ownership of a leasehold gave tenants the same sort of flexibility in dealing with their affairs that freeholders had. The frequency of sales and the involvement of well-known speculators in the leasehold market indicate that tenants speculated in leases; they waited until their property rose in value, then sold their interest and left to do the same again elsewhere, or invested their profits in freehold property. It might be argued that in the early years the value of land rose so fast that there were greater profits to be had in speculation than in farming itself. Sullivan reported in 1837 that clergy reserve lessees throughout the province played at “leap-frog” with their land, convert-
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ing their labour into liquid capital and then moving on.80 The same was true on private estates with long leases. On Amherst Island, most of the original lessees had sold their leases by mid-century and with their acquired capital and knowledge moved elsewhere to buy. They were replaced by new settlers whose strategy was much the same: to make all they could on their leasehold interest and then become freeholders.81 William Leslie’s son put the object quite succinctly in 1837 when he urged his father to hold onto his lease of one hundred partially cleared acres on the Lower Indian Reserve in Moore Township, Western District, as the “property will become more valuable on account of the rail road.”82 In just two years the lease had been sold twice, first for twentyfive pounds in 1835, then for seventy-five pounds in the following year.83 If the timing and conditions were right, lessees could make a considerable profit as others had done before. A leasehold interest could also be deployed to create a stable, even permanent farm existence. Loans from private individuals could be secured using the leasehold interest as collateral.84 Certainly, being able to deploy one’s leasehold interest in times of financial difficulty was invaluable. A wide variety of arrangements demonstrated the varied utility of a leasehold interest and the ingenuity of lessees. When Woolmer Cubitt of Darlington Township fell into financial trouble in 1834, he convinced Edward Gibson to buy his clergy reserve lease for two hundred pounds for a three-year period, after which, Cubitt promised, he would buy it back for two hundred and fifty pounds plus improvements. Obviously he expected that selling the lease would give him the extra money and time to sort out his problems.85 It often made more sense when money was needed to sell only the lease to the uncleared portion of the lot and keep the “working farm” for one’s own use. When Ebenezer Sammis of Cramahe Township, the father of seven small children, could not afford the rent increase on his twohundred-acre clergy reserve, he assigned twenty-five acres south of the “Crick” to William Kelly for the price of half the rent.86 By assigning only part of his leasehold interest to another, Ebenezer avoided the trap of mounting arrears, salvaged the family farm, and put his boys back on the track of someday owning land of their own. As noted above, leaseholders, in much the same manner as freeholders, were able to hand over their property rights to the next generation in pre-death transfers of the lease. Evidence has survived of ten predeath transfers in Cramahe Township spanning the period 1826–60. Up until the mid-1840s, the transfer of a lease between generations
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7.4 Ebenezer Sammis’s assignment of his clergy reserve lease, the portion “South of the Crick more or less” for the price of half the rent, 1840. (Archives of Ontario, Crown Land Paper, Cramahe Township Papers, rg1, a-iv, Reel ms-658, no. 1062)
usually went unrecorded.87 Thereafter various formal legal instruments were used, such as assignments or quit claims. Five formal pre-death transfers of a lease exist and in each case a son purchased the lease from a father in his sixties for a minimal price of anywhere from two to eighteen percent of the assessed value of the property.88 There seems to have been a discount on the usual price for leases for intrafamilial transfers. Like freeholders, therefore, leaseholders were able to hand over the responsibilities of active farming to their children within their own lifetime and watch them benefit from, and build upon, the improvements they had made on the land. In the case of Jeremiah Dickinson and family, Cramahe Township, one lease was transferred down three generations such that each generation benefited from the rights it conferred and from the labour of the preceding generation. The Dickinsons first inhabited their clergy reserve lot as squatters in 1817; nine years later Jeremiah informally transferred his interest in the lot – and what was now fifty cultivated acres – to his son, Theron. Over the next several years the farm supported Theron, his growing family, and his two aged parents. Together they cultivated another fifteen acres and built a one-storey frame house. By 1830
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Theron had been successful in getting a lease for the property, and before his death eight years later he had bequeathed the lease in a formal will to his eldest son, Erastus. By then the property was described as an “excellent farm” with improvements worth £195 including a house, a barn, and one hundred and twenty cleared acres.89 Besides being sold, transferred, and bequeathed, a lease could be used as the basis for a maintenance agreement. Shortly before he died, David Bradd, Sr, of Cramahe Township made out an assignment of his clergy reserve lease to his youngest son and namesake, David, upon his death. David, Jr, was to pay fifty pounds for the leasehold and support his mother.90 These pre-death transfers of land between generations were the most likely means for freeholders to keep the family on the farm over the years and thus maintain continuity.91 Clearly, owning a lease gave tenants the same kind of options and continuity. Though David, Jr, never had cause to sell his lease and profit in that manner, his title to the land and the family’s improvements allowed him to provide for his family and gave him the “favour” of eventually buying the freehold of the farm.
Elsewhere in the nineteenth century customary rights became highly politicized as landlords tried to take them away and tenants resisted. The compromises that were eventually reached reflected the general movement in land law over the nineteenth century towards something more definite and less accepting of vague traditional customs. In New Zealand, the British Isles, and parts of the United States compensation for unexhausted improvements became law. In Ireland, England, and Wales various forms of tenant right were defined and legally recognized. In the process these old “living laws” were reduced to their tangible aspects (i.e., measurable improvements), and those aspects that did not fit as well with the dominant discourse – that is, the claim to land because of continuous possession and past productive labour – were sidestepped.92 No concerted public movement to entrench customary rights emerged in Upper Canada. A number of reasons may account for this. The generally buoyant economy may have kept tensions over relevant practices to a minimum and encouraged their tacit acceptance. Landlords were not a cohesive or particularly powerful group. Their diverse backgrounds, high turnover, occupational pluralism, and often shortlived status as landlords may have hampered their interest in land
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reform. Those who were concerned about the potentially contentious issues of emblements, improvements, and pre-emption incorporated them into written leases that the courts would uphold. Tenants did not collectively mobilize to defend their time-honoured practices, they just continued to honour them, giving them the force of general acceptance. What happened after the period under study is more difficult to discern. The financial significance of selling improvements and leases may have declined. After all, the conditions of early settlement that had given tenants leverage and made such practices relevant were largely over by the 1870s. Private landlords rarely rented out their land on long leases any more, which diminished the chances of making big gains on an uncollected rental. Concerning the sale of improvements, it must be said that by the 1870s the land had already been cleared and the big buildings had already been erected. Tenants were unlikely to be “making the farms” as they had in the early years of settlement and hence did not have as much claim to the increase in property value. Though there would always be improvements to make, tenant labour was less transforming. Furthermore, the clergy reserves technically ended in 1867 and it is likely that those few people who still held leases had difficulty getting much for their leasehold. The system that had given confidence and certain privileges to buyers was now dismantled. By the end of the nineteenth century it may have been difficult to find fresh tenants who could afford tenant-right prices and were willing to be tenants instead of pursuing expanding opportunities in other sectors of the economy. As we have seen, however, customary rights and the selling of leases certainly played an important role in the lives of individual farm families and the settlement of the countryside before the 1870s. Owning improvements and a leasehold interest gave tenants the incentive to be good farmers and allowed them the flexibility to provide for their families as they saw fit. It held out the opportunity to climb the agricultural ladder to freehold status and accomplish the same goals as real owners. The customary and legal rights of tenants also helped transform the economy and the landscape. Selling the lease was, in effect, a secondary commercialized land system – an exchange of commodified tenancies, part of the developing market economy.93 R.B. Sullivan was only too aware of this important fact. By the 1830s the economy of Upper Canada had become dependent to a considerable degree on the confidence and capital these customary and legal rights gave settlers. Tenants relied on the ability to sell their rights to convert the fruits of their
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labour into liquid cash in order to become freeholders in the back settlements. Newly arrived immigrants needed the opportunity to purchase the right to partially improved farms at a moderate price and thereby avoid the perils and demands of an unfamiliar frontier. Thus, these rights brought settlers, old and new, experienced and inexperienced, together in a mutual dependence that was essential to the continuum of land settlement and social mobility in Upper Canada.94 As long as nothing was done to disturb the operation of such rights, a secure environment existed in which the enterprise, experience, and ambition of a significant portion of the population – tenant farmers – were realized.
heir amilies, Lives and Agricultural Practices
8 Their Farms, Families, and Agricultural Practices
Charles Fiddick probably had cause for reflection on 27 June 1842 as he contemplated the census taker’s visit. How did he assess himself as an agriculturalist? The census taker was working his way eastward down the main road out of Colborne. Before he got to Fiddick’s, he stopped at John Garbutt’s. Mr and Mrs Garbutt, along with their child, an elderly male relative, and a female servant, had been the Fiddicks’ neighbours for five years and raised mostly oats, potatoes, and sheep on their sixty improved acres. On the other side of the Fiddicks were John McFall and his wife, now in their sixties, who over a period of ten years had improved ninety acres upon which they grew a wide variety of crops and raised twenty-three head of cattle. Across the road, the newly married Reuben and Eliza Crandell had just moved in and taken on the big responsibility of cultivating one hundred and sixty acres of field crops. All the Fiddicks’ neighbours lived in comfortable circumstances with frame houses, one or two teams of horses, large improved farms, and property valued well beyond the township average. Charles Fiddick also had reason to be particularly pleased that year. Eight years earlier he and his wife had been landless. Now they and their eight children worked a farm of 405 acres of which 260 were improved. When the census taker laid out his large folio of columns to be filled, Fiddick was able to report production figures that would stand out as unusually large compared to others in the township. He listed fifteen hundred bushels of oats, twelve hundred bushels of potatoes, eighteen head of cattle, forty-two sheep, and twenty-four hogs. The Fiddicks and their neighbours were all tenant farmers: the Crandells had a share arrangement, the Fiddicks and Garbutts had short-term cash rental agreements, and the McFalls held a twenty-one year lease on Crown reserve land.1
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Examining the 97 tenants and 157 owners in Cramahe’s 1842 census, this chapter addresses two basic and interrelated questions. First, what kind of agriculture did tenant farmers practise? Immediately certain stereotypes come to mind. Were they grain growers ruthlessly exploiting the soil in order to pay rent, or were they slovenly marginal farmers eking out an existence with little concern for the future? It was noted earlier that, according to the dominant liberal ideology of landholding, owners make better farmers than tenants.2 Because their tenure is less secure, tenants are said to want to maximize their income over the short term. They are reluctant to invest in slow-yielding products such as livestock or in barns to protect that livestock, and equally reluctant to invest in the clearing of fields to extend cultivation, prefering instead to keep their assets as liquid as possible. By implication, their farms are more likely to suffer from disrepair, soil exhaustion, and low yields.3 It is assumed that tenants have less capital than owners and therefore invest less in improvements. Some scholars, attempting to test these assumptions, have compared the agriculture of tenants and owners with interesting results. Largely absent from their analysis, however, are the household economy and the terms of the rental contract.4 Tenant farming, like farming in general, was not a fully capitalist system.5 Tenants placed varied and complicated demands on their lands with a view to family security. The profitable sale of farm produce was just one of several considerations in their strategy; others included production for consumption, the number of dependents, the needs of different generations, and the available family labour supply. The unpaid work of women and children, for example, was crucial to the household economy.6 Women’s housework, food preparation, and childcare allowed men to work in the fields and their economizing and social networks provided a cushion in times of need. Women manufactured dairy products, cloth, and other items that provided for the family and augmented cash income. Through their visiting, care of the sick, letter writing, and entertaining they provided a web of social connections that could be called upon in times of need. Children helped where they were required and as their age, gender, and skill level permitted. At fourteen or even earlier, young men and women assumed the work of adults, enabling the family to clear more fields, harvest larger crops, and produce more goods for sale. Though the census only refers to the male household head, the quantities of produce it reports are clearly the result of a family enterprise. Some farm households enthusiasti-
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cally engaged the market and embraced the agricultural improvements of the era. Others were less engaged with the larger liberal project and instead produced what they consumed with little surplus, or combined farming with a trade or wage labour.7 Our understanding of household economies in Cramahe Township is limited because enumerators did not record the contributions to households of hunting, fishing, dairy production, gardens and orchards, the sale of logs and potash, off-farm work, or the work of women and children, but it does allow us to consider how the nature and composition of households may have affected people’s choice of rental contracts and what to grow. This brings us to the second question. To what extent did the rental contract affect agricultural practices? This chapter begins by comparing the agricultural behaviour of owners and tenants, then focuses on tenant farmers according to the three types of rental arrangements being offered by landlords in Cramahe Township – share, short-term cash rentals, and long leases (hereafter referred to as share, rent, and lease in the tables).8 One is struck by the range and similarity of experience. For example, tenants holding every type of rental contract appeared in all the same categories of farm size and improved acreage that owners did. In fact, one can easily argue that they were all more alike than different. Yet subtle differences do appear and it is the purpose of this chapter to understand them from the perspective of the rental contract, all the while acknowledging that the conclusions presented here are necessarily tentative. The census presents only a crosssection of the complex lives of tenants and has its limitations.9 Missing is information concerning their personal ability to manage their financial, family, and work commitments. Caught in time, the census tells us nothing about the changing balance of debt and the ability to pay.10 Some families, for example, in choosing a farm, may have taken on commitments that seemed reasonable at the time in proportion to the value of their land and the income it could generate. But that balance could alter. Despite its limitations, the 1842 census of Cramahe Township does indicate that different kinds of families, depending on their experience, capital, and labour, were attracted to different kinds of rental agreements. The rental agreement in turn influenced the family’s level of security, responsibility, incentives, limitations, and independence in running a farm. All these factors meant that farm families, depending on whether they were share tenants, short-term cash renters, or long leaseholders, sometimes made different farming decisions and ran different kinds of farms.
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8.1 The fertile gentle sloping land of Cramahe Township today. (Photograph by C.A. Wilson)
The 1840s were an era of farm making in Cramahe Township and throughout much of the southern parts of the province. Reporter Walter Crofton described it as a “good township” with many inducements for settlers, lumbering and farming forming the principal source of wealth. In 1841 lumber was conveyed to Cold Creek and then floated to the Trent River.11 By the 1860s teams hauled lumber on improved roads from as far away as Hastings into Colborne where an agent dealing in lumber, cordwood, and cedar posts shipped it to Oswego, New York. The lumber trade was lucrative for farmers as they cleared their land and provided a market for their horses, oats, potatoes, and pork.12 Land along the front concessions, with its gentle slopes and relatively stone-free, well-drained, fertile soil, was excellent for green crops and livestock. By the 1840s most of it was occupied and even those areas that had low water-holding capacity were proving good for growing fruit. Prospective settlers were informed that land in the centre and northeast of the township was similarly good. Here too, though the terrain was less flat, the soil was excellent for a wide range of agricultural uses and is still rated today as first- and second-class agricultural land.
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In the northwest, however, plains covered with stunted oak and bramble made it more difficult to produce good crops, and some parts were simply too irregular and steep to work easily. 13 Throughout the township, households were busy clearing fields, putting up buildings, and raising food. Some farm families were further ahead in the process of farm making than others, especially those along the Toronto-Kingston road, and the road running north from Colborne into Percy Township. In the front concessions, for example, improved acreage per farm averaged forty-one acres. There, both tenants and owners could be found with highly improved farms and apple orchards, for which the area later became famous.14 In the back concessions (concessions seven to ten), the average farm had twenty-five improved acres. Bush farms, those that were little more than clearings, were more often found here; cutting timber, rather than farming, was probably the main objective on a few of these lots. Established commercial farmers in the first concession and bush farmers in the back concessions were, however, in the minority. Most farm families in the township had two milk cows, two working steers they might use for meat, a few young cattle, pigs, sheep, maybe a horse, and enough cleared acres to raise wheat, oats, potatoes, and corn.15 Many individuals were new to the country and needed to acquire detailed local knowledge to take best advantage of circumstances. To educate farmers, the County of Northumberland Agricultural Society had been holding annual agricultural fairs, cattle shows, and ploughing matches since 1828. The best farms were reported to be experimenting with drainage; they had commodious and well-arranged barns, good stock, high yields, and gardens and orchards. These farms may have been using reapers, revolving hay rakes, and threshers as these new machines made their appearance in the county. But such farms were rare, and the men who belonged to the agricultural society were described by journalists as “gentlemen farmers” whose “club” had little of value to teach ordinary farm folk. The majority of farmers wanted to know how to construct and locate buildings for convenience and efficiency, whether to root out stumps or leave them to rot, when to cut a meadow, and how to cultivate various crops – in short, the rudiments of creating and running a farm. They had little use for the finer points of agricultural debate concerning pedigree bulls, drainage, and complicated crop rotations.16 The prevailing impression of farming, therefore, is one of considerable uniformity. But there were subtle differences. Tenure type, to a certain degree, helps explain these differences.
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comparison of owners and tenants Recent comparisons of owner and tenant agriculture in the nineteenth century do not reveal the stark contrasts posited by the liberal ideologues of landholding. Instead, the results are various and complicated. Case studies of Malden Township (Western District), Amherst Island, and Eastern Iowa, show that while tenant farms were noticeably smaller than owner-operated farms, tenants often had a greater percentage of their farms improved than owners, so that in the end tenants and owners were cultivating similar acreages.17 Tenants engaged in shortterm production, meaning that they showed a bias toward grains whose rewards could be reaped within four to six months, instead of livestock where profits took three to four years to materialize.18 But as Marr showed in his study of York County in 1871, differences between young tenants and owners in their twenties and thirties were very small and only grew greater with age.19 Tenants also were less likely than owners to invest in permanent structures, barns, houses, etc.20 Smaller farms, humbler dwellings, and a propensity for short-term production, however, should not be confused with inefficient or slovenly agriculture. Tenants’ production levels were often equal to owners’ levels, and in some cases tenants farmed more intensively, investing in more livestock, rotation crops, manure, and implements per acre than owners.21 In these instances they were clearly substituting capital in livestock and moveable goods, which were absolutely their own, for capital in land and maximizing income per acre in the process. Some contemporary observers noted that tenants could have laudable farm operations. The Township of Percy Farmers’ Club reported that Cobourg-area farms that had once been owned by starving farmers were now rented by tenants who were getting rich because they manured their land.22 The editor of the Canadian Agriculturalist and Journal admitted that he associated renting with mining the soil, but said that he had visited an excellent rented farm near Cobourg where this was not the case.23 In 1853, when John Lynch submitted his agricultural report for the County of Peel to the board of agriculture, he noted that most Old Country immigrants preferred leasing to purchasing land, adding that they were “not only much better farmers than the natives of this Province, but by preserving their means – for improving their farms, instead of exhausting it in the purchase of land – they are enabled to cultivate and stock their farms in a more advantageous manner.”24 William Micking, reporting from Welland County, went so far as
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to say that tenancy worked very well in some cases, so much so that the “tenant is observed to be more prosperous than the proprietor himself.”25 Certainly several Cramahe tenants were productive farmers and displayed an interest in the latest agricultural techniques and improvements. Albert Yerrington and Martin Keeler, for example, were members of the agricultural society, and George Walker came first in 1847 at the Northumberland County Agricultural Society Fair for his rams.26 Charles Fiddick, who opened this chapter, was director of the Cramahe Agricultural Society.27 Cramahe tenants in 1842 generally had less experience of farming than owners and different needs to consider. Tenant farm operators were younger than owners, less familiar with the agricultural conditions in North America, and more likely to have arrived in the province within the previous four years. They had fewer and smaller appetites to consider when planning their seeding and fewer grown children who could be called upon to help drive horses, plough, and harvest (Table 3.8). Furthermore, it was unlikely that they could afford to hire labour, and when they did hire, it was usually a girl to look after tiny children. The family’s stage in the life cycle, whether they were a young newly formed family or one of advancing maturity, experience, and wealth, was an important predictor of farm size. Given that tenants had smaller consumption requirements, less experience, fewer labour resources, and, one assumes, less capital, they tended to have smaller farms.28 On average, tenant farm families occupied 97.9 acres and owners 127.8 acres (Table 8.2). But it must be noted that nearly identical proportions of owners and tenants – half – had medium-sized farms of 70 to 169 acres. Tenants were only half as likely as owners to have larger farms of more than 169 acres and were more likely to have ones under 70 acres (Table 8.3). Tenants, therefore, had good-sized workable farm units. A farm of about 100 acres was a sensible size given the need for forested land to provide forage and fuel, and was in keeping with the provincial average.29 Concerning improved acreage, tenants had on average 31.8 improved acres, or 40.6 percent of their farm, and owners had 42.5 improved acres, or 38.5 percent of their farm (Table 8.2). Owners’ farms were fairly evenly distributed over a range of improved acreage categories from one acre to more than seventy-six acres. Tenants were also found in all categories but were overrepresented in those with one to thirty improved acres. Only 34 percent of tenants had more than thirty improved acres, whereas 66 percent of owners had over thirty improved acres (Table 8.5). Though tenant farms tended to have fewer
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improved acres, they were not relegated to the poor land in the third and sixth concessions but were spread throughout the township. If anything, they showed a slight tendency to be overrepresented near Colborne and Castleton and along the main road running through the township in the first and second concessions (Table 8.1, map 3.4).30 In fact most of the improved land in the first two concessions was held by tenants.31 Neither owners nor tenants chose to occupy poorly drained lots on the third and sixth concessions since they were not suitable for lumbering or cultivated crops; only wild grasses could survive there.32 Generally tenants and owners faced similar circumstances in terms of access to markets, roads, mills, and good soil conditions. Both owners and tenants ran diversified farming operations (Table 8.13). As elsewhere, tenants in Cramahe showed a bias, however, slight, toward crops. They were not, however, cash-crop wheat farmers. Tenants had less livestock per farm and a smaller percentage of farmland devoted to pasture and wildland than owners (Tables 8.7, 8.14, 8.16). They also had a slightly greater percentage of their farms in tillage, which they devoted to subsistence crops such as potatoes, corn, and some cash crops (Tables 8.7, 8.8). While the contrast between tenants and owners in Cramahe mirrors, to some degree, that found elsewhere, once we take the type of rental agreement into account, the contrast between tenant and owner fades in importance compared to the differences between share, cash rent, and long leaseholding tenants. In fact, we can make very little sense out of tenant farming without knowing something about the rental contract. Covenants, for example, were one component of the rental contract that might have influenced agricultural choices. The law decreed that, whether stated or not, it was implicit in all farm leases that tenants must use the land in a good husbandlike manner. Throughout the 1850s as the courts attempted to clarify property law, the interpretation of what “husbandlike” actually meant was made more specific and standardized. The clause was now interpreted to mean that tenants were required to keep and make use of all manure produced on the property, and that they could not cut down any fruit trees, or trees used to protect the house and other buildings. Long leases usually did not contain any further details regarding agricultural practices but shorter-term leases and at-wills tended to have additional stipulations. Landlords renting out on shares, for example, who were anxious to maintain high crops yields and the fertility of the soil, might insert clauses specifying that all noxious weeds were to be pulled, that ploughing was to be done to a
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certain depth, and that crops were to be rotated in a particular manner, or at least not sown in successive years on the same ground; landlords who wanted to encourage livestock farming might stipulate that all straw, cornstalks, and hay remain on the farm and not be sold or transported off it.33 Most knew, however, that when rents were low, land was abundant, the population scarce, and the food supply sufficient, detailed covenants would be ignored or the land might be left empty.34 Such covenants were also hard to enforce, as the tenant could only be evicted for breaking them if the lease stipulated explicitly that that was the case, and few leases did so.35 One might surmise, therefore, that most tenants made their agricultural choices with less regard for covenants stipulated in the rental agreement and more for the duration of the contract, the form of payment, the opportunities that land, labour, and markets provided, and the dictates of their family consumption requirements. These factors will be considered in what follows. By examining the correlation between the farm household, rental contract, and agricultural practice, we reach a better understanding of tenant agriculture.
share tenants Evidence from Cramahe suggests that share tenants’ agricultural choices were often determined by the fact that they were just embarking on their lives as a family: they were usually young Canadian or immigrant families, short on skills, land, labour, and capital. They tended to be from the United States or Canada and were therefore more familiar with farming on shares than immigrants from Great Britain would have been. They were likeliest to comprise small nuclear families with children for the most part under the age of six (Tables 3.5–3.9). Canadian-born Cornelius Huycke, who was in his late twenties, had only been operating a farm for a year before he contracted to work a forty-two-acre fully cultivated farm on the third concession on a two-third share arrangement. At the time, he and his wife had four children under the age of thirteen. Young, cash poor, and inexperienced, they found share renting attractive because it meant a smaller initial outlay and a better chance of avoiding costly mistakes. So instead of locking themselves into a fixed cash rental and shouldering all the responsibility of stocking and managing the farm, they chose a share arrangement whereby the landlord supplied the materials for farming,
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supervised the management of the farm, and received a portion of each year’s produce. In this manner, share tenants shared the responsibilities and risks associated with starting up a farm and reduced the chances of falling in arrears and being distrained or evicted. Another influential factor in their agricultural choices was the share contract itself. Though no written agreements for Cramahe’s fifteen share tenants have survived, the 1842 census tells us that seven rented on half shares where the landlord most likely supplied the land, and perhaps some of the stock, implements, and seed; three paid their landlord one-third of the produce and were responsible for supplying the seed, implements, a team, and any other livestock; and two paid their landlords two-thirds of the produce because he supplied everything but the labour. Share tenancies were usually contracted for one year and rarely more than seven years.36 The short-term nature of these tenancies affected agricultural decisions, as did the necessity of dividing the produce. Dividing the produce had at least four implications for agriculture. First, share tenants were attracted to highly improved farms whose produce, even when divided, would be enough to support their families.37 Second, share tenants were more grain-oriented than any other farmers since it was easier to divide wheat, peas, potatoes, oats, and hay each year at harvest time than to divide livestock, which was sold at long irregular intervals, or dairy produce, which was sold at short irregular intervals.38 Third, because landlords received rent in shares, they had a greater interest in controlling agricultural production than other landlords and directed and supervised farming more closely. Their leases were often the most detailed regarding agricultural practices. This was particularly true in the second half of the nineteenth century as mixed farming grew in popularity.39 By then, landlords frequently defined the number of acres to be seeded down in particular crops, the number of milk cows, horses, and other livestock allowed on the premises, and the number of times animals were to be bred.40 Fourth, share tenancy provided tenants with a greater return on their labour if they engaged in extensive rather than intensive agricultural production. Hay and grain production did not require much labour compared to dairy, which required long hours of work, while the produce still had to be divided with the landlord. Grains were therefore attractive to share tenants. Share tenants had a greater percentage of their farm improved than all other tenants. Though they had the smallest farms (87.9 acres when the township average was 116 acres), they had an average
8.1 Distribution of Land Held on Shares in 1842, Cramahe Township. ao, Assessment of 1842, and lac, Canada West Census 1842 for Cramahe Township.
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of 64.3 percent of their acreage cleared, fenced, and ready for cultivation (Table 8.2). This was well over the township average of 39.3 percent. Nearly half of them had farms such as the Huyckes’ that were fully improved, an unusual situation throughout the province (Table 8.4). In the first three concessions, they had an average of 67.8 improved acres each, nearly double that of owners in the same location. Not surprisingly, share tenants tended to be located in the front concessions (map 8.1).41 The supply of farmer landlords anxious to let improved farms was greatest there and tenants interested in a share arrangement wanted land in a high state of cultivation. Throughout the township, share tenants had the greatest number of improved acres per person. Each member of a share tenant family had on average 11.4 improved acres, whereas other households in the township had on average 7.5 improved acres per person (Table 8.2). Their choice of highly productive farms made sense when most were paying half of their produce to their landlord, leaving them with only 5.7 improved acres per person after the rent had been paid. Fortunately, the remaining food went further as they had younger dependents, hence smaller appetites, to satisfy. Share tenants in Cramahe were primarily tillage farmers. Economists theorize that they were the most likely to grow grain, so we might expect them to be wheat farmers as this was the province’s main cash crop. Surprisingly, however, they devoted the smallest percentage of their improved acreage to wheat of all tenure types, and half of them grew no wheat at all in what was known to be a wheat-producing county (Tables 8.9–11). There are a few reasons for this. Wheat grew best on newly cleared land, not on the established fields that they tended to occupy, and it was unreliable compared to other crops. Oats, not wheat, were preferred by share tenants who, living close to town, likely found a ready market for it in the lumber trade as horse feed (Table 8.12). In other townships where lumbering was less pronounced, wheat may have been more important to share tenants. Instead, in Cramahe Township, they devoted a greater percentage of their improved land to buckwheat and peas than any tenure type (Table 8.10). These were the crops that farmers throughout the province preferred to grow on older clearings.42 It is possible that they planted them in rotation to replenish the soil and maximize yields, as this was recommended by agriculturalists. Share tenants were unlikely to exploit their soil as most were related to their landlords and might inherit the land they tilled.43 Share tenants also devoted fewer of their
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improved acres to potatoes and corn than other tenure types, but then these were considered to be food for humans, cows, and pigs, and share tenants had small families and very few animals to feed. In fact, share tenants had hardly any livestock. They were young families that had not acquired the capital to invest in livestock, which was a longterm interest, vexing to manage jointly and divide, and difficult to liquidate when the share lease ended. Livestock also required specialized skills that the young or newly arrived farmer did not always possess. Moreover, most share landlords supplied only land and implements, not livestock, which further dampened the tenant’s incentive to spend much effort on livestock.44 Thus, they had less livestock per farm and per improved acre than any other tenure type and sometimes had no livestock at all (Tables 8.14, 8.15, 8.17). Most had a few cows and pigs for domestic consumption but were less apt than other farmers to invest in horses of their own, or in wasteland for sheep. Nor did share tenants generally produce wool, linen, or flannel, though close to half produced a small quantity of fulled cloth, which was common amongst all groups (Tables 8.18–8.20). Weaving was women’s work and part of the complex and varied way families supported themselves.45 With houses full of tiny children to keep them busy, few female share tenants could afford the time required for the production of these labourintensive commodities. Joseph Evans and his wife farmed seventy fully improved acres on a half-share basis near Colborne. They grew a wide range of field crops with the greatest production in oats (four hundred bushels) and potatoes (five hundred bushels). With six children under the age of thirteen, a frame house, and a small garden to maintain, Mrs Evans had no extra time to attend to dairy, cloth, or maple sugar production. In many regards, share tenants in Cramahe township farmed in accord with conventional views about share farming; the lack of labour and capital, the need to share risk and produce, and limiting covenants all encouraged them to be tillage farmers and discouraged livestock farming beyond their immediate consumption needs. But were they less diversified than other farmers? Not really. Were they poorer? Maybe in appearance. They lived in the poorest accommodation; more than three-quarters had dwellings that were too shabby to be rateable and well below the average housing conditions of most other owners and tenants (Table 8.22). None of them had servants (Table 8.21). Concerning the most fundamental form of livestock – pigs – sixty percent owned too few to meet subsistence requirements (Table 8.17).
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But such appearances might be misleading. It must be remembered that share tenants had the greatest number of improved acres per person and their strength lay in their ability to grow oats for market (Table 8.12). In sum, then, their farms could not sustain a growing family over the long term, but as a short-term arrangement they could provide young families with a place to live and an income until such time as they moved on or inherited.
cash renters Forty-six Cramahe households rented for a short term, usually less than seven years, and paid an annual cash rent to their landlord. Cash renters usually had fewer landlord-imposed limitations upon their agricultural choices than share tenants and were simply required by law to farm in a good husbandlike manner. Their agricultural choices were influenced by the need to feed themselves and grow a reliable cash crop with which to pay the rent. Therefore, like share tenants, they were attracted to improved farms and for that reason were overrepresented on some of the most valuable and improved property in the front concessions (Table 8.4, map 8.2). They were positioned between share and leaseholding tenants in terms of farm size and improved acreage. Their average farm size was 94.5 acres with an average of 31.7 improved acres, or forty percent of their farm (Table 8.2). Though they were represented in all farm size and improved acreage categories, they tended to have larger and more valuable farms than share tenants (Tables 8.3, 8.5). In fact, on average they had the most valuable farms in the township. They had a higher assessed value per cultivated acre (£3.47) than freeholders (£3.22). This was in part a reflection of their location on the good-sized well-improved farms of the front concessions. They were far more likely to live in frame houses or even two-storey houses than all other tenure types except owners and far less likely to inhabit log houses or shanties than other tenure types (Table 8.22). This picture of relative comfort is augmented by the fact that nearly fifteen percent of renting households had live-in servants (Table 8.21). Cash renters in Cramahe Township were also positioned between share tenants and leaseholders in terms of their stage in the family life cycle. They were older and more experienced than share tenants. Since many had come from overseas, their households were often more complex, containing grown children, grandparents, and other relatives (Tables 3.6–3.9). For all these reasons, they may have preferred the rela-
8.2 Distribution of Rented Land in 1842, Cramahe Township. ao, Assessment of 1842 and, lac, Canada West Census 1842 for Cramahe Township.
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tive freedom from landlord supervision that cash rents offered, and the knowledge of exactly what rent they would have to pay.46 Owing to their obligation to pay a cash rent and their short-term tenure, economic theorists usually depict renters as grain farmers. Renters in Cramahe Township did show a preference for tillage crops but they were not avid wheat farmers compared to owners, who were much more apt to grow wheat (Tables 8.9–8.11). Instead renters were diversified when it came to crops, growing a wide variety to feed their families, nourish their livestock, and sell (Table 8.13). They were also more likely to have livestock than share tenants but, for the same reasons as share tenants, had less livestock than deeded owners (Tables 8.14, 8.15). The cows, pigs, and sheep they raised were mostly for their own domestic needs, though renters, more than share tenants, showed a slight preference for hogs. Fifteen percent of them had more than ten hogs, beyond the number required for subsistence (Table 8.17).47 Many cash renters were from the British Isles where hogs were often kept to pay the rent. Hogs took one and a half years before they were ready for marketing, so they were a viable form of investment for renters, and they required no pasture land. Living as many renters did close to Colborne, oats and hogs seem to have been important cash products, both finding merchants in town who were ready to sell them to the lumber trade.48 The Fiddicks, who opened this chapter, were obviously producing for the local market. In 1842 these cash renters raised fifteen hundred bushels of oats, more oats than anyone else in the township, twelve hundred bushels of potatoes, three hundred bushels of peas, and twenty-four hogs. Such amounts were well beyond subsistence requirements. Their wheat production for that year of only one hundred bushels seems small in comparison. Cash renters, therefore, had more diversified farms than one might expect, growing a broad range of crops and livestock for domestic consumption. Did fixed cash rents, then, produce more prosperous tenants and better agriculturalists than share agreements? It might be argued that cash renters could realize higher profits and higher levels of agricultural productivity in two ways.49 First, tenants with cash agreements paid lower rents than share tenants. In cash rental agreements tenants contributed everything but the land and took on the responsibilities of farm management and the risks associated with insecure weather and crops. For their efforts they paid less in the form of rent to their landlord whose duties were very small. Share tenants, in contrast, paid higher rents because their landlord often supplied the land and much
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of the stock, seed, and implements. Share landlords also assumed the responsibilities of management and marketing, had greater costs of negotiation and enforcement, and shared the risks of misfortune.50 Second, cash renters theoretically had more incentive than share tenants to make improvements and farm in a good husbandlike manner so as to increase their agricultural productivity. Cash renters usually owned everything except the property and could therefore profit from the use and eventual sale of improvements. In the meantime, they had more incentive to manure, rotate crops, and invest in nonland inputs such as livestock and equipment because all additional produce was theirs and did not have to be shared with the landlord. A tenant paying a cash rent, therefore, was more likely to practise good agriculture and be prosperous. Just who was more productive and the better agriculturalist, however one defines that, is far from clear when we turn to the evidence. Winters, in his study of Iowa tenant agriculture, found cash and share tenants more alike than different in their agricultural choices and productivity.51 The 1842 census does not allow us to measure productivity or yields (bushels per acre) for Cramahe Township. On the one hand, cash renters who had more livestock per improved acre were more likely to manure their land, if they chose to haul and spread it. A greater percentage of them also operated more diversified operations and were less likely than share tenants to be growing only corn and potatoes (Table 8.13). On the other hand, share tenants showed a greater propensity to grow rotation crops. Furthermore, if we use the number of improved acres per person as a measurement of how likely they were to be able to feed themselves, then share tenants come out on top. Even when the number of improved acres is divided in two to take into account a half share, share tenants still emerge with a total of 5.7 improved acres per person. Cash renters had an average of 5.6 improved acres per person and still had to pay the rent out of this. But one hastens to add that such an advantage for share tenants was small indeed when the township average for improved acres per person was about seven acres (Table 8.2). Differences between cash and share tenants may therefore have been very slight. It is difficult to pick out a cash-renting family as an example of the aggregate data. Individual renters deviated considerably from the numerical average. Some cash renters, such as the Fiddicks, clearly welcomed the incentives that cash renting offered. Their production figures equalled or excelled the township average in nearly all categories.
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Likewise, Philip Ainsworth, with properties in the first three concessions totalling 320 acres, had a frame house, another two-storey house, a large herd of twenty-nine cows, and was assessed at £280. Albert Yerrington, near Colborne, was similarly valued by the assessor at £268 and had considerable material wealth and social prestige. He lived in a two-storey house with four fireplaces and hired five servants; he had the only fancy carriage in the township and was a member of the agricultural society. These families were clearly operating well above subsistence and doing much better than the average owner in terms of agricultural production and signs of visible wealth. But more than half (52.2 percent) of all cash renters lived on the edge with no more than four improved acres per person (Table 8.6). These individuals may have taken on large unimproved farms throughout the township, or very small ones close to town, neither of which provided enough improved land to be secure. Samuel and Sarah McCracken, for example, rented one hundred acres on the fourth concession but had only two cultivated acres. The only way they were able to support their two small children was by farming that acreage intensively or working for others. They planted subsistence crops of oats, corn, and potatoes and had one cow for milk. They used their two oxen to clear additional land and in the meantime produced as much wool and flannel from their seven sheep as possible and let their six pigs forage. They lived precariously from one season to the next. By 1847 they were renting a smaller and much more improved farm nearby.52
leaseholders As share and cash tenants had their own specific set of responsibilities, incentives, and choices reflective of their family circumstances and tenurial arrangements, so too did the thirty-three families with long leases in Cramahe Township. They had twenty-one-year leases and therefore, in theory, much greater incentive to invest in the long-term interests of their farming operation than share tenants or cash renters. Livestock, buildings, and other improvements took on greater significance. Moreover, though all leaseholders had the right to sell their lease and improvements, those with long leases had the greatest incentive to select unimproved land and reap the potential financial reward that would come from years of improvement and increasing property values. Because of their long-term interest, they farmed more like owners than tenants. To be more precise, leaseholders and mortgaged owners were
8.3 Distribution of Leased Land in 1842, Cramahe Township. ao, Assessment of 1842, and lac, Canada West Census 1842 for Cramahe Township.
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almost indistinguishable in their farming operations since both had a long-term interest in the land and an annual payment to meet. Generally leaseholders were Canadian- or American-born; compared to other tenants they were further along in the family life cycle: they were older, they had fewer dependent children, more children of working age, and additional relatives (Tables 3.5–3.9). Having grown children encouraged them to select property containing large tracts of uncleared land in need of chopping and fencing. When John McFall signed his lease in 1833, he was in his fifties with eight children, six of whom were over the age of sixteen. His three older sons likely helped in clearing the land and thereby expanded the family operation. Leaseholders also had the largest tenant farms, on average 110 acres. They were more apt than cash renters or share tenants to have farms of 170 acres or more (Tables 8.2, 8.3). Most of their land, however, was unimproved. Though their average improved acreage of 30.6 acres was very similar to the figures for renters and share tenants, they had much larger tracts of unimproved land. On average, sixty-nine percent of each farm was still bush. Not surprisingly, given the distribution of reserves, they were scattered throughout the township and slightly overrepresented in the back concessions where farms clearly “in the making” were still in abundance (map 8.3). In most of the above characteristics, leaseholders had more in common with mortgaged owners than with other tenants. In age, nationality, household size, and work-age children, leaseholders and mortgaged owners were very similar (Tables 3.5–3.9). Concerning their farm size and the state of cleared acres and buildings, they were almost identical (Tables 8.2, 8.22). Likewise in their production choices, leaseholders were like mortgaged owners. Livestock was important to them. Their age, experience in the province, and long-term interest may all account for their ability to invest in livestock. On average the numbers of cows, horses, pigs, and sheep they had per farm and per improved acre were similar to those of other tenure types, save for share tenants (Tables 8.14, 8.15). Leaseholders, however, had considerably more sheep than other tenants because they had more pasture and wasteland for grazing, and more grown children to process the wool. They also had the requisite forest land, as well as the labour and expertise, to produce honey, maple sugar, cloth, and wool (Tables 8.18–8.20). Though their production did not equal the production of freeholders, it was, once again, almost identical to that of mortgaged owners. When it came to tillage crops, leaseholders showed a slight preference for
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wheat over other tenants who preferred oats (Tables 8.11, 8.12). Wheat thrived on their newly cleared land, and they may have been more willing than short-term cash renters to risk the vagaries of wheat yields since the reserves had the lowest rents and were notoriously lenient in their rent collection.53 Leaseholders grew other crops but were somewhat less diversified in their crop production than renters and owners (Table 8.13). This may have been a reflection of their location in the backwoods on farms where cultivated land was still scarce and rotation crops had not been integrated into their farming systems yet. The other crops they grew, namely, corn and potatoes, were clearly associated with “bush” agriculture. Leaseholders put a greater percentage of their land into these two crops, more than any other tenure type, and nearly twice the township average (Table 8.10). Besides being crops associated with bush farming, corn and potatoes fed their numerous pigs and cows. Leaseholders may have been better equipped agriculturally to provide for their families than other tenants. They manufactured more nonagricultural goods, raised more livestock, and presumably produced more dairy products than others. The McFall family, for example, grew wheat, barley, oats, corn, buckwheat, and potatoes, they had twenty-three cows, five horses, and twenty-two hogs, and they produced fifty-two yards of linen. Leaseholders also had lower rents and the right to sell their lease and improvements. In sum, they had more sustainable agricultural operations, providing them with greater security to survive a crop failure or bad prices, grow most of what they needed to feed their families, and improve their farms. Indeed, leaseholders possessed as much agricultural opportunity and security as mortgaged owners.
Tenancy was not inherently exploitive, slovenly, poor, or inefficient. It did not, as some were wont to argue, sabotage agricultural development and retard the economic growth of local communities or the province at large. Most tenants had good-sized diversified farm units similar to those of owners only smaller. In fact, the similarity in the range of experience is striking for all tenure types, but census figures do suggest some subtle differences. Families made decisions on several different levels, assessing their consumption needs and the available labour and taking calculated risks regarding the local environment not only in terms of what the land could produce but also the market for agricultural produce. The rental contract was another factor to con-
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sider. Families depending on their stage in the family life cycle, their age, skills, and size were attracted to different kinds of rental contracts and those, in turn, affected their farming choices. Share tenants needed to divide their produce with the landlord. This meant that farms let on shares were usually extensively cleared, crop-oriented operations with little invested in livestock. The Crandells, at the beginning of the chapter, illustrate this point. Farming on shares was a workable short-term arrangement but not the best option for supporting a growing family over the long term. Cash renters, in contrast, had a fixed rent and fewer landlord imposed limitations. They had the incentive to improve their farms as all additional produce was theirs and did not need to be shared with the landlord. Many cash renters like the Fiddicks had valuable farms in the front concessions and raised diverse crops and livestock, selling their oats and hogs to pay the rent. But just as many lived on farms that would hardly have provided a living without supplemental income. In contrast, leaseholders ranked alongside mortgaged owners with their long-term interest and annual payment. Lengthy leases and low rents, like the McFalls’, provided leaseholders with the incentive to invest in livestock and buildings and to clear land. With larger than average farms, they could grow a wide variety of crops, keep livestock, and produce maple sugar, cloth, and wool, making them the most sustainable tenant farm operations. The differences between the farms of share tenants, renters, and leaseholders show how the agricultural hierarchy was not simply divided between owner and tenant but was finely graduated, complex, and based, in part, on the various arrangements that were negotiated within families and between landlord and tenant.
ons, heirSuccesses, Lives and Failures
9 Their Aspirations, Successes, and Failures
Although it must be admitted that tenancy was something less than freehold, a tenant’s life chances were not as bad as most ideologues of the nineteenth century would have claimed. Renting was often a temporary stage en route to ownership. Some tenants were able to buy land within their own communities, others left in pursuit of freehold status elsewhere. Stepping up from tenant to freeholder status was part of the “agricultural ladder” that many claimed existed for those with skills, resources, and character. Several scholars have used movement up the ladder as a test to determine whether tenancy was an oppressive or facilitating experience.1 In using the agricultural ladder as the sole measure of tenancy’s worth, however, we succumb to the nineteenthcentury liberal view that ownership was inherently better. The agricultural-ladder test implies, moreover, that those who did not climb the ladder failed and led inferior lives. This chapter examines the career paths of tenants in Cramahe Township, whether they remained as tenants, became freeholders or left. The evidence suggests that renting did not necessarily prevent farm families from enjoying a sense of economic advancement, security, community involvement, and belonging.
the agricultural ladder For some nineteenth-century thinkers, tenancy could be accommodated into a liberal new world but only if it was a temporary rung on the agricultural ladder to ownership. A tenant who became an owner exemplified the liberal creed of economic opportunity and progress. Some writers of immigrant guidebooks described tenancy as a temporary phenomenon, a sturdy rung on the agricultural ladder.2 To
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9.1 “Climbing the Agricultural Ladder.” The belief in an agricultural ladder persisted into the twentieth century.
convince their readers of this certainty, they provided specific examples of individuals who had climbed the ladder with spectacular success. Arthur Hardy and David Spence included several personal accounts of settlers in their Emigration: The British Farm Labourer’s Guide to Ontario (1880). Mr Daniel Osborne of South Dumfries, Brant County, for example, arrived in 1849 with only $6.50, worked as a farm labourer, then rented ever larger farms until he had saved enough to purchase. By 1880 he owned a fine farm of 330 acres, worth over thirty thousand dollars (six thousand pounds) and adorned with a newly constructed brick house worth another three thousand dollars.3 The
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County Atlases of Ontario, published between 1875 and 1905, also provide evidence of the agricultural ladder. Thirty-two volumes featuring forty counties celebrated the material achievements of years of effort and the liberal creed of progress. Settlers paid to have their biography, a portrait of themselves, or an illustration of their farm included. Most of those who wanted such publicity were highly successful farmers who owned their farms. Some, however, had previously been tenants and made sure that that was mentioned, to show just how far they had come.4 A moral message reflecting the ideology of ownership ran through these accounts. Only those tenants who already possessed the requisite qualities of freeholders – determination, a willingness to work hard, sobriety, etc. – could be expected to attain that elevated rank. As Daniel Osborne, a former labourer and tenant, then a wealthy farm owner in Brant County, pointed out, one needed only the drive to succeed by one’s own industry: “Any one who comes out here with health and determination to work hard and avoid drink need not fear making a good living and securing a comfortable home.”5 The notion that someone might attain a “stake in the country” by mining the land and moving about, characteristics associated with the stereotypical tenant, was not entertained. Exactly how one accumulated the skills and capital to climb the ladder was not always clear. The following account of a Scottish settler who arrived in Dundas in the early 1840s is worth quoting in full as it not only illustrates the usual “rags to riches” formula but unwittingly details how capital could be accumulated along the way. I landed in Quebec with my wife and family, and with seven sovereigns in my pocket – found my way to Glengarry where my brother-in-law resided, from whom I took a farm to work upon shares. He found me in seed, stock, and implements. I laid in a stock of provisions for the summer, and went to work with a good will, and with a cash capital of five shillings currency in my pocket. I had an excellent crop. I returned him first the seed, and then gave him one half of the remaining produce. My share gave me provisions for a year and something to spare. The following year I rented a small farm at £20 a year, where I remained three years with moderate success, at the end of that time I had provided myself with stock and implements. I next rented the farm which I now occupy, along with the adjoining one, at £33 per annum. At the end of three years it was offered for sale, I had no money to pay for it, but
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I judged that the land was good for the money. The boys were growing up to be men, I said to them that if they were industrious, we could pay for it; they said they would do their best. I bought it for £300, to be paid in 6 annual instalments of £50 each, with interest till paid for, and had a year to make the first payment ... We all set to work to clear up and improve the land; and now at the end of 10 years my whole farm is cleared and paid for ... My farm is worth to day in cash £1000, and I am out of debt. The older boys have left home and are doing well for themselves, the two youngest are with me, and work the farm, we manage every thing “within ourselves” and employ no hired labor.6 This Scotsman, relying on family connections and labour, slowly accumulated skills and capital so that when the opportunity arose he could take a calculated risk to meet the needs of his growing family and fulfill his own personal ambitions. Nonagricultural income could also assist in moving up the ladder, as John Gilmour, a weaver from Scotland, showed. He took a clearing lease on arrival in Ontario; for every acre he got five dollars and the use of the whole farm for ten years. He cleared land for potatoes and wheat, and once the sheep were shorn in the spring and the wool carded and spun, he busied himself at his loom and hired a man over the winter to help with further clearing. In a few years, he had a place of his own.7 The path to ownership was a varied and personalized one. It is easier to describe career paths than to evaluate them. Inevitably one is faced with the challenge of determining the aims of tenant farm families and the troublesome categories “success” or “failure.” Nineteenth-century liberal thinkers viewed independence and material wealth as the main aims, and their achievement as indicators of one’s success in life. Both were clearly associated with ownership; to remain a tenant implied failure. Attaining ownership status will be used as one measure of success in this chapter as it was so essential to nineteenthcentury ways of thinking about one’s place in the larger society. However, I move beyond the agricultural-ladder test and its win-or-lose framework to explore a wider variety of options and to see why, for example, farmers might choose to remain tenants for decades. I place considerable emphasis on rental contracts and the landlord-tenant relationship. I also consider the household economy, the labour of grown children, intergenerational relationships, nonfarm work, neighbourhood networks, and a sense of belonging. Finally, I look at the role
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of farm capital in decision making. Decisions to buy or move away or to stay put were sensitive to market forces and also synchronized to meet family circumstances and the needs of different generations. In this chapter I consider the standard, relatively straightforward measures of wealth – productive acreage, assessment values, house types, etc. – assuming that many tenants who never became owners aspired to the same sort of material improvements attained by the elite who spoke for them. It must be kept in mind that such measurements were relative: what to one person represents an unbearable or disappointing situation might be quite tolerable, even comfortable and promising, to someone else with different objectives and standards. I was reminded of this when reading a letter from William Courtnage to his brother and sister in England in 1837, five years after Courtnage arrived in the Niagara District. “I have got along pretty well since I have been here,” he said, and proudly elaborated that he was renting fifty acres and had acquired two cows and a waggon.8 I use other measures of success that assume that households might also have pursued goals that were less material and less easily quantifiable, such as finding security, establishing a home, and setting up future generations.9 Supporting these assumptions requires extensive research; the usual method of capturing tenants at one or two points in their lives and comparing the quantifiable census and assessment data is not sufficient. Instead, tenant farmers listed in the Cramahe Township census of 1842 have been traced backwards to their first appearance in the township records and forward to their last appearance. Where possible I have situated them within a multigenerational context; beyond cradle and grave. I have combined quantifiable data, genealogical research, and narrative accounts to recreate individual lives through time. In many cases, the details of these lives are more revealing than the aggregate data. Even such careful hands-on research has its limitations. What one can retrieve from the surviving sources is only a fuzzy impression, a selective compilation of surviving bits of information, often a very bland numerical image of what were complex lives shaped by family relationships, personal character traits, and experience. What is clear is that there was no one route to ownership. The vagaries of life – illness, accident, weather – could intervene at any point and challenge the best-laid-plans, and that is assuming that there were plans and a desire to own one’s own land. Finally, it must be admitted that success and contentment can never be measured in all their dimensions, economic, familial, and spiritual.
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stepping up the ladder The life histories of Cramahe tenants show that the agricultural ladder worked. Looking backward from 1842, the vast majority of Cramahe tenant farmers had first appeared in the records as newly arrived immigrants, sons of local farmers, or labourers before taking up rented land. This is what one would expect if the ladder was being used in a positive way. Only three had previously been landowners and therefore would appear to have fallen, or stepped, down the ladder (Table 9.1). Looking forward from 1842, the career paths of tenants have been broken down into five categories: those who moved up the ladder, those who left, those who remained tenants, those who moved sideways, and those who moved down the ladder. Those who clearly moved up the agricultural ladder were tenants who purchased property during their active family and farming lives. This category does not include tenants who may have purchased small town lots in their retirement.10 Of the ninety-seven farm tenants who appear on the 1842 census of Cramahe Township, twenty-seven (or 27.8 percent) became freeholders on their own productive farms.11 Nearly the same number, twenty-eight (or 28.9 percent) left the area. Sometimes transiency rates are higher when scholars include all those who disappear from one decennial census record to another, whether they actually moved away or died and disappeared from the records. Individual level tracing, where genealogical records such as graveyard inscriptions, civil records, and obituaries are used, removes much of this inflation. Thirty-two tenants (or 33 percent) remained in Cramahe Township as tenant farmers for the rest of their lives. One might safely say, therefore, that about onethird moved up the ladder, one-third moved away, and one-third stayed on as tenants. A much smaller number – five tenant families – moved in what I have labelled “sideways” career paths, that is to say they moved out of agriculture altogether and took up other occupations.12 Three gave up being tenant farmers and became farm labourers, which many would have considered a step downward on the agricultural ladder.13 Gordon Darroch and Lee Soltow argue that the hierarchy of landholding in Upper Canada was compatible with, indeed fostered by, a relatively open process of acreage acquisition over the life cycle of farming men. They found that ownership increased with age, reflecting achievement over the life cycle.14 Census and assessment records for Cramahe Township indicate that tenants who moved up the ladder did so in mid-life, the average age at purchase being
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forty-six, and were materially better off than those who did not move up the ladder. They were often leaseholders who had been in the township on a particular lot for years and had few fully grown dependents to support. In sum, they had had the time to amass some savings and benefit from their improvements. The distinguishing characteristics of these ladder tenants as found in the 1842 census provide some clues to their success. Canadian-born and Europeans were overrepresented, as were Protestants (Tables 9.7, 9.8), but ethnicity and religion were likely not as important in determining their careers as other factors. Tenants who became owners, for example, had better farms than those who did not move up the ladder. When compared with all tenants in 1842, regardless of their career path, those who moved up the ladder were more likely to have medium- to large-sized acreages, the average being 110.9 acres (Tables 9.2, 9.3). Total acreage, however, was not nearly as important an indicator of the ability to buy as improved land, or better yet, improved land per person.15 On average ladder tenants had 45.7 improved acres compared to nonladder tenants who had an average of 26.2 improved acres. Moreover, they had more improved acres per person in their household, nearly three times the average for those tenants who did not move up (Table 9.3). Their ability to acquire large improved farms may in some cases reflect greater initial capital, but their previous experience on the land was very similar to nonladder tenants (Table 9.1). What stands out is that they had higher clearing rates, nearly three times the average of newly improved acres per year than those who did not move up the ladder (Table 9.3). They were also far more likely than other tenants to have hired men. Seven families, or onequarter of the ladder families, had at least one hired man living with them who may have helped with the clearing (Table 9.4). Ladder tenants had invested a lot in other improvements too. Nearly half lived in frame, brick, or stone houses, at a time when only one-quarter of nonladder tenants had this comfort (Table 9.3). Ladder tenants also invested more in moveable goods and cash crops than nonladder tenants. Most tenants, regardless of their career path, grew a wide variety of crops to meet their family consumption and market requirements. Ladder tenants, however, had nearly twice the investment in livestock, wheat, and especially oats, which found a market locally in the timber trade. Livestock was their own to sell, take with them, or use as collateral on chattel mortgages. To a large degree, the chattel mortgage market was for tenants and gave them an opportunity
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to put their assets to good use. They mortgaged their livestock primarily but also crops, furniture, and agricultural implements. Such agreements were not clearly associated with hard times but were a way to raise shortterm capital, make improvements, or acquire barns or more livestock.16 Cash crops were also important in the process of moving up; ladder tenants produced far more oats and wheat than those who did not become owners (Table 9.5). Surpluses may also have been more abundant in these families, which were feeding half as many young men aged fourteen to twenty-nine as nonladder households (Table 9.4). Not surprisingly, their farms were assessed at nearly twice the value of those tenants who did not move up the ladder (Table 9.3).17 Ladder tenants can be described as persisters. They had been in the province longer than other tenants, and they rarely moved (Table 9.6). Forty-six percent of those who purchased property bought the farms they had first rented or occupied. Clergy reserve tenants were particularly persistent; five out of seven clergy reserve tenants who became owners or seventy-one percent, purchased their own clergy reserve lot (Table 9.9). Another thirty-five percent of ladder tenants bought property adjacent to their rented lots or just down the road and in this way maintained their community contacts and benefited from the improvements they had contributed to the neighbourhood. Persistence was often viewed as a measure of success, and with some reason. Experience on a particular piece of land, the accumulation of support networks, and investment in improvements may have contributed to the ability to buy and the desire to purchase the land a tenant had been renting. One central factor in understanding the career paths of ladder tenants is the nature of their rental agreements and their landlords. Fortyfour percent of ladder tenants in Cramahe Township were leaseholders on Crown and clergy reserves (Table 9.10). They had a long-term interest in their farms which encouraged good farming and improvements, and they had the right to sell their leases and use the profits to purchase elsewhere. They also had the right of pre-emption to convert their leasehold to freehold. Another twenty-four percent of ladder tenants rented from the township’s big landlords, especially Donald Campbell. In marked contrast to reserve lessees, these short-term cash renters moved around more and rarely bought the property they rented. They were more likely to move four or five times before they purchased property, in part because the landlord’s plans for the property and their desire to purchase did not usually coincide (Table 9.9).18 Twenty percent of the ladder tenants rented from relatives and in those
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cases the plans of landlord and tenant were more likely to merge as renting was often part of the gradual transfer of the farm from father to son. They were almost assured of one day becoming owners and could benefit from parental assistance in the form of shared labour and tools, and the ability to borrow money.19 Owners, and the ebb and flow of their land sales, could enhance or inhibit the opportunities for tenants to move up the ladder. Recent studies have shown that farm owners who kept their land off the market and held on to it for whatever reason reduced the amount of land available for tenants to buy, whereas owners who divided land through impartible inheritance or sold it increased the opportunities for newcomers to enter the ranks of owners. These kind of decisions made by farm owners intersected with broader economic and demographic circumstances such as rising prices and an aging population to create windows of opportunity when many farms were available for sale.20 Changing policies concerning the clergy reserves also influenced the opportunities to own. Aside from a period of confusion and uncertainty from 1839–45, lessees were able to purchase their lots.21 Preemption rights guaranteed them a private sale and avoided the public auction, which was the usual manner of purchasing a reserve. The price was reached through an official valuation of the lot that included the price of lands sold in the area, the nature of the soil, and the proximity to mills and markets and excluded lessees’ improvements such as cleared fields, fences, wells, and buildings. Buyers made an initial payment of ten percent of the purchase price and paid the remainder over nine years in annual instalments of ten percent with a six percent interest charge on the purchase price.22 Except for the period 1841–46, these had been the basic terms of purchase since 1827 and continued for decades. Not every leaseholder was anxious to convert to fee simple. While the lure of freehold was great, it was especially attractive to lessees who had made large-scale improvements that they wanted to preserve and protect, or who wished to obtain land for their sons. Reserve inspection documents are useful and very interesting in this regard. In 1840 the Crown reserves underwent inspection, and in 1844 the clergy reserve inspectors made their way along the concession roads in Cramahe Township.23 Each lot was visited, its occupant noted, and details recorded pertaining to the value of the land in its unimproved state, the improvements made, any mismanagement or depredation, the advantages of the location (miles to a mill, main road, etc.), quality of
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the soil, whether the occupier was willing and able to purchase, and the occupant’s own offer of what they would pay if they were to purchase. On average tenants were willing to offer fifty-eight percent of what the government wanted as its asking price.24 Twenty-three of these Crown and clergy reserve tenants (who were also on the 1842 census as tenants) had improvements valued at less than the land in its improved state; nine had made improvements worth more than the land in its improved state. The latter showed a greater propensity to buy their land.25 Usually those who opted for conversion were lessees who had made improvements, paid their rent regularly, could afford to buy, and whose leases were expiring. Those in arrears had to pay back rents with their first instalment on the purchase, a hefty lump sum that discouraged them from buying.26 Those with unexpired leases found it more sensible to continue making small rent payments until the end of their lease than paying the much higher annual purchase instalment. Like reserve tenants, those on Canada Company land had the opportunity to buy their lot when they were ready.27 If possible and desirable, tenants preferred to purchase their rented land to protect and benefit from the improvements they had built up over the years. Fully sixty-one percent of those who became freeholders in Cramahe Township purchased the land they were renting in 1842.28 When this was not possible, they tended to buy farms that were smaller than their former rented farms, though the percentage of cleared acreage varied.29 This pattern was found elsewhere.30 Most tenants probably could not afford to buy farms in the area as large as those they had rented. Evidence from other townships suggests that if they were unable to purchase farms in settled areas, tenants often moved into the backwoods where large unimproved lots could be had on more advantageous terms. About twenty-five leaseholding families from Amherst Island, for example, sold their leases and then purchased property in the Goderich-Dungannon area as their children reached marriageable age and it opened up for settlement in the 1840s.31 Similarly, William Johnston, who rented in Toronto Township, moved his several growing sons into the backwoods of Blanshard Township, Perth County, in 1842 where they purchased several lots and created what became known as the Dinsmore settlement.32 Moving to new areas that were opening up for settlement as children approached adulthood was a strategy employed by farm owners too.33 Individual-level tracing reveals various strategies and processes that tenants used to acquire freehold status that statistical comparisons do
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not. In 1830 George and Jane Walker moved directly onto an uncultivated two-hundred-acre clergy reserve, soon after arriving from England with three small children. George secured their tenure by signing a lease for twenty-one years and a few years later transferred the lease for part of the lot to another, since it was more than they needed. The striking fact, however, was that within twelve years they had turned the remaining 140 acres into one hundred cultivated acres of some of the best land in the township and had erected a frame house and barn, improvements that were valued at £120 by the clergy reserve inspector in 1844. George informed the inspector that year that he wanted to buy the lot. By then the Walkers had six children and were running an impressive mixed farming operation producing maple sugar, field crops, livestock, and cloth. Though from time to time they accumulated some arrears, these were soon looked after so that in 1853 they bought their clergy reserve and received the patent once all the instalments were paid. By the time George died in 1871 most of their sons had settled nearby – William had purchased a Crown reserve lot down the road, John had been granted fifty acres on the homestead, and George held a mortgage with his Dad. His daughters may have been in the neighbourhood too, though it is more difficult to follow them. Secure tenure, aggressive clearing to produce a productive farm unit quickly, the foresight to choose a good lot with long-term potential, and the ability to take advantage of the clergy reserve purchasing plan helped George in his aim to become a freeholder.34 In some ways, the Ventresses, like the Walkers, were typical ladder tenants – they were leaseholders with secure tenure and a good mixed farm, and they stayed put. Thomas and Millicent Ventress arrived from England in 1834 with two small children and moved directly onto a clergy reserve, signing a twenty-one year lease. It was broken sandy land but well located on the second concession close to the Toronto and Kingston Road, right next to a gristmill, and the lot already had fifty cultivated acres and a frame house. Over the next decade, the Ventresses made very few improvements and actually cultivated only thirtyfive acres. They had a small mixed farm that seems to have supported their growing family and Thomas supplemented their income by working as a joiner. In 1845 he sold the lease to forty-five acres of his farm and kept the remaining acreage, which contained most of his improvements. The additional income from his trade and from selling his lease as property values rose helped him in buying the clergy reserve in 1851. In 1861 he told the census taker that he was retired and that he
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and his son had the farm as partners. Two years later he sold the farm to his son.35 Family assistance was also important in acquiring freehold status. One-third of Cramahe tenants rented from relatives and may have been assisted by beneficial rental terms or eventual inheritance. Seth Burr Gould was not the only Cramahe tenant to rent for years until he eventually inherited his father’s farm. In the early 1840s Seth began renting all 150 acres of his father’s farm in the expectation that if he paid a minimal rent and looked after his parents in their old age, he would eventually inherit the whole farm. Described in his obituary as a man of “strong constitution and a large amount of determination,” Seth had very little education but many natural abilities and he quickly grew dissatisfied with his father’s farm. It had some good soil but was broken with low-lying wet areas and had been ravaged by a fire in 1832 that had destroyed all the property, which was worth nearly fifteen hundred dollars, three hundred bushels of grain ready for market, and his father’s lease to a neighbouring clergy reserve. With no insurance, the process of rebuilding had been costly and Seth yearned for better land and different surroundings. In 1845, recognizing his growing restlessness, his father sold him one hundred acres of the farm, which contained about fifty cultivated acres. By 1850 Seth had purchased another two fifty-acre lots nearby and inherited another fifty acres from his father. His household contained his own family, two extra children who were relatives, and two labourers. At last, in 1863, at the age of forty-seven, he was able to fulfill his dream of moving off the home farm. That year he exchanged farms with Isaac Welton on the eighth concession and remained there for the rest of his days. His obituary stated that “he enjoyed much prosperity and was regarded as one of the most successful farmers in the township.” His will, signed in a shaky hand, left the property to his granddaughter and her husband who had been living next door for some years. An inventory of his real and personal estate, valued at $9,409, suggests that at the age of seventy-nine Seth no longer had many implements or farm goods but had acquired a comfortable sum in cash, debentures, and promissory notes.36 Those who could not rely on family had a variety of other ways to move up the ladder. Gilbert Weller combined various occupations and aggressive resource exploitation to rise to owner status. On first arriving in the township in 1840, he leased a clergy reserve east of Castleton, then he rented what would become his base property for the next several years, a lot just west of the town where he lived with his wife
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and children and two servants. From 1842 to 1850 he seems to have rented and leased various additional lots, usually large expanses of wildland surrounding Castleton where he exploited the timber resources, sometimes calling himself a lumberman and other times a farmer. At varying times throughout the 1840s he rented as many as four hundred and fifty acres of wildland. He seems to have taken advantage of the brisk timber trade in many ways, not only supplying timber but also setting up by 1845 as an inn and tavern keeper. In 1850 he gave up his tenant farmer-lumberman status and became the freeholder of the Castleton Hotel.37 Julius and Almira Ives provide a most intriguing case. They were quite different from most ladder tenants who had high clearing rates, few dependents, and a greater ability to produce surpluses than other tenants. The Ives had eight sons and three daughters and farmed only twenty-five to thirty cleared acres on a fifty-acre lot in the first concession a few miles from town. Their large family resided in a log house with no barn. How were they ever able to purchase the fee simple of the farm in 1850? Reading the surviving records provides some clues. The Ives family farmed their lot intensively, devoting more of their cleared land to field crops than most farmers. In particular they grew large quantities of potatoes, which they may have marketed in Colborne. They also lived on the waterfront and likely supplemented their diet with fish. Once they had bought the farm, they managed in various ways to pay the instalments on the purchase price. As the boys reached their teen years in the 1850s, they worked out as labourers or left home. This made room for boarders; in 1861, besides the nuclear family, the household contained two additional related children, a shoemaker, and a pedlar. In 1857 Julius sold a small portion of the lot to the Grand Trunk Railway Company, and four years later he served as an enumerator in the township. These and various other ways of increasing the family income helped the Ives to purchase their clergy reserve.38 A few weeks before he died in 1866, Julius made out his will and signed his name. The will suggests that he was a literate man and a man of property, albeit on a modest scale. Though life could not have been easy, Julius and Almira had managed to acquire freehold status and settle some of their children in the area. At the time of his will, three of Julius’s oldest boys were already established with careers and homes of their own. Ira (age twenty-eight) and Edward (age ten) inherited the farm and were to support their mother. Ira was given custody of the remaining children and the responsibility of ensuring that the desig-
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nated cows, sheep, and cash were distributed to particular daughters and grandchildren when they came of age. William (age sixteen), who later rented some of the farm from his brothers, was to be set up with a pair of horses and their fittings when he came of age. Hulbert (age thirteen) was to be sent to school to get a second-class common school teacher’s certificate and was to get all of his father’s library books.39 Though ownership brought a greater degree of security, a sense of permanence, and a chance to settle one’s children in the area, on the rare occasion it ended in disappointment. Asa Irish, for example, had rented fifty acres from J.D.Goslee in the third concession for nine years or more before buying it in 1857. Four years later he lost his farm because he could not make the mortgage payments.40 Those who made it to owner status augmented their income by clearing land aggressively, engaging in nonagricultural employment, and entering the market in a sizable way. Some were able to rely on family assistance. Other less-quantifiable factors played a role too, such as well-laid plans, hard work, ability, astute farming decisions, opportunism and risk taking, and, not least – a household that worked well together.
jumping off the ladder: leaving the township Twenty-eight tenant families left Cramahe Township. According to proponents of the liberal ideology of landholding, transiency was to be expected of tenants and leaving was proof of failure. Getting beyond this commonly accepted view is a challenge.41 The analytical hurdle is compounded by the fact that those who left did not tell us why or where they went. But with some effort we can find out more about them, and in trying to understand tenancy from the perspective of those who left, a rather different analysis emerges. First it is important to establish the fact that transiency was fairly typical of newly settled areas. Numerous studies examining early settlement in Canada and the northern United States indicate that onequarter to two-thirds of the population – owners, tenants, and the landless combined – moved.42 Tenants were more mobile than owners but transiency did not necessarily equate with failure, and tenancy itself did not cause instability. The majority of owners were also mobile. In fact, movers, whether tenants or owners, shared the common characteristics of having smaller farms, fewer improved acres, less livestock, and greater youth than the permanent population.43 That transiency, failure, and tenancy were synonymous has been exaggerated by the
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ideology of landholding and needs to be disentangled. When transiency rates were carefully compiled for Cramahe Township, eliminating those who died, for example, and tracing individuals right through to 1901, 28.9 percent of the 1842 tenant families moved away, and 56.1 percent of the 1842 owners moved away (Table 9.11). These figures suggest that comparing transiency figures for owners and tenants over a short period, say, ten years, as scholars frequently do, overrepresents tenant mobility and underrepresents owner mobility.44 Exactly why tenants moved away remains uncertain. Only two left over arrears and might be considered to have been unsuccessful in supporting themselves. In another five cases the landlord sold the lot and the tenant left the township. In each of these cases, it is possible to see the tenant as the victim of unfortunate circumstances, though a landlord selling his property was a predictable risk that tenants took. In the remaining cases, their situation and motivation is unknown. Two moved out of agriculture entirely and took up different occupations. The rest left us with no idea at all why they moved. In the era under study, it is unlikely that tenants abandoned their farms because they were exhausted; most of the land simply had not been under cultivation for that long. This reason was more prevalent in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.45 Perhaps we need to consider that some tenants had never intended to stay. They made rational decisions to move on, just as the permanent population made rational decisions to stay. Moving may suggest not so much failure on their part as their view that renting in Cramahe was a transitional phase. They may have based their decision on the agricultural ladder itself – one sometimes had to move in order to climb. Indeed, frequent sales of tenant right recorded in the records of the Crown and clergy reserves and on large landed estates suggest that tenants sold out and used their profits to invest in renting or buying better farms elsewhere.46 In short, some leavers operated much like landowning speculators. Randy Widdis’s findings that tenants and speculators (owners who did not occupy their land) had remarkably similar rates of transiency is very suggestive.47 “Success” meant picking up and moving if opportunities presented themselves. Tenant families who left Cramahe were not as materially advantaged as those who stayed and moved up the ladder. Their farms were more likely to be medium-sized or small, the average being 73.5 acres. They also had fewer improved acres, an average of 23.8 acres. Nearly half who left had fewer than ten improved acres in 1842. Though they were similar to ladder tenants in terms of their age and household size,
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smaller working farm units meant that they had fewer than average improved acres per person. Whereas ladder tenants had an average of 12.6 improved acres per person, those who left had an average of only 4.3 improved acres per person (Tables 9.2, 9.3). Few of those who left had been able to hire servants to assist with land clearance. They also raised fewer livestock and produced very little wheat or other items to augment their income such as cloth or maple sugar. Overall, they had smaller less-diversified farm operations and less invested in livestock and buildings (Tables 9.3–9.5). Given these circumstances, some probably left in search of better opportunities elsewhere. Those who left were also more likely than ladder tenants to have sons aged fourteen to twenty-nine in the house (Table 9.4). In these cases, moving may have been motivated by the need to find larger properties or newer townships where land was cheaper and expansion possible. Transiency was most common among those with short-term contracts and farmers as landlords. Tenants holding long leases were the least likely to leave. Only 12.5 percent of all leaseholders left the township as compared to 35.7 of all share tenants and 41.3 of all cash renters (Table 9.12). Short-term contracts encouraged transciency but tenants did not always relocate when their term ended. People such as William Murphy who was on his lot one year and gone the next were relatively rare. Tenants in Malden Township moved about every two years; those in southern Michigan generally remained longer.48 Cash renters in Cramahe stayed on their property an average of nine years and share tenants an average of eleven years (Table 9.13). Over half of those who left had been the tenants of ordinary farmers who had rented out their farms temporarily for their own reasons, and not of large landholders who were in the “business” of landlordism. Tenants were thus more subject to removal if the landlord decided to sell the lot, bequeath it to a son, or take up farming again. Surprisingly tenants who left the township were often related to their landlord (Table 9.10). They may have benefited temporarily from the low rents and lenience over arrears that their father, for example, might have extended but they were noninheriting sons, not part of a larger plan to keep the farm in the family. Andrew Turney, for example, who had been renting part of his father’s farm, left in the 1840s when the lot was sold to two other brothers.49 Tenant families who left may have had fewer connections in the community, connections that might have increased their security and encouraged them to stay. They were generally not from the old established families who had kin and a broader community to draw upon in
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times of need. Though many were Canadian-born, they had not spent as many years in the area as ladder tenants (Table 9.7). Forty-four percent were not affiliated with any larger religious community. For these reasons, they may not have had the same sense of place, security, and belonging that might have enabled and encouraged others to stay. Pressed to make ends meet and with few supports in place, it is not surprising that some tenant families gave up and moved on. William Lawnsbury, his wife, and two children were in such a situation. The only family of African-American origin in the township, their separateness was compounded by living in a rather remote lot on the fifth concession. Their landlord, Platt Ketchum, had done very little to improve his property; now, too old to work it himself, he was waiting for his sons to come of age. Ketchum kept a few pigs and cows for his own use and turned over the improved acres to the Lawnsburys to farm. The Lawnsburys produced a few crops, some maple syrup, and linen and gave half the produce to Ketchum as his share. The Lawnsburys left the farm at about the same time Ketchum’s son reached the age when he could run it.50 Elijah Miars presents another example. Classified as having no religion and as an “alien” unable to own land, he worked as a joiner from 1835 to 1837 in Cramahe Township and then combined joining with farming on a first concession Crown reserve in 1839. There he claimed to lease twelve acres (though there is no record of his title) and tried to support his family of five on his carpentry and five improved acres. His frame house seems to have been destroyed around 1841, and the family left a year or two later for Murray Township. Fortune intervened and his career was reshaped when his wife, the granddaughter of wealthy businessman Zacheus Burnham, inherited two hundred acres in Peterborough County from her grandfather.51 Moving could be a response not to economic distress but to opportunity. Like ladder tenants, movers tended to be Canadian-born; thus they were more familiar with frontier farming than immigrants and may have had relatives in other parts of the province. They tended to be considerably younger than other tenants and had spent far less time in the township (Tables 9.4, 9.6, 9.7). For more than half of those who left, their Cramahe lot had been their first farming experience (Table 9.1). One might argue, therefore, that they had less invested in the community and greater freedom to pick up and move when opportunities arose. They had not depleted their resources with constant moving but were on the first step to something better and may have believed that climbing the agricultural ladder was dependent on moving when
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the opportunity presented itself. The biographies at the beginning of this chapter illustrate how families might profit by selling their improvements, time their departure according to when the lease expired, and move to purchase farms of their own in parts of Upper Canada that were opening up for settlement or in western Canada.52 James and Elizabeth Skinner of Cramahe Township are an example of how by moving one could climb the ladder. They arrived from England in 1831 and supported themselves without land for one year. Then they rented a seventy-acre farm on the first concession near Colborne where over the course of three years they cleared an additional ten acres, so that they had forty cultivated acres. Selling these improvements, they rented a larger farm on the tenth concession in 1836 from freeholder Michael Asselstine. Once again, James and Elizabeth and their growing family set about expanding their cultivated acreage from fifteen to forty acres in just a few years. By 1842 they were raising a wide variety of field crops and had thirteen head of cattle, a team of horses, several sheep, and hogs; they produced all manner of cloth and wool. The Skinner family exhibited the same characteristics as the ladder tenants in the township. They were successful farmers who could support themselves; they were able to invest in moveable goods such as livestock and profit from the improvements they made. For reasons that remain unknown, the Skinner family moved two concessions southeastward into Brighton Township in 1848. This was not as far as their previous move from the front concession of Cramahe to its northern edge, but it was just far enough to ensure that they no longer appeared in the Cramahe records and were classified as transients. They became the owners of a highly improved ninety-acre farm in Brighton Township.53 It is simplistic to equate transiency with failure. Poverty or other bad circumstances likely forced some tenants to relocate but others clearly seized the opportunity to move if they thought they might increase their security and material well-being by doing so.
staying put: tenancy as a way of life Though scholars have generally been interested in identifying and analyzing ladder tenants and transients, there is little understanding of those who chose the third option – to remain as tenants. Thirty-two tenant families in Cramahe’s 1842 census continued to be tenant farmers for the rest of their lives. Evidence suggests that they found tenancy
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useful in attaining a wide variety of family goals such as continuity on the land and meeting the needs of various members of the family over several generations. These families tended to be older, they were at a later stage in the family life cycle, and they had the largest households of all tenant families in 1842. Eighty-eight percent of them had male household heads who were over the age of thirty-nine. They were also far likelier to have grown boys (ages fourteen to twenty-nine) in the house and more than four dependent children under the age of thirteen (Table 9.4).54 These facts can be interpreted in two ways. On the one hand, were they so burdened with family responsibilities that they were immobilized? This might have been the case with William Shannon who had nine children under the age of thirteen and was constantly in arrears.55 Moving was riskier, more cumbersome, and more expensive for Shannon than staying put amidst familiar surroundings, kin, and friends.56 On the other hand, some lifelong tenants may have been content with their situation. They had been in the province for an average of twentysix years in 1842, far longer than those who left, and may have established more kin networks (Table 9.6). They had created diversified farms boasting nearly as many livestock as ladder tenants. Large families with many children of working age allowed them to produce more cloth and maple sugar than all other tenant types and increased the sophistication and productivity of their farming operations overall (Table 9.5). Having invested so much in the working farm unit, it is not surprising that they remained stationary, making very few moves during their lives and staying on their property for an average of seventeen years (Table 9.6). The vast majority also belonged to established religions with local churches in the area (Table 9.8). All these characteristics suggest that they may have had greater ties to farm and community than those tenants who chose to leave. They may even have felt that they had “established” themselves. Peter Irish had a large farm on the first concession where he had built a frame house and barns. His brothers, their families, and several other Methodist families lived nearby. In 1853 Peter wrote to the bursar of King’s College concerning his Crown reserve, saying: “I have lived forty years of my life on said lot and it is a home to my family.”57 Except for the occasional case, poverty does not seem to explain their permanent status as tenants. They were generally better off than tenants who left the township, but less well off than those who became owners. On average, they had larger farms (107.7 acres), larger improved areas
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(31.3 acres), more improved acres per person, better dwellings, and much higher assessment values than those who left, but they ranked below ladder tenants in all these categories (Tables 9.3, 9.14). Some of them had very prosperous farms in 1842 and might be considered quite successful according to the indicators of the era, save for that one factor – ownership. William Cox, Sr, John Garbutt, and John Nellest had large farms with more than fifty improved acres situated in the first concession close to markets in Colborne. They ran diversified mixed farming operations and had invested in larger numbers of livestock than most farmers in the era. John Garbutt even had a hired man living with the family. All three were able to transfer the farm to their sons or establish them nearby. Given the diversity of experiences, it is difficult to classify lifelong tenant farmers as an economically inferior class.58 Leaseholders on Crown and clergy reserves were overrepresented among those who stayed (Tables 9.10, 9.12). Twenty-one-year leases gave tenants a significant long-term interest in their property, the greatest security, and independence from their landlords. As one official noticed, leaseholders were “as secure as if the land which they leased were actually their own.”59 Lessees used their land in strategies to achieve long-term family goals in much the same way owners did: they assigned or sublet their interest to raise money and deal with family situations; and they used the land to support the next generation through pre-death transfers of the lease, and by willing the lease. Tenant farmers Richard Haynes, Michael McMahon, Samuel Merrill, David Bradd, Joseph Clement, John Garbutt, Michael Cryderman, Joseph Hicks, and Joseph Porter transferred their farms to their sons and then continued to reside with them.60 In this manner, they were able to set up the next generation and look after themselves in old age. On occasion, some used their leased lots to effect maintenance agreements to support the elderly, as the Bradd family did.61 Others such as Joseph Porter, Caleb Purdy, William Shannon, and Samuel Sprintall retired from farming, sold what rights and moveable farm goods they had, and purchased small lots nearby or in town.62 Several died in harness, remaining tenant farmers until they met their end. Only a few – William Shannon, Simeon Hilton, Philip Ainsworth, Abel Hubbell, and Benjamin Barney – became landless in their old age and may have had to seek work as labourers rather than enjoy their declining years on the family homestead.63 Even without a long lease it was possible to live one’s life as a tenant farmer, setting up the younger generation and supporting the older
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generation. For three generations the several related households of the Cox family used a variety of rental arrangements to support their farming careers. In this family there were no formal pre-death transfers or wills of leases, just a great deal of shifting around between properties. Transiency, in this case, was not a fruitless moving about that resulted in wasted resources and downward social mobility. Essentially the Cox family created two small settlements of rented farms, one on the waterfront near Colborne and the second further inland. As the needs and abilities of each household changed, they moved from one property to another. By the second and third generation they had become landowners. William Cox, Sr, and his family first rented a partially cleared waterfront lot in 1825 from Joseph Keeler, landowner and speculator in several properties. As William’s sons reached maturity, he rented adjoining lots from Keeler to expand his holdings so that by 1832 he had 211 acres in a prime location, sixty-five acres of which he cultivated.64 By that time some of his sons had started out on their own on rented or leased farms. Edward moved to a neighbouring clergy reserve lot and William, Jr, journeyed north to a rather remote lot on the fifth concession where he and his new wife created the hub of a new inland Cox settlement. They rented a partially cleared lot from Willet Casey until 1836 when William, Jr, had an opportunity to buy the lease of a one-hundred-acre Crown reserve just down the road. It had fewer cultivated acres, but with fifteen years left in the lease it provided greater security and the possibility of eventual ownership.65 He and his family moved onto this lot, and his father, who was roughly sixty and well past the point of clearing land, rented the cleared west half of the old Willet farm. His brother Aaron rented the east half of the Willet farm and took over the task of clearing. Another brother, George, rented the Willet farm for a short while in 1837.66 In this manner the improvements made by William, Jr, were kept in the family and enlarged. Meanwhile back on the waterfront settlement, Edward found that he could not buy his clergy reserve, and so he moved closer to Colborne and rented an eighty-acre lot where he worked as a shoemaker and farmed on the side. His brother John, who had recently married, took over Edward’s clergy reserve and stayed there for eight years. Meanwhile in 1839, Edward, perhaps looking ahead to the time when his own son would need land, purchased the lease to one hundred acres of wild land on a clergy reserve lot on the third concession close to the inland Cox settlement. This also proved to be a useful way of helping
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his brother George; for while Edward made shoes in Colborne, George, and his young family settled on the lot. George gradually cleared fifteen acres, managing to support his own family and at the same time improve the value of his brother’s leasehold.67 From the late 1830s to the mid-1840s, then, the Coxes rented four hundred acres in the neighbourhood of lots twenty-two to twenty-five in the third and fifth concessions and at various times supported the current and future interests of at least five different branches of the family. John, who had stayed on the highly valued waterfront, eventually purchased a fine farm on the first concession.68 The next generation of Coxes continued the tradition of renting. The three Cox families to appear in the assessment of 1869 were all tenant farmers. William (the third) was renting Edward’s old clergy reserve lot on lot twenty-five in the third concession, having doubled the number of cultivated acres. During the next ten years, both William (the third) and Henry became landowners on land that neighboured the old inland Cox settlement, while Edward inherited his father’s freehold farm on the waterfront.69 By shifting back and forth on the same and adjoining properties, the Coxes were able to keep their improvements in the family and give several young families the opportunity to farm. The risks associated with moving into an unfamiliar environment where a landlord of unknown character might exploit them, where the capabilities of the soil were unknown, and where farm buildings and fences might have been run down by previous tenants were avoided. Some branches of the family ultimately faced failure but others had the satisfaction of seeing their offspring settled nearby as tenants and owners. The Coxes and other lifetime tenant families used renting and especially leasing as an effective means for meeting their family goals of maintaining a career on the land, weathering family and financial crises, and supporting the needs of the old and new generations.
stepping (or falling) down the ladder What about those who moved down the ladder? Though too few to analyze numerically, their individual cases shed some light on their circumstances. When failure occurred, blame ensued. Journalists in farm magazines accused landlords who charged high rents or refused to make the necessary outlay in buildings, fences, draining, and other upkeep. Just as often, however, they pointed to tenants who mismanaged their land and fell into arrears.70 One can only speculate about
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the complex interplay of factors that led to the abandonment of a farm since the sources, even court records, remain silent on the issue. The cases of failure in Cramahe provide some other factors to keep in mind when considering why families might have to step down the ladder. Four tenants in 1842 had previously been owners and two other tenants became landless labourers in subsequent years. The evidence suggests that their poverty was associated with old age, ill health, and bad luck, not with tenancy per se. Family crises could seriously undermine one’s position on the agricultural ladder. Sarah Michael and her husband had once been owners but when he died the land went to one of their sons, and Sarah and the remaining children became tenants on an adjoining lot before leaving the township in 1844.71 Family crisis affected tenants too. Assizi Benedict was constantly in arrears, and when he died in 1840 his widow, Lucy, struggled on for another five years; but with five children between the ages of six and thirteen years she was unable to handle the mounting debt. In 1845 she sold the lease and left.72 Some people’s movements are more difficult to understand. Whether out of necessity, restlessness, or speculation, Henry Blakley and Enoch Ledwith stepped up and down the ladder several times between owner, tenant, and labourer status.73 Obediah Allen rented and worked farmland for more than ten years but called himself a labourer.74 Did these people simply eschew the ideal of climbing? Were they thinking in aliberal terms? No sense can be made of their positioning on the agricultural ladder as it is defined here and this serves as a caution against placing too much importance on the differences between rungs.
At least one in three tenants, possibly more if we knew what happened to those who left, climbed the agricultural ladder to ownership within their working lives. Others lived to see their children join the ranks of freeholders. Contemporaries were right in saying that hard work and determination were key factors in their progress; their high clearing rates, large cultivated fields, and other improvements testify to this. Persistence on one lot, the government’s sales policy, inheritance, supplementary income, cash crops, and lease sales also helped. How well they managed their household economy also influenced the likelihood, ease, and timing of their step up to ownership. Their households may have been more adept than others at pooling labour and income and channelling their activities into visible and productive investments.
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Tenants who did not climb the ladder cannot be easily categorized as failures. They recognized the constraints – and opportunities – their households faced and made rational choices with interesting results. Tenants who left the township were noticeably less welloff than those who purchased freeholds. Clearly some tenant families encountered hardship and eventually failure by most measurements and fled the township; but many who departed were young, with little invested in the locale, and viewed leaving as a step to something better, not a last resort. Many who stayed and remained tenants throughout their lives achieved a level of material comfort, security, flexibility in meeting family needs, and sense of community that leave one wondering whether ownership was really all that important.
Conclusion
The powerful images and assumptions that dominate rural history are insufficiently problematized. Widespread ownership, the basis of the independent pioneer, is one such image.1 In this study I have tried to move behind and beyond the dominant ideology of landholding in nineteenth-century Upper Canada. Tenancy, though undervalued and underreported, was common because it fit well into the political economy and the lives of individual farm families, whether of landlords or tenants. Tenancy in Upper Canada was not characterized by large, compact estates, powerful landlords, and a permanent tenantry. The occasional person might have envisioned the grandeur of an Old World estate but the natural environment, the desire and ability to own, and the evolving land market encouraged a different role for tenancy. The very existence of small parcels of land for sale and the status attached to freehold meant that many families viewed tenancy as a temporary step to becoming owners, a prospect that was well within their grasp.2 Tenancy, therefore, was not the predominant land system, nor was it associated with a long history of oppression as it was in Prince Edward Island and New York. Instead, settlers in Upper Canada could choose from a wide variety of rental arrangements and avenues to land ownership such as outright purchase, mortgage financing, or leasing with the option to buy, and landlords could only hope to attract and keep good tenants if they offered reasonable terms that were competitive with other landholding opportunities. Thus, tenancy was a means rather than an end in itself, and the relationship between landlord and tenant – varied, negotiable, complicated, changing, and temporary – was more equal than in the Old World. Landlord and tenant families made choices about rental
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arrangements according to their family life-stage, experience, and capital. The result was an array of rental agreements that ranged in nature to fit almost any situation and a hierarchy of land tenure that was startling in its complexity and, in some cases, its ambiguity. Landlordism was somewhat constrained. In fact, “landlord” seems a misnomer, denoting a kind of person, a class, and a relationship that fails to describe the situation in Upper Canada. The various types of landlord and the prevalence of ordinary farmer landlords was at the heart of why tenancy worked. Large estates rarely persisted or achieved the political power of the English landed class. Though thousands of individuals would rent out their land and benefit from being landlords, their power was limited, as one can see in the apparent accommodations they had to make regarding the collection of arrears, enforcement of covenants, and toleration of tenant customs. The largest single landlord, the government, had dispersed rental land that was difficult to administer; anxious to speed settlement and maintain a loyal tenantry, the government as landlord was notoriously lenient concerning rent and arrears. Ultimately it wanted to sell the land, not create a permanent tenanted estate. Aristocratic and corporate landlords, who wanted capital gains from escalating land values, also had to offer tenants reasonably good terms, and the lifespan of their estates followed a similar chronology from leases in the early years to the outright sale of lots later on. The vast majority of landlords, and ultimately the ones who make this story the most complicated and interesting, were members of the general population of farmers. They were the least visible in terms of the supply of rentable land and never achieved the local notoriety or the estate infrastructure of other landlords, but they were a constant over the course of this study. There were always farm owners who wanted to rent out the farm as a matter of short-term expediency, a way to raise some extra income and keep the farm in working order until other opportunities or family plans presented themselves. They let out their farms on shares or for cash, with or without formal agreements, depending on their particular family and financial circumstances and their knowledge of the landlord business. A brief period as landlord often served their purposes very well but was not specifically intended to maintain them as part of a permanent economically superior class. Being a landlord in this context was perhaps more acceptable to those adhering to liberal values. If conditions in Upper Canada made landlordism somewhat weak or temporary in nature, they made tenancy strong. The economic viability
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of being a tenant was manifest in the vibrant market for selling improvements and leases, and in the tenants who willed leases to sons, took pride in their farms, and advanced up the social ladder. Nowhere was the economic security and social mobility of tenants more readily observable than on the reserves. The reserves represented some of the best rental arrangements available in the first half of the century, and given their importance historians need to reconsider their role. Though politicians and agrarian radicals dismissed them as “waste” land, thousands of families found that Crown and clergy reserve leases were an effective means for making a living on the land, supporting the needs of different generations, and graduating to freehold status. Reserve leaseholders often demonstrated that tenancy was an alternative to ownership with a different, not inherently inferior, set of characteristics. The system’s virtues had much to do with the way it had initially been set up to attract tenants by giving them long leases, low rents, and the legal right to sell their leasehold interest. The government’s desire eventually to sell gave tenants pre-emption rights too. The opportunity to lease a Crown or clergy reserve, however, diminished over time as lots were gradually sold to leaseholders. It is not so clear that tenants on other lands were as secure, or had such lenient landlords, as those on reserve leases. The landlord-tenant relationship under the supervision of the general population was more apt to be short term and reflect the landlord’s financial and family needs and his experience. The relationship, in such cases, was not solely about exchange and gain but could involve other factors such as apprenticeship, responsibility, trust, and collective family identities. Where the landlord-tenant relationship was an agreement between father and son that was bound up with farm succession, it might be based more on family circumstances and the balancing of the needs of different generations than on market forces. Despite the short-term nature of these arrangements, many tenant households were able to become freeholders through advantageous terms and inheritance. Others were able to support their parents and children by using a variety of rental arrangements in succession, shifting from one property to another, and keeping their improvements in the family. Given the diversity of experience it is difficult to classify tenants, even lifelong tenants, as a permanent and economically inferior class. Their experiences show that despite the dominant ideology of landholding that linked freehold with success, there were alternate ways of making a living and getting on in life.
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The character, practices, and ideological import of tenancy highlight the limitations of liberal discourse and suggests the subcurrents within it. Though tenancy was not part of the liberal ideal as expounded by politicians, immigrant promoters, or agrarian idealists, it was a vital part of its working reality. Renting was common and it did matter in the larger capitalist order. Tenant farm families, like owners, contributed to economic growth, the land market, the growing formality and regulation of property relations, and the spirit of improvement. Tenants participated as independent, industrious, productive members of the larger market economy, seizing opportunities as they arose and taking calculated risks to expand their acreage, build a new barn, or market another crop. They patronized the general store for sugar, nails, and thread; they took their horses to be shod like other farmers and, in a place such as Cramahe Township, supplied the local lumber merchants with pork, peas, horses, and oats. Some lived on the edge of subsistence and moved in and out of the labour market as household and individual needs dictated. Others thrived in the market economy producing surpluses, marketing goods, experimenting with progressive farming, and competing in the local agricultural society. Their individual family strategies, however, remind us that even though tenant households participated in the market economy, their way of life was also firmly grounded in an older political economy whereby they produced much of what they consumed, responded to the needs of different generations, and depended on nonwaged household labour, customary rights regarding land, and informal ways of negotiating with landlords. Relying on the flexibility of tenancy and the household economy, many were able to achieve the social mobility, independence, and economic progress that liberalism promised. Meanwhile their land settlement and clearance and their construction of houses and barns contributed to the extensive growth and capital creation that characterized Upper Canada at mid-century. Tenancy also represented a significant slice of the property market, which broadens and complicates our understanding of it. The reserve, corporate, and aristocratic landlords had specific set rents. The general population of landlords did not and yet they played a large part in the making of a land market. Evaluating the productive capacity of the land and negotiating the rent, the term of the lease, and covenants represented a set of bargaining points for landlord and tenant that parallelled that of the seller and buyer of freehold land. The outcome depended on the leverage each party wielded, the prices others were
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asking or offering, and what amenities the property actually had. Whereas tenants on big estates in Prince Edward Island or New York had little choice in rental arrangements, those in Upper Canada were able to make business decisions by weighing advantages and risks, for example those associated with taking a long or a short lease. Besides the market in rental land, leases themselves were eagerly bought and sold. Their value is ideologically suggestive. Leases were an alternate form of ownership that challenged the freehold ideal. Lessees had legal ownership of their leasehold and customary rights extending beyond this that compensated them for past possession and their transforming role in creating farms. The market in leaseholds that existed beyond the control of the landlord allowed leaseholders the freedom to use their property as opportunities arose. They could sell part of the lease to pay off arrears or pay for a frame barn. They could stay put until the end of the lease or sell their entire leasehold and take on a mortgage. They could bequeath their leasehold. In short, they used their leasehold interest as owners might use their freehold interest to deal with situations as they arose, create a stable farm existence, and achieve long-term family goals. The landlord-tenant relationship evolved over the nineteenth century, becoming more formalized, more in line with the liberal vision of a capitalist economic order where individuals were free to take advantage of economic opportunities and prosper. In part this was the workings of liberal ideology and rule, but it was also a practical response to a complex land market. Small changes were made to landlord-tenant law to simplify it, make it more accessible and intelligible, and standardize contracts and procedures. These changes promoted the free trade in land by giving parties guidelines for greater self-regulation, giving investors confidence, creating a more orderly, predictable way to resolve conflict over distraint and eviction, and easing the speed with which tenants in arrears could be replaced with new ones. Rental contracts were increasingly made in writing and involved the payment of cash. Customary rights to emblements, improvements, and pre-emption were also increasingly written into leases that the courts would uphold and that reflected the desire to make the transfer of land more predictable, orderly, and peaceful. Even the terminology used by observers to describe rental agreements differentiated the relationship from the Old World and implied more of a “business” relationship. Tenants would “take the charge of,” “superintend,” or more commonly “hire” a farm.3 By the end of the period under study they might refer to
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their landlord as their “employer or boss” and to a share arrangement as a “partnership.”4 This terminology reflected conditions in Upper Canada where tenants had leverage in the relationship, landlords were ordinary farmers, and both shared in the ideology of improvement and assumed that the relationship was only a temporary contract. Many tenants, furthermore, participated in and embraced improvement. The idea of improvement increasingly motivated and informed the legal and political process in this era. In particular it was used to justify the superiority of ownership, but it also maintained tenancy as a viable institution. Practical administrators appreciated how reserve leaseholders turned “waste land” into farms. Speculating owners knew how tenants would clear fields and increase the value of their property. Tenants, themselves, knew the value of their improvements to other would-be settlers and their own financial strategies. They based their claim to customary right on the idea that their “productive usage” of the land entitled them to certain property rights – in this case, their improvements. Tenants relied on the ability to sell these improvements and their lease and they expected to find buyers such as immigrants and other start-up farmers who wanted to settle on working farms and avoid wildland in the backwoods. Thus the buying and selling of leases and improvements brought together experienced settlers and newcomers, owners and tenants in mutual dependence that was integral to the settlement and the development of farm land. Most of this activity took place outside official channels, documentation, and regulation, but it fit well within the larger liberal market-oriented creed of private initiative, investment in agricultural productivity, and free trade in property. It also reflected a laissez-faire attitude, if only by default. Various aspects of the landlord-tenant relationship were left to operate on their own. Selling improvements, for example, existed outside the purview of the courts, formal systems of documentation, and professionals and depended instead on landlords and tenants who carefully weighed the force of local practice, their financial interest, and social justice. The very definition of a leasehold interest was stretched beyond its legal meaning to include other rights, and what those rights were, what their value was, and how the sale took place were governed by local practice. Some might argue that tenancy was a transitory, hence insignificant, phenomenon associated with the frontier. Such a depiction, however, equates it with large permanent estates and underestimates its diverse form and longevity as a functional part of the larger land system, and its role in the strategies of individual farm households to survive and
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prosper. Well past the early days of settlement, tenancy functioned as a viable relationship, settling people quickly on the land, developing workable farm units, assisting in the creation of local land markets, easing intergenerational transfer, and providing a rental income to aging farmers or others who were no longer able or willing to work their own farms. That tenancy never became a burning political issue in Upper Canada is not surprising. Tenants, diverse in background and experience, were not likely to call for an end to landlordism when they were engaged in what was, for the most part, a workable temporary relationship.
Data Base and Sources
appendix a
A Note on the Database and Sources
the database for cramahe township The basic aim of the project was to identify owners and tenants on the 1842 census of Cramahe Township and trace those individuals backwards and forwards in time.1 Individuals were selected from the 1842 census based on a number of criteria. First it was necessary to set the geographical limits of the study. Tracing people forward in time is complicated because Cramahe was divided in 1851 into two townships, Cramahe and Brighton.2 For this study, therefore, I have defined Cramahe Township in 1842 according to its post-1851 description, which means lots eleven to thirty-five from the broken front to the tenth concession. Only occupiers of land from this area were included. The census category “Under what tenure such land is held by each family” described individuals as l, r, s, d, or b. No instructions for, or definitions of, these specific letters have survived but when linked with other categories on the census, such as “Proprietor of Real Property,” “Average money rent of farm ...,” and “Proportion of produce ... on shares ...,” and with other land records, these letters translated into the following basic categories: Tenants l = long leases. Corroboration with Crown land records prove that in nearly all cases these were tenants with twenty-one-year leases on the Crown and clergy reserves. Under “Proprietor” the tenant’s name was given, not the landlord’s. r = renters. These individuals likely had a short-term cash arrangement. They were distinct from long leases, which were identified
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as l, and from share arrangements, which were identified as s. Under “Proprietor” their landlord’s name was given. S = share tenants. Another census category identified the share arrangement, such as “½,” and the landlord’s name was given under “Proprietor.” Owners d = deed. These were freeholders with a deed to their property, which I was able to confirm in the Abstract Index to Deeds. b = bond. These were mortgaged owners who held their property under bond, which I was also able to confirm in the Abstract Index to Deeds. All owners and tenants from the 1842 census were selected for the project who defined themselves as farmers, however small their acreage. I felt it was important to respect the way people self-identified. But as I also wanted to examine the largest, loosest definition of tenant farmer, I included eight tradesmen and three labourers who rented land that they obviously farmed. I also selected three tenant farmers with improved acreage who had no farm produce to report in 1842; they might have been in their first year on the property. Those excluded from the study were self-identified farmers (owners and tenants) with no acreage and no produce to report. The four people who owned land and rented at the same time were classified as owners. Owners were defined in a legal sense as those who had the greatest interest in the property (the reversionary interest); this included those with mortgages. The total number of owners and tenants included in the study was 254, of whom 157 were owners (deeds = 108, bonds = 45, and deeds who also leased = 4), and 97 were tenants (long leaseholders = 33, renters = 46, share =15, and 3 who were not clearly identified as l, r or s but seem to have been tenants based on other census categories and land records). One had their tenure listed as “r?”, one was a “pos” and one was blank. Landlords, identified by tenants in the 1842 census as the “Proprietor of Real Property,” were considered separately. The 1842 census was not always useful for further information on these people as nearly half were retired and did not appear as household heads. It was necessary to use the assessment and other records to attain a profile of them. Despite a few ink blots and darkened corner areas, the fourteen folio pages of the Cramahe census are remarkably legible. I worked with a photocopy of a microfilm copy of the original, taking special care to
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align columns with headings that only appeared on the first page, and align rows across what was an expanse of about one metre, before I transcribed the entries onto printed census forms. All the information on owners and tenants was then entered into the database by Marty Pullen, my research assistant, and myself with one of us reading and one of us typing so as to minimize any errors. We used “Paradox: Relational database v 5.0.” We also kept a card file for each tenant, owner, and landlord, which was a reference to their life history. Each individual was manually traced backwards and forwards through all the available evidence; we carefully checked names, locations, and ages before assuming a correct match. We recorded specific references to other sources about that individual and their family on these cards, for example, when they were born, when they got a lease, purchased land, died etc. We used these cards to access the original sources and extract what information was needed for numerous other Paradox tables. The base table was “Farm42,” the agricultural portion of the 1842 census that contained the land tenure category and all the selected owners and tenants. Each individual was given a “householder” number by which he or she could be linked to the other tables. These other tables contained information on only the individuals selected from the 1842 census (with the exception of the tr table). Name of Paradox Table Contents Farm42 the base table, the agricultural part of the 1842 census Family42 the personal part of the 1842 census Assess42 the 1842 assessment information Other42 details of the lease and lot for Crown and clergy reserve tenants from the inspections done in 1840 and 1844 respectively Pre1842 compilation of information about tenants’ pre-1842 history from a variety of sources Post1842 compilation of information about tenants’ post-1842 history from a variety of sources Census48 1848 census Assess52 1852 assessment Census52 1851/52 census tr information gathered from Township Papers for all sales of leases 1810–69, not just people on the 1842 census.
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Appendix A
compilation of information about the landlords of the 1842 tenants from a variety of sources
These paradox tables will soon be available at www.uoguelph.ca/rural history/. Taken alone and in combination, they formed the basis of the hundreds of queries that we ran. I then used the resulting information to compile new tables, those referred to in chapters 3 to 9 and printed in appendix b. Working with the data so closely and over a long period convinced us of the care and accuracy of the enumerator, alerted us to errors and discrepancies in the 1842 census and other documents, and gave us a sensitivity to the place, era, and particularly the people we were studying. By the end of our project we were able to talk about individuals on a first-name basis and had formed mental pictures of their farm operations. I hope this helped us to acquire the most accurate story; it certainly fuelled our imaginations, inspiring us to ask layers of questions and to enjoy the process.
analysis of the primary sources The 1842 Census Dated 27 June 1842 The 1842 census was based on the 1841 Census Act (4 & 5 Vic. c. xlii). The census for Cramahe was compiled by James Munroe Merriman, sawyer and assessor for the township and a landlord himself. This was the first time he had done the census and the assessment. He seems to have been very conscientious in his work as the document is internally coherent and complete, and it largely agrees with other records, the assessment, reserve records, and land registry. Of all the censuses that survive for other townships, this is one of the most carefully filled out, and certainly one of the most detailed concerning land tenure. By contrast, many other enumerators did not bother to fill out information on tenancy. One cannot assume the empirical accuracy of the 1842 census. Personal and family information is useful but limited. The 1842 census only gave the household head’s name. Other members were classified according to their gender and age groupings (for example, “married females ages 18 and not 21”). I was only able to acquire women’s names by linking households to the 1851/52 census. People might be forgetful or creative about ages. Religion was also problematic as often families were divided into many sects, some preferred not to give infor-
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mation of that nature, and the enumerator did not always know how to handle the less-common, less-formalized religions.3 In the 1848 census, for example, enumerators of Cramahe wrongfully considered all persons who were not actually communicants of any Church as being of “no creed.”4 Property information also requires some qualification. Only properties and produce located in the enumeration district were reported. Because speculative and farm activities outside the township were not identified, this may have underrepresented the property holdings of some occupiers of land, especially owners. One must also be mindful that the sources are very male-oriented. The enumerator may have been inclined to record the oldest man in the household as the household head when in fact the rent was paid by a woman. No young single women appear in the Cramahe records as tenants, but three widows do, either under family rental arrangements where the landlord was a relative, or as widows of the original leaseholder, their husband, and for the remaining years in his lease. Also, rent figures make sense only if they are viewed as rent per improved acre; farms with zero improved acres were given a rental value of zero. The rents that were given could represent the actual rent paid by the tenant or the calculated rental value of the property. The latter is more likely because owners of land and share tenants also had their rent calculated, and rent values given in the census for the clergy reserve properties were much higher than what we know the regulation clergy reserve rents were. Rents were given in dollars and I converted them to pounds currency for comparison with other contemporary sources.5 The agricultural returns also require some explanation. Militia service had come during harvest time in 1841 and may have reduced the quantities of crops harvested and reported in the spring of 1842.6 The inhabitants of Cramahe, and of Upper Canada more generally, associated the census with the assessment of property for tax purposes, as both were compiled by the municipal assessor throughout the 1840s. For this reason, they may have been inclined to minimize their agricultural returns. What the quantities of produce reported actually represent is also somewhat unclear. Did the enumerator, for example, count all crops raised that year including produce already consumed at the table or used to pay off commercial debts, rents, etc., or just what remained? I expect the enumerator wanted a sense of total production, which may have been a challenge for farmers to calculate. Very few farmers kept accounts and none have survived for Cramahe. It was
226
Appendix A
probably easier for farmers to recall how many bushels of potatoes had been marketed than how many had been consumed at home. Fortunately this census occurred in the late spring, so farmers could measure the grain thrashed over the winter and did not have to guess at the other grain only partially thrashed. Still, one suspects that for field crops a fair bit of estimation occurred; witness the rounded figures (e.g., forty, fifty, one hundred bushels of peas). The livestock figures were likely more accurate. Some cattle, however, might have been slaughtered over the winter and spring and, if so, were they included in the count? Many other items produced by families were not considered at all, for example, lumber, shingles, staves, potash, whiskey, eggs, butter, and orchard and garden produce. The census says little regarding other forms of self-provisioning, for example, hunting, fishing, or offfarm work. Despite the limitations of this census, it does seem that care was taken in its compilation and it is the only source available for getting some sense of tenancy in this era and agricultural production at the household level. The Assessment of 1842 Dated 11 April 1842 The assessment of property was carried out for tax purposes. By 1842 taxes were used to pay the wages of members of the legislative assembly, support the provincial asylum and common schools, repair county roads and bridges, and pay off the government debt and other general expenses. The level of assessment determined one’s responsibility for statute labour and, after 1853, the right to vote in parliamentary elections.7 The assessment contained different information than the census, such as the location of farms, house types, and the estimated value of real and personal property. Not everyone or everything was assessed. Under the terms of the 1st Assessment Act (33 Geo. 3, c. 3), only occupied and patented land was assessable. Land leased from the government was not taxable until 1820 (59 Geo. 3, c. 7, ss4 & 12).8 Even then reserve tenants did not appear in the assessment until they had a patent for their lease, so they might live on the property for years and never appear in the assessment. Other kinds of tenants appeared on the assessment if they had agreed in their lease to pay taxes for the property. In this case, they were assessed for the full value of their land even though their interest was for a very limited time.9 Tenants might also appear in the assess-
A Note on the Data Base and Sources
227
ment if they had taxable livestock or other moveable goods of their own. Those with no taxable wealth did not interest assessors. Landlords appear in the assessments if they remained responsible for paying taxes on the land they rented out, or if they had other unrented land. Income derived from rental property was never assessed for taxes in the period under study and is an example of how some forms of wealth, often the less visible ones, escaped taxation.10 The inventory of property in the assessment is fairly reliable once one understands who and what could be assessed. Until 1850 ratepayers reported the number of cultivated acres, horses, and other kinds of taxable property they had. Because the assessment was taken for tax purposes a tendency to understate might well be expected. Three circumstances probably held this tendency somewhat in check. The assessor had to swear to the authenticity of his report and if it was false he was liable to a fine. J. Merriman, Cramahe’s assessor in 1842, brought considerable thoroughness and administrative integrity to the job. Moreover, all assessors were to post the list in a public spot where the community could identify any outstanding misrepresentations. The assessment for Cramahe was particularly useful for locating people on farms as it detailed each parcel of land (and sometimes people had more than one), giving its lot and concession. The census, in contrast, lumped all property together and gave no location. Concerning land use and agricultural production, the assessment was not as comprehensive as the census, and therefore I have used the census unless otherwise stated. “Cultivated” land in the assessment was defined as arable, pasture, or meadow lands. Arable land was fit for tillage, pasture was used for grazing livestock, and meadow was grassland used for hay. Presumably gardens and orchards were also included, but it was not evident. Although it seems that “cultivated” land could differ from the census category of “improved” land, in seventy-four percent of the cases the “cultivated” and “improved” amounts returned for individuals were the same.11 My sense is that improved land was usually land that was cleared, but it quite likely also included land that was useful in its natural state (grassland and low lying, treeless areas near water suitable for hay, and rocky upland suitable for grazing sheep, etc.) “Improved” may have referred to land “put to human use.” Since the census included more farms in its count, its figures were used. Livestock returns (the assessment did not consider crops) were not as complete as the census returns because the assessor was only interested in animals that had reached their productive potential and therefore
228
Appendix A
did not include young cattle or horses, or other kinds of livestock such as pigs and sheep. The assessment, unlike the census, did break down “cattle” into separate categories for milk cows and oxen, which was useful for this study. Though valuable as an inventory for land, the assessment is far less useful for calculating an individual’s total wealth. A system of fixed values was first implemented in 1811, after which each acre of arable land, each horse, fireplace, etc. was to be valued at a fixed rate.12 Every acre of arable, pasture, or meadow land, for example, was rated at twenty shillings and uncultivated land was rated at four shillings. This kind of categorical assessment took no account of market value. Moreover, rates remained at these levels across the province until the Assessment Act of 1850. It required that the assessor value property as if it was taken from a solvent debtor in payment of a debt.13 This still was not its market value. The Assessment Acts of 1866 and 1869 set taxes on the actual value of property. Whether this was considered to be the market value is unknown as debates do not survive.14 Changes in municipal tax law and currency values make it difficult to calculate a person’s total wealth or comparisons over time. To address this problem in part, I have used the assessments primarily to locate people but have relied on the 1842 assessment’s total assessed value of rateable property for an indication of each person’s wealth. It is understood that this figure is likely lower than the market value but it provides some indication of relative rank within the distribution of wealth in the township. Abstract Index to Deeds15 These are indexes to land transactions that occurred after the original patent and that were registered at the County Land Registry Office. The indexes for Cramahe are rather incomplete for the first half of the century as not all transactions were registered: people often appear as selling but no entry is made of the original purchase or grant, not everyone promptly registered their transfers, and information regarding sale price is usually missing. The indexes were useful in identifying some landlords, and for confirming the location of owners and the timing of purchase for tenants who became owners. The abstract also served as an entry point into a few useful documents for tenants: leases, assignments of leases, and wills. Only leases for a term of more than
A Note on the Data Base and Sources
229
twenty-one years, however, needed to be registered and so the registry offices are of only limited use regarding rental agreements. Township Papers16 These are the earliest land files organized by lot number. They contain a variety of documents and letters about claims to a particular property prior to the sale of the freehold and the formal registration of land transfers in the land registry books. The township papers are especially useful for Crown and clergy reserve tenants and often included the order-in-council, lease, receipt of patent fee, request for lease renewal or to purchase property, agreement of sale, assignment of lease, even the occasional rent receipt. Assignments of leases found in these records form the basis of table tr. Crown and Clergy Reserve Inspections17 In 1840 the Crown reserves, and in 1844 the clergy reserves, underwent inspection. These were costly and detailed surveys of each lot in order to expedite land sales. Lessees were interviewed about their lot and answered questions pertaining to the value of the land in its unimproved state, the improvements made, any mismanagement or depredation, the advantages of the location (miles to a mill, main road, etc.), quality of the soil, and whether the occupier was willing and able to purchase. Money values were given in currency. Many other interesting odds and ends were noted in passing. These are some of the best records for individual lessees and form the basis of table Other42. Previous Censuses and Assessments We used the censuses and assessments before 1842 to identify a person’s recorded presence in the township, the changing size and location of the farm, and composition of the household. This information appears in the Pre1842 table. The early assessments contained the same basic categories as those found in 1842. Census enumerations carried out before 1842, however, contain far less information than the 1842 census: they recorded the name of the household head and counted by sex those in the household who were above or below sixteen years of age. A forty-shilling fine was imposed on inhabitants who
230
Appendix A
refused to give information. The township clerk was originally responsible for making the census lists. By 1824 that duty was given to the municipal property assessor. From 1826 to 1838 the census and assessment were combined. Though responsibility for compiling these documents in Cramahe fell to different prominent men over the years, they frequently served for several years and carried out their duties in an experienced and consistent manner.18 A nearly complete run of censuses and assessments exists for Cramahe for every year for 1803 to 1842. Specifically, censuses exist for 1803–07, 1809–10, 1812–23, 1825, 1839–41; assessments for 1808–25, 1839–41; and combined censuses and assessments for 1826–38. Subsequent Records Tracing people forward in time is also possible. Assessments for Cramahe exist for 1842–47 and for 1852, 1854, 1858, 1861, 1862, 1864, 1867, and 1869. Censuses exist for Cramahe for 1848 and 1850, and decennial censuses from the census of 1851/52 forward. The 1848 schedules were revised to include 146 columns. James P. Scott, assessor and enumerator of Cramahe, compiled the 1848 and 1851 censuses and the 1847 assessment and was commended by his peers for his excellent statistics.22 The 1848 census was made into table Census48, which contained only those tenants from 1842 who were still tenants. In the 1848 census, tenure was considered under the categories “proprietor,” “non-proprietor,” and “if held by tenant rent paid.” Tenure was not identified again until the census of 1871. Cramahe was the only township in which both the 1842 and 1848 censuses containing tenure information survive and were properly filled out. The 1848 census also contained agricultural information, not previously collected, concerning land use. Whereas the 1842 census only counted bushels of produce, the 1848 census also counted acres for each crop, so that calculations are possible for yield and how farm land was apportioned for various uses. The 1851/52 census was the first to provide family members’ names and relationships and for this reason was made into table Census52. The 1852 assessment was also made into a table. Subsequent censuses and assessments were used only to trace people through time and not for more systematic analysis. The relevant material was extracted from these and put into the Post1842 table.
es
appendix b
Statistical Tables
Table 3.1 Farm Tenants as a Percentage of All Occupiers of Rural Land in Canada, 1844–1911 Provinces Ontario Quebec New Brunswick Nova Scotia Prince Edward Island British Columbia Manitoba Territories Canada
1844/48
1871
1881
1891
42.7 33.2 n/a n/a 61
15.3 6.7 6.5 10.8 n/a
17.7 9 7.6 7 6.2
21.2 11.1 7 6.8 5.4
n/a n/a n/a
n/a n/a n/a
11.4 3.3 3.9 12.3
25.3 10 5.6 14.9
Sources: The tenancy figures that are quoted in the census throughout the years pertain to farm land only and not tenants on urban residential lots. Censuses of Canada 1665–1871, vol. 4, Upper Canada 1848, Table v, 168, Lower Canada 1844, Table vii, 154; Census of Canada 1870–71, vol. 3, Table xxi, 100; Census of Canada 1880–81, vol. 3, Table xxii, 114; and Census of Canada 1911: Agriculture, vol.4, Table 6, xii. The retrospective figures given in 1911 for 1891 differ from those given in the 1891 census. I have used the latter figures. Census of Canada 1890–91, vol. 4, Table t, 470. Figures for Prince Edward Island in 1848 are from Clarke, Three Centuries and the Island, Table 3, 95.
Table 3.2 Number of Crown and Clergy Reserve Leases by District in Upper Canada, 1803–18 District Western London Niagara Home Newcastle Midland
Clergy reserve
Clergy reserve
Crown reserve
Crown reserve
1803 9 36 7 44 17 31
1811 9 86 10 134 64 69
1803 10 21 8 35 28 13
1818 9 73 9 125 75 30
Appendix B
232 Table 3.2 continued Johnstown Eastern Totals
14 15 173
49 31 452
15 10 140
47 22 390
Sources: Wilson, Clergy Reserves, 36; ao, rg 1 c-ii–3 vol. 6, Lists of Clergy Lessees, All Districts 1802–11; lac, rg 19 d–5(t) vol. 2507, Crown Land Leases cw 1818–20. A numerical breakdown by district is unavailable for later decades.
Table 3.3 Tenancy by District in Upper Canada, 1848 and 1871
District Western London Talbot Brock Niagara Gore Huron Wellington Simcoe Home Newcastle Colborne Prince Edward Victoria Midland Johnstown Eastern Dalhousie Ottawa Bathurst Total
Number of tenants 1848
Tenants as % of all occupiers of land 1848
Tenants as % of all occupiers of land 1871
1558 2009 1199 1897 3274 3942 1817 2362 1243 6180 3762 961 968 1437 1504 3000 2117 1022 980 1967 43199
36.1 53.5 50.1 39.4 47.3 44.7 46.9 32.7 33.4 44 47.2 39.2 36.5 49.8 37.4 41.1 44.3 37.7 57.9 43 42.7
16.6 14.1 16.2 17.7 21.5 22.2 14.1 13.4 8.4 26.3 22.3 9.6 11.1 15.6 22 13.3 9 9.5 9.3 7.6 15.3
Source: Censuses of Canada 1665–1871, vol. 4, Table v. How “tenant” was defined in 1848 is unclear. The aggregate version of the census lists “owners” and “tenants.” The manuscript version of the 1848 census had no such category as tenant but called those not owning their land “nonproprietors.” Nonproprietor included tenants as I have defined them in this paper, along with squatters, and perhaps others as well. Various census takers seem to have interpreted the category as they saw fit and no specific guidelines have survived. The 1848 figures for large urban areas such as London, Hamilton, Toronto, Kingston, and Bytown were separate, implying that the numbers given above were largely rural. There tenancy represented 69.7 percent of the occupiers of land. Percentages for 1871 have been translated from William Marr’s figures to fit into the districts as they existed in 1848. Marr, “Tenant vs. Owner Occupied Farms,” Table 1, 52.
Statistical Tables
233
Table 3.4 Farm Tenants as a Percentage of all Occupiers of Land in Upper Canada, 1848–1911 Year
Number
Percentage
1848 1871 1881 1891 1901 1911
43199 27340 36690 60483 32360 31201
42.7 15.9 17.7 21.2 14.4 13.8
Sources: Censuses of Canada 1665–1871, vol. 4, Table v; and Crowley, “Rural Labour,” Table 4, 59.
Table 3.5 Tenure Type and Place of Birth of Household Head, Percentages for Cramahe Township, 1842 Place of Birth Canada United States Foreign
Twp
Tenant
24.8 48.4
19.6 47.4
26.8
33
Owner
Share
Rent
Lease
Bond
Deed
28 49
20 60
17.4 37
24.2 54.4
31.1 44.4
26.9 50.9
22.9
20
45.7
21.2
24.4
22.2
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842. Tenure type categories are defined in the following manner: Tenant = lease + rent + share. Owner = deeds + bonds + those leasing and owning at the same time. Township (Twp) = all those farmers in the township who were included in the study, a few of whom were not clearly identified as owners or tenants. See appendix a for details. Lease = those with long leases, usually the twenty-one-year leases on Crown and clergy reserves, identified by “l” on the 1842 census. Rent = short-term cash renters identified by an “r” on census. Share = share tenants identified by “s” on census. Deed = freeholders identified by “d” on census. Bond = mortgaged owners identified by “b” on the census.
Table 3.6 Tenure Type and Age of Household Head, Percentages for Cramahe Township, 1842 Age 10–29 years 30–59 years 60+ years
Twp
Tenant
Owner
Share
Rent
Lease
Bond
Deed
16.9 67.7 15.4
21.6 60 15.5
14 69.4 15.3
33.4 60 6.7
23.9 63 13
15.2 63.6 21.3
17.8 71.1 11.1
12 71.3 16.7
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842.
Appendix B
234
Table 3.7 The Young and Newly Settled by Tenure Type, Percentages for Cramahe Township, 1842 %
Tenure type
16.9 20.6 14.6 33.3 19.6 18.2 17.8 13
Of the entire farm population Of all tenants Of all owners Of all share tenants Of all short-term cash renters Of all leaseholders Of all bondholders Of all deeded owners
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842. “Young” is defined as those under the age of thirty and “newly settled” means those who had been in the province for less than five years.
Table 3.8 Tenure Types Compared Regarding Family and Labour Characteristics, Percentages for Cramahe Township, 1842 Characteristic Household size, average Households with dependent children age 0–5 (%) Households with children age 6–13 (%) Households with children age 0–13 (%) Households with single, young men ages 14–29 (%) Households with 1 or more female servants (%) Households with 1 or more male servants (%)
Twp
Tenant
Owner
Share
Rent
Lease
Bond
Deed
5.9
5.6
6.2
5.3
5.8
5.6
5.6
6.3
65.7
68
64.3
80
76
57.6
53.3
70.4
64.6
55.7
70.1
60
50
66.7
62.2
75
85
82.5
86.6
86.7
82.6
84.8
80
90.7
33.9
24.7
39.5
13.3
26.1
21.2
35.6
39.8
9.4
9.3
9.6
0
15.2
6
4.4
11.1
13.7
8.2
15.3
0
13
6
11.1
16.7
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842.
Statistical Tables
235
Table 3.9 Tenure Type and Household Type: Percentages for Cramahe Township, 1842 Household Type Simple unit Single parent Complex unit
Twp
Tenant
Owner
Share
Rent
Lease
Bond
Deed
72.8 7.9 19.3
73.2 10.3 16.5
72.6 6.4 21
86.7 6.7 6.7
65.2 10.9 23.9
78.8 12.1 9.1
80 4.4 15.6
70.4 7.4 22.2
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842. A “simple family” unit = nuclear unit of mother, father, and children; the solitary person; and the childless couple. Only one occupier of land was single and living alone – testimony to the importance of teamwork and helpmates in the early days of settlement. A “single parent” unit = one parent (either mother or father) and children; and a single parent and other relatives. A “complex” unit = “extended” family, which included the nuclear family as well as other relative(s). The extended family also included the “stem” family, comprising the nuclear family as well as married grandparents. It also included households that contained coresident adult siblings. The categories were ascertained by first identifying the person designated as household head and then determining the other members’ relationship to him or her. Unfortunately the 1842 census did not have categories naming each person in the household or describing their relationship to the household head. Using age categories and marital status, it was fairly clear when a family was nuclear, stem, solitary, a childless couple, or a single parent with a child and grandparents. It was more difficult to ascertain the relationship of those beyond the nuclear family. For example, who was the man or woman over sixty years of age and single in a household? Were they a widowed parent, or a single aunt or uncle? Widows and widowers were not identified but were considered as single. The age categories were also very large. Who was the additional married woman, for example, whose age was between fourteen and forty-five? Was she a sister of the household head or his mother? Servants were not included in these calculations of household type.
Table 4.1 Age of Landlords Compared to Other Landholders, Percentages for Cramahe Township, 1842 Age
Twp
Tenants
Owners
Landlords
10–29 years 30–59 years 60+ years
16.9 67.7 15.4
21.6 60 15.5
14 69.4 15.3
12.5 70 17.5
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842, gravestone inscriptions, and printed genealogies. Ages were found for forty of the fifty landlords. Those not found were likely in the over-sixty-years-of-age category, residing with children, and no longer identified by the census as the household head. Township (Twp) = all those farmers included in the study.
Appendix B
236
Table 4.2 Landlords Compared to Other Tenure Types, Cramahe Township, 1842 Characteristic Average assessed value Average years in province Average acres Average improved acres Average household size Frame houses under two stories (%)
Twp
Tenant
Owner
Landlord
102 21.8 116.3 38.4 5.9 35.1
76 18.1 97.9 31.8 5.6 25.3
118 24.3 127.8 42.5 6.2 40.9
154 28.5 166.8 64.2 6.7 45
Sources: lac, Canada West Census 1842, and ao, Assessment of 1842. These figures do not represent all Cramahe landlords: half were no longer actively farming in 1842 but had retired or moved away and were no longer identified by the census as the household head. As a result, they could not be found on the census. Of the fifty landlords, ten could not be found on the assessment. Money values are given in pounds currency.
Table 5.1 Comparison of Recommended and Actual Rent Values, 1820–79, Upper Canada, When Rent Is Calculated as One-Third of Average Wheat Value per Acre
Decade 1820s 1830s 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s
Recommended rent when calculated as 1/3rd of wheat value Actual rent values in Average price of each decade per acre wheat/bushel Average yield of wheat (shillings per acre) (shillings per acre) (shillings, currency) per acre (bushels) 3/9 5/2 4/– 4/1 6/4 5/–
15 15 15 15 15 15
18/9 25/10 20/0 20/5 31/8 25/0
5 5–10 5–15 5–20 5–20 10–25
Sources: Prices are in currency, shillings/pence. Wheat prices are from McCalla, Planting the Province, 336–7, 340. Though higher wheat yields (seventeen bushels per acre) can be found in works such as McInnis, “Marketable Surpluses in Ontario Farming,” 45, I have chosen to use the lowest average yield per acre calculated by McCalla – fifteen bushels per acre, Planting the Province, 25. Some accounts even go as far as twenty-two bushels per acre. Mealing, editor of Gourlay, Statistical Account of Upper Canada, 291; and Jones, History of Agriculture in Ontario, 97. The Cobourg Star, 1 February 1831, reported that wheat yields in Northumberland County (Cramahe’s area) were twenty-three to twenty-five bushels per acre on the best farms. The actual rent values in each decade are compiled from the following sources: 1820s: ao, mu–2382, James Reid Papers, James Reid to Thomas Reid, 22 September 1827, Gore Township rents, twenty miles around Toronto. 1830s: Evans, The Emigrant’s Guide, 78–9; and Hume, Canada As It Is, 22–3. 1840s: lac, rg 5 B21, Completed Emigration Questionnaire 1840–41, vol. 1, figures calculated by district. This questionnaire was sent out by Mr Harris, the provincial and civil secretary of Upper Canada, to a number of prominent officials and private citizens who he felt were well informed and in positions to gather information regarding agriculture, usually the district sheriff, president of the agricultural society, or local emigration agent. Responses were sent in by seventeen of the twenty districts established by 1845. Eight districts gave money values for rent: Newcastle, Canada Company (Huron), Gore, Home, London, Niagara, Victoria, and Wellington Districts. Question 18, “What is the usual mode of letting; and, if by leases,
Statistical Tables
237
state the conditions, and for what term of years?” is particularly useful. Abbott, The Emigrant to North America, 88–9; and Wilson, Clergy Reserves, 186. 1850s: ao, mu–2382, Reid Papers, James Reid to Thomas Reid, 1 March 1847, Gore Township; Smith, Canada: Past, Present and Future, 535, figures for various districts across the province; Haw, Fifteen Years in Canada, 106; Rose, Emigrant Churchman, 197; James Johnston, Notes on North America, 275; and Hutton, Canada, 29. 1860s: Buchanan, Jr, Canada, vol. 1, 51 and 59, vol. 2, 4, 19, 20 for various counties and for Canada West as a whole; Croil, Dundas, 206, 208; and Canada Farmer 1 (15 September 1864): 270. 1870s: Reports of Tenant Farmer’s Delegates, 16, 32, 78–9, 115; Duffield, Old Towns and New Domains, 146, for locations throughout province; Hardy and Spence, Emigration, 28–9 generally, and 103 for Guelph area; and Easton, Travels in America, 99.
Table 5.2 Rent as a Percentage of Purchase Price 1820–79, Upper Canada
Decade
Rent in shillings/acre
Purchase price in shillings/acre
Rent as % of purchase price
1820s 1830s 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s
5 5–10 5–15 5–20 5–20 10–25
not available 30 60–100 100–300 25–250 250–500
16–50 8–15 5–7 8–20 4–6
Sources: For this table I have used only evidence where the same individual recorded a rent and purchase price for the same piece of property or area. The purchase price may not have included stock and implements as these moveable goods generally belonged to the tenant. 1820s: ao, mu–2382, James Reid Papers, James Reid to Thomas Reid, 22 September 1827, Gore Township rents, twenty miles around Toronto. 1830s: Evans, The Emigrant’s Guide, 78–9; and Hume, Canada As It Is, 22–3. 1840s: lac, rg 5 B21,Completed Emigration Questionnaire 1840–41, vol. 1, figures calculated by district. 1850s: Smith, Canada: Past, Present and Future, vol. 2, 535, figures for Johnstown District and westward. 1860s: Buchanan, Jr, Canada, for the Information of Immigrants, vol. 1, 51 and 59, vol. 2, 4, 19, for various counties and for Canada West as a whole. 1870s: Reports of Tenant Farmer’s Delegates, 32 Galt area, 78–9 Ottawa area; Duffield, Old Towns and New Domains, 146, for locations throughout province; and Hardy and Spence, Emigration, 28–9 generally, 103 for Guelph area.
Table 5.3 Crown and Clergy Reserve Rents for Each 200-Acre Lot
Annual Total rent Average Annual Annual rent for 1st rent for 2d rent for 3d for 21-year annual rent lease seven years seven years seven years
Average annual rent/acre (pence)
Year 1800 1811 1819
10 15 35
20 30 70
30 45 105
420 630 1470
20 30 70
1.2 1.8 4.2
Increase from previous regulations (%) over era
per year
50 133
4.5 16.6
Sources: ao, rg1 a-i-7, vol. 3, env. 2, ms 892 Reel 1, clp, Clergy Reserve Legislation and Sales, 01004–5; and lac, rg1 L7, vol. 34, pt. 1 (Folder 1812–18), Records of the Executive Council, Misc. Correspondence, “Table Shewing Rents ... under the Regulations 13 April 1819.”
Appendix B
238
Figures are given in shillings currency, unless otherwise stated. I have not converted shillings to pounds so that comparison is easier. Average annual rent equals the total rent for a twenty-one year lease divided by twenty-one years.
Table 7.1 Value of Selling a Clergy Reserve Lease in Cramahe Township, 1810–69 Decade
Number of cases
Average value of lease / acre
2 2 8 21 23 2
6 shillings currency 12 10 12 25 6
1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860
Value of lease in rent years
Lease as % of assessed value 47.6
10
56.7 66.5 50.9
Sources: ao, rg1, c-iv, clp, Cramahe Township Papers, and rg21, Municipal Records, assessments 1803–70. Each transfer that is found in the Cramahe Township Papers was tabulated and the leaseholder matched with the surviving assessment records for that decade. See appendix a for a full discussion of the relationship of assessed value to market value. Rent for the 1840s for each lot was taken from lac, Canada West Census 1842. Rents for other years are not available. Acres represent total acreage, improved, and wild.
Table 7.2 Value of Selling a Lease on Amherst Island, Lennox and Addington County, 1843–86 Case
Value of lease/acre
1843 Fowler 1858 Finnegan 1886 Glenn
$6.00 12.00 21.09
Value of rent / Value of lease in Freehold price / acre rent years acre $0.60 0.60 1.00
10 20 21
$20.00 13.00 24.00 (1875)
Lease as % of freehold price 30% 92 87
Sources: Fowler: Smith, Daniel Fowler of Amherst Island, 129: Finnegan: William Perceval to Maxwell, 13 July 1858, Moore Hill Papers, proni; and Glenn: “Account of Captain Hugh Glenn,” courtesy of the late Ruth Glenn. Freehold prices are from ao, g.s. 4727, aid and for the specific farms.
Statistical Tables
239
Table 8.1 Acreage Data by Concession for Owners and Tenants in Cramahe Township, 1842
Total no. O or T of farms held with farms by (%) Concession Bf & 1st 2d 3d 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th not located Totals
Total no. of farms 52 52 23 33 25 11 9 20 14 12
T
O
20 32 19 33 6 17 15 18 5 20 3 8 4 5 7 13 7 7 2 10 9 97 163
251
T
O
23 20 22 20 7 10 17 11 6 12 3 5 5 3 8 8 8 4 2 6
Total no. of acres held by
Improved land held by O&T in each con. (%)
Acres held by Total no. T&O in that of improved con. (%) acres held by
T
O
T
O
2002 1792 477 1182 710 500 620 665 725 250
3376 2338 1842 3195 3058 1252 890 1754 840 931
37 43 21 27 19 29 41 28 46 21
63 57 79 73 81 71 59 72 54 79
8923
19476
T
748 505 135 372 145 68 44 191 129 135
O
T
O
482 554 349 534 439 212 30 265 135 65
61 39 48 52 28 72 41 59 25 75 24 76 60 40 42 58 49 51 68 32
2472 3065
Sources: lac, Canada West Census 1842 and ao, Assessment of 1842. Acreage and figures are derived from the census of 1842 and location is derived from the assessment of 1842. Acreage figures in the census do not differentiate when a person held properties in different concessions. For this reason those farmers, for example, who first listed one lot on the second concession and under it one lot on the fourth concession have had all their property listed as being on the second concession. My assumption is that the first property they listed in the assessment was the main farm. This places some acreage in the wrong concession, but more than fifty percent of those farmers with a second property had it located in the same concession as their first property. Another caution with these figures concerns share tenants. Share tenants were much less apt to pay tax on land than other tenure types; hence they do not appear in the assessment. If their location could be derived from other sources, it was included in this table.
Table 8.2 Land Held and Improved by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842 Tenure type Township Tenant Owner Share Rent Lease Bond Deed
Average size of farm in acres
Average no. of acres improved per farm
Average % of farm improved
Average no. of improved acres per person
116.3 97.9 127.8 87.9 94.5 110 117.7 129.9
38.4 31.8 42.5 38.5 31.7 30.6 33.8 45.1
39.3 40.6 38.5 64.3 40.8 31.1 32.8 40.6
7.52 7.08 7.96 11.4 5.6 7.5 7.8 7.9
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842. The average percentage of farm improved was calculated by determining the size and percentage improved on each farm individually and then finding the average. Township (Twp) = all farmers included in this study, a few of whom were not clearly identified as owners or tenants. See appendix a for details.
Appendix B
240
Table 8.3 Distribution of Farm Sizes amongst Tenure Types, Cramahe Township, 1842
Tenure type Township Tenant Owner Share Rent Lease Bond Deed
Under 1 acre
Tiny (1–31 acres)
Small (32–69 acres)
Medium (70–169 acres)
Large (170+)
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
4 3 1
1.6 3 0.6
2 1
4.3 3
1
0.9
32 16 16 5 10 1 6 10
12.6 16.5 10.2 33.3 21.7 3 13.3 9.6
39 18 21 1 6 9 10 11
15.4 18.6 13.4 6.7 13 27.3 22.2 10.2
123 45 78 7 22 15 18 58
48.4 46.4 49.7 46.7 47.8 45.5 40 53.7
56 15 41 2 6 7 11 28
22 16 26 13 13 21 24 26
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842. These farm-size categories are the same ones designed by McInnis, Perspectives on Ontario Agriculture, 45.
Table 8.4 Percentage of Farms with “x” Percent of Farm Improved by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842 % Farm Improved
Twp
Tenant
Owner
Share
Rent
Lease
Bond
Deed
0% 1–24 25–49 50–74 75–99 100%
4.7 27.2 34.6 22 3.9 7.5
7.2 26.8 29.9 19.6 2.1 14.4
3.2 27.4 37.6 23.6 5.1 3.2
6.7 13.3 20 6.7 6.7 46.7
6.5 26.1 30.4 19.6 2.2 15.2
6.1 33.3 36.4 24.2
2.2 44.4 31.1 15.6 2.2 4.4
3.7 20.4 40.7 26.9 5.6 2.8
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842.
Table 8.5 Distribution of Tenure Types by the Amount of Improved Land, Cramahe Township, 1842 Tenant
Owner
Share
Rent
Lease
Bond
Deed
Acres
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
0 1–10 11–20 21–30 31–40 41–50 51–75 76+ Total
7 21 16 20 10 7 9 7 97
7 22 17 21 10 7 9 7
5 19 21 20 22 25 22 23 157
3 12 13 13 14 16 14 15
1 2 2 4
7 13 13 27
3 2 1 15
20 13 7
3 14 8 5 6 1 5 4 46
7 30 17 11 13 2 11 9
2 5 5 10 4 3 2 2 33
6 15 15 30 12 9 6 6
1 11 7 7 8 5 1 5 45
2 24 16 16 18 11 2 11
4 8 14 13 14 20 18 17 108
4 7 13 12 13 17 17 16
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842.
Statistical Tables
241
Table 8.6 Measuring the Ability to Feed One’s Family: Percentage of Households with “x” Improved Acres per Person by Tenure Type Improved acres per person 0–4 = below subsistence 5–9 = subsistence 10–80 = above subsistence
Twp
Tenant
Owner
Share
Rent
Lease
Bond
Deed
41.6
47.4
30.8
40
52.2
42.4
56.1
30.1
35.4
32
37.7
40
23.9
39.4
29.3
40.7
23
20.6
24.7
20
23.9
18.2
14.6
29.1
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842. It is generally understood that a family of five required about thirty-five cleared acres to sustain themselves, or seven acres per person. Allowing some leeway for large and small appetites, and varying numbers of livestock that might influence the ability of a family to feed itself, I have extended the subsistence category to include families with anywhere from five to nine acres per person.
Table 8.7 Land Use by Owners and Tenants in Cramahe Township, 1848 Land use % of farm in tillage % of farm in pasture % of farm in wood or wild land % of farm unfit % of tilled acres devoted to subsistence crops – potatoes and/or corn * % of tilled acreage devoted to market crops – wheat and/or rye * % of tilled acreage unaccounted for in census and likely in fallow, gardens, turnips, clover, hay, etc.
Township
Tenants
Owners
29 16 54 2 10
33 15 50 3 13
28 17 55 2 9
35
40
34
8
7
8
Sources: lac, Canada West Census 1842, and ao, Census of 1848. The 1848 census was the first to provide information of this kind. Only people identified in 1842 as tenants or owners who then appeared in the 1848 census were included in these calculations. Ten tenants that persisted from 1842 but had entered the rank of owner by 1848 were removed from the tenant category and entered into the owner category for the purpose of this table. This table cannot be created for specific tenant types – i.e., cash, share, and leasehold – since the 1848 census did not give this detailed information and farmers may have shifted between tenure categories – i.e., from share to cash renter in the intervening years. * These categories need some qualification. Wheat was also used for domestic consumption and some farmers near town may have grown a surplus of potatoes for the lumber trade. Generally, however, potatoes were consumed at home as they were too bulky to transport and surplus wheat was marketed.
Appendix B
242
Table 8.8 Percentage of Owner and Tenant Farms Growing Individual Crops, Percentage of Improved Acreage Devoted to the Crop, and Average Number of Bushels Produced on Those Farms Growing Each Crop, Cramahe Township, 1842 Tenants
Crops Wheat Barley Rye Oats Peas Corn Buckwheat Potatoes
Owners
% growing the crop
% of improved land used
average bushels produced
% growing the crop
% of improved land used
average bushels produced
52.6 27.8 11.3 68 45.4 76.3 34 85.6
14.1 5.8 11.7 13 6.8 8.8 7.1 7.1
44 45 55 110 54 44 37 148
73.2 30.6 21 75.8 53.5 72 35 89.8
19.9 5 12.6 12.6 6.4 5.5 5.4 4.6
81 47 62 114 44 42 49 180
Sources: lac, Canada West Census 1842, and ao, Census of 1848. Numbers were arrived at through the same method as that employed for table 8.10, and do not include farmers producing zero quantity of each crop.
Table 8.9 Percentage of Farms Growing Individual Crops by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842 Crops Wheat Barley Rye Oats Peas Corn Buckwheat Potatoes
Township
Share
Rent
Lease
Bond
Deed
64.5 26.9 14.3 71.8 48.6 72.7 32.2 87.7
46.7 20 13.3 73.3 60 86.7 53.3 100
43.5 34.8 10.9 63 41.3 63 23.9 80.4
75.8 24.2 12.1 75.8 48.5 93.9 42.2 90.9
71.1 31.1 4.4 53.3 31.1 62.2 22.2 84.5
75 29.6 26.9 86.1 62 75.9 40.8 92.6
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842. The table above reads, for example, as only 46.7 percent of share tenants grew wheat on their farm. The other share tenants grew no wheat at all.
Table 8.10 Percentage of Improved Acres Estimated to Be Devoted to Field Crops by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842 Crops
Twp
Tenant
Owner
Share
Rent
Lease
Bond
Deed
Wheat Barley Rye Oats Peas Corn
11.7 1.5 2.1 9.1 3.2 4.9
7.4 1.6 1.3 8.7 3 6.5
14.4 1.5 2.6 9.5 3.4 4
1.6 0.7 0.5 10.3 4.8 4.2
8.8 2 1.4 9.8 3.1 6.9
8.8 1.6 1.7 7.3 2.4 7.3
19.1 1.3 1 6.3 2.4 3.3
12.9 1.5 2.8 10.8 3.7 4.2
Statistical Tables
243
Table 8.10 continued Buckwheat Potatoes
2.1 4.8
2.4 6
1.9 4.1
3.4 2.9
2.3 6.4
2.2 7.3
1.5 4.6
2.1 3.8
Sources: lac, Canada West Census 1842, and ao, Census of 1848. The 1842 census did not count the acres devoted to specific crops. To calculate the numbers above, it was necessary to calculate the average bushels per acre (yield) for each crop in Cramahe from the 1848 census and then use these yield numbers to calculate the estimated acres used for the bushels of produce given in 1842. The percentage of improved land devoted to each crop was then calculated. The following yields (bushels per acre) were used from the census of 1848: wheat 9.6, barley 18.5, rye 8.5, oats 20.0, corn 21.6, buckwheat 16.7, potatoes 107.2, and peas 17.0. The census of 1848 did not list peas, so the yield was calculated from the census of 1852. These numbers include those farms that had zero acres of a particular crop. All other improved land not devoted to crops might have been used for orchards, pasture, or hay, or left fallow.
Table 8.11 Percentage of Farms Producing “x” Bushels of Wheat by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842 Bu. of wheat 0 1–49 50–99 100–199 200–299 300–399 400–499 500–599 600–699 700–799
Twp
Tenant
Owner
Share
Rent
Lease
Bond
Deed
33.7 36.1 14.2 9.3 2.8 2 0.8
46.2 37.4 9.9 4.4 1.1 1.1
26.4 35.5 16.8 12.2 3.8 2.6 1.3
57.1 42.9
55.8 27.9 4.7 7 2.3 2.3
25 50 21.9 3.1
27.3 27.3 22.7 9.1 4.5 6.8 2.3
25.5 39.6 14.2 14.2 3.8 0.9 0.9
0.4 0.4
0.6 0.6
2.3 0.9
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842.
Table 8.12 Percentage of Farms Producing “x” Bushels of Oats by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842 Bu. of oats
Twp
Tenant
Owner
Share
Rent
Lease
Bond
Deed
0 1–49 50–99 100–199 200–299 300–399 400–499 500–599 600+
26.5 24.9 13.9 19.2 8.6 4.5 1.6 0.4 0.4
30.8 28.6 12.1 17.6 5.5 2.2 2.2
24 22.7 14.9 20.1 10.4 5.8 1.3 0.6
28.6 21.4
34.9 23.3 14 14 6.9 2.3 2.3
25 37.5 15.6 12.5 6.3 3.1
45.5 20.5 15.9 9.1 4.5 2.3
14.2 24.5 15.1 42.5 13.2 6.6 1.9
1.1
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842.
42.9
7.1
2.3 2.3
Appendix B
244
Table 8.13 Degree of Crop Diversification by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842. Percentage of Farms in Each Category. Degree of diversification Bush farmer Subsistence farmer Diversified farmer
Twp
Tenant
Owner
Share
Rent
Lease
Bond
Deed
8.3 9.8 81.9
9.3 8.2 82.5
8.2 10.3 81.5
13 7 80
8.6 4.4 87
9.1 12.1 78.8
15.6 22.2 62.2
4.6 6.5 88.9
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842. Bush farmer = only growing potatoes and/or corn. Subsistence farmer = only growing potatoes and/or corn, wheat, oats, or any combination thereof. Diversified crop farmer = one who grows a more diverse range of crops than the subsistence farmer including rotation crops.
Table 8.14 Average Number of Livestock for Tenure Types, Cramahe Township, 1842 Livestock
Twp
Tenant
Owner
Share
Rent
Lease
Bond
Deed
Cattle Pigs Sheep Horses
7.9 5.9 10.7 1.7
5.9 5.1 6.7 1.2
9.2 6.5 13.2 2
3.3 3.9 4.9 0.8
6.3 5.2 6.3 1.2
7 5.8 8.4 1.5
6 4.6 8.1 1.3
10.5 6.7 15.3 2.2
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842. The census category “neat cattle” included all bovines, for example, milk cows, cattle age two to four, and oxen (steer over four years). These were individually itemized in the assessment. The census, however, also included cattle under two years, i.e., calves and heifers. These animals were not counted for assessment purposes as they generally had not begun their productive lives as milk producers or working steers. Livestock figures in the census (taken in June), therefore, were greater than those listed in the assessment of 1842 (taken in April). In addition, some farmers may not have kept animals over the winter and then have acquired new ones after April – new calves, foals, lambs, and piglets. As far as I know, 1842 was an average year. In 1836 and 1843, Northumberland County experienced cold winters and late springs. This resulted in a scarcity of fodder and a great loss of cattle. Riddell, Northumberland County, 144.
Table 8.15 Average Number of Livestock per Improved Acre by Tenure Type – A Measure of Farming Intensity, Cramahe Township, 1842 Livestock Cattle Pigs Sheep Horses
Twp
Tenant
Owner
Share
Rent
Lease
Bond
Deed
0.207 0.043 0.155 0.28
0.186 0.038 0.16 0.212
0.217 0.047 0.153 0.312
0.087 0.02 0.102 0.128
0.2 0.037 0.163 0.198
0.227 0.047 0.188 0.275
0.178 0.038 0.136 0.24
0.235 0.05 0.149 0.342
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842.
Statistical Tables
245
Table 8.16 Percentage of Owner and Tenant Households with No Livestock, Below Subsistence, Subsistence Level, or Surplus Livestock, Cramahe Township, 1842 Zero livestock
Below subsistence
Subsistence level
Surplus
Livestock
Tenant
Owner
Tenant
Owner
Tenant
Owner
Tenant
Owner
Milk cows Pigs Sheep Horses Oxen
7.7 10.3 32 45 63.9
3.2 7 24.2 35.1 51.6
29.7 44.3
22.1 35.7
46.2 34 32 49.5 26.8
46.7 37.6 21 47.4 40.9
16.5 11.3 27.8 5.5 3.2
27.9 19.7 54.8 17.5 6.4
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842 for pigs, horses, and sheep, and ao, assessment of 1842 for milk cows and oxen. Milk Cows: Below subsistence = one cow. Authorities believed two or three milk cows were required for subsistence. Surplus = greater than four cows. No one in the township had more than nine milk cows. Pigs: Below subsistence = one to four hogs. Subsistence = five to nine hogs, or the equivalent of about one litter. Surplus = ten hogs and over. One fattened hog was equal to a barrel of pork. Sheep were not as crucial for subsistence as pigs and cows. They were primarily kept for their wool, not their meat. Subsistence = one to nine sheep. Surplus = ten sheep and over. Horses: Subsistence = one or two horses. Surplus = three horses and over. Oxen: Subsistence = one or two. Surplus = three and over..
Table 8.17 Percentage of Farms by Tenure Type with No Livestock, Below Subsistence, Subsistence Level, or Surplus Livestock, Cramahe Township, 1842 Zero livestock Livestock zero Cows Pigs Sheep Horses Oxen below subsistence Cows Pigs Sheep Horses Oxen subsistence level Cows Pigs Sheep Horses Oxen
Share
Rent
Lease
Bond
Deed
7 20 47 57 64
9 10 52 42 67
3 3 21 44 69
5 13 38 50
3 5 19 30
29 40
33 46
25 46
36 44
17 31
64 40 33 36 36
42 28 26 54 26
47 39 36 50 31
45 29 29 41
47 42 18 49
Appendix B
246 Table 8.17 continued surplus Cows Pigs Sheep Horses Oxen
16 15 22 5 7
20 7
25 12 42 6
14 13 33 9
33 22 64 21
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842 for pigs, horses, and sheep, and ao, assessment of 1842 for milk cows and oxen. For definition of categories, e.g., “below subsistence,” see note for Table 8.16.
Table 8.18 Percentage of Farms Producing Some Nonagricultural Produce by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842 Produce Hives Maple sugar Fulled cloth Linen Flannel Wool
Twp
Tenant
Owner
Share
Rent
Lease
Bond
Deed
13.8 49 57.1 19.7 50.8 63.4
7.2 36.3 44.3 17.5 40.2 53.6
17.8 56.5 65 21 57.3 69.4
13.3 42.9 46.7 20 33.3 33.3
4.3 22.7 30.4 8.7 28.3 47.8
9.1 51.5 63.6 30.3 63.6 72.7
8.9 59.1 48.9 11.2 48.8 55.5
20.4 56.6 72.2 25.9 61.1 75.9
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842. Fulled cloth was wool that had been felted, made thicker and more compact by moistening, beating, or pressing. Flannel was unfelted or unfulled cloth, usually woolen cloth in this era. Linen was not fulled, and under the category of “linen” other thin cloth such as cotton was included. Only three farms on the broken front reported fish as an additional income.
Table 8.19 Percentage of Farms Producing “x” Amount of Cloth by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842 No of yards 0 1–19 20–39 40–59 60–79 80–99
Share
Rent
Lease
Bond
Deed
F
L
FL
F
L
FL
F
L
FL
F
L
FL
F
L
FL
53 40 7
80 13 7
67 20 13
70 22 9
91
72 17 11
36 58 6
70 9 12 9
36 36 24 3
51 33 13
89 7 4
51 22 20 4 2
28 38 26 7
74 11 11 3
39 22 27 6 6
2
1
7 2
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842. f = fulled cloth, l = linen, and fl = flannel.
2
Statistical Tables
247
Table 8.20 Percentage of Farms Producing “x” Pounds of Wool by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842 Pounds
Share
Rent
Lease
Bond
Deed
0 1–49 50–99 100–149 150–199 200–249
66 27 7
52 41 4 2
27 73
44 40 16
24 50 18 4 1 3
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842.
Table 8.21 Percentage of Households with Male and Female Servants by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842
No Female Servants Some Female Servants No Male Servants Some Male Servants
Twp
Tenant
Owner
Share
Rent
Lease
Bond
Deed
91 9
91 9
90 10
100
85 15
94 6
96 4
89 11
87 13
92 8
85 15
87 13
94 6
89 17
83 17
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842.
Table 8.22 Percentage of Households with Certain House Types by Tenure Type, Cramahe Township, 1842 House type
Twp
Tenant
Owner
Share
Rent
Lease
Bond
Deed
Non-ratable houses Squared or hewed log under 2 stories Frame under 2 stories Frame, brick, or stone, under 2 stories Frame, brick, or stone, 2 stories Brick or stone, under 2 stories Two houses
56.3 3.6
67 3.3
50 3.9
78.6 7.1
55.8 2.3
75 3.1
72.7 2.3
41.5 4.7
35.1
25.3
40.9
14.3
32.6
21.9
20.5
48.1
0.4
3.7
0.6
4.4
0.8 1.6
3.2
2.3
9.3
2.3
1.3 2.2
1.3
Sources: ao, Assessment of 1842 and lac, Canada West Census 1842.
3.8 1.8
2.3
3.1
1.8
Appendix B
248
Table 9.1 Cramahe Township Tenants’ Career Paths Prior to 1842 Ladders Pre–1842 Had been farmers on other lots No previous experience on the land Grew up on area farm and moved onto new lot Previously an owner Total
Non-ladders
Leavers
Lifetimers
All tenants
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
9
33
21
31
8
29
12
38
30
32
16
59
39
57
16
57
16
50
55
58
2
7
5
7
3
11
2
6
7
7
0 27
0 100
3 68
5 100
1 28
4 100
2 32
6 100
3 95
3 100
Source: In lac, Canada West Census 1842, tenant farmers in the Census of 1842 were traced back through all the existing censuses, assessments, and the Abstract Index to Deeds. In the tables that follow for this chapter, the category “nonladders” includes leavers, lifetimers, and those who moved sideways or downwards. The category “all tenants” is the sum of ladders and nonladders. Two tenant farmers died young and were not included in career path tables; hence the total number of tenants used in the tables for this chapter is ninety-five, not ninety-seven. Sideways and downward cases have not been included as there were so few people in these categories.
Table 9.2 Career Paths of Tenants and Farm Size, Cramahe Township, 1842 Ladders
Non-ladders
Leavers
Lifetimers
All tenants
Farm size, acres
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
0–31 Tiny 32–69 Small 70–169 Medium 170+Large Totals
5 3 14 5 27
19 11 52 19 100
13 15 31 9 68
19 22 46 13 100
8 6 12 2 28
29 21 43 7 100
2 7 18 5 32
6 22 56 16 100
18 18 45 14 95
19 19 48 15 100
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842.
Table 9.3 Career Paths of Tenants and Farm Size and Value, Cramahe Township, 1842 For each career path
Ladders
Non-ladders
Leavers
Lifetimers
All tenants
Average size of farm, acres Average improved acres Average improved acres per person Percentage of farms with fewer than 10 improved acres
110.9 45.7 12.6
90.6 26.2 4.9
73.5 23.8 4.3
107.7 31.3 5.6
97.9 31.8 7.1
14.8
11.4
46.4
15.6
25.2
Statistical Tables
249
Table 9.3 continued Percentage of farms with more than 29 improved acres Average number of newly cleared acres/year Average assessed value, £/d currency Percentage with non-rateable houses Percentage with log house Percentage with frame house Percentage with two-storey frame/brick/stone house Percentage with farms in the first two concessions
66.7
80
39.3
59.4
51.6
3.5
0.9
1.6
1
1.5
114.61
60.56
39.11
79.15
76.16
56
70
75
70
67
0 33
5 20
4 17
7 23
3 25
11
5
4
0
5
48
42
50
43
45
Sources: lac, Canada West Census 1842, and ao, Assessment of 1842. The average number of newly cleared acres per year uses the number of acres they improved during the number of years they occupied their 1842 lot. This figure, therefore, draws from a number of census and assessment records from the pre- and post-1842 period.
Table 9.4 Career Paths of Tenants and Family Characteristics, Cramahe Township, 1842 Households
Ladders
Non-ladders
Leavers
Lifetimers
All tenants
Average size Percentage with more than 5 people Percentage with more than 3 children under age 14 Percentage with boys aged 14 to 29 Percentage with male or female servants Percentage with male servants Percentage with female servants Percentage with household head under the age of 39 Percentage with household head over the age of 40
5 40.7
5.8 50
5.61 48.1
6.3 59.4
5.6 47.9
29.6
35.3
32.1
40.6
33
14.8
29.4
25
37.5
24.7
25.9
8.8
3.6
6.3
13.4
25.9
1.5
3.6
0
8.2
14.8
7.3
0
6.3
9.3
74
50
82.1
12.5
56.8
25.9
50
10.7
87.5
43.2
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842.
Appendix B
250
Table 9.5 Career Paths of Tenants and Farming Characteristics, Cramahe Township, 1842 For each career type Percentage growing subsistence crops only Percentage growing diversified crops for market Average no. of cattle Average no. of horses Average no. of pigs Average no. of sheep Average bu. of wheat Average bu. of oats Average lbs maple sugar Average yds fulled cloth Average yds linen Average yds flannel Average lbs wool
Ladders
Non-ladders
Leavers
Lifetimers
All tenants
14.8
17.6
10.7
15.6
17.5
85.2
82.4
89.3
84.4
82.5
8 1.6 7 8 33.3 136.9 24.9 6.4 3.4 6.2 16.7
5.2 0.9 4.4 6.1 19.6 49.1 32.8 5.9 5.1 6.4 12.9
3.9 0.6 2.4 3.5 12.4 54.3 19 3.1 3.9 2.7 5.5
7 1.4 6.3 9.3 27.8 52.5 42.5 9.3 6.9 11.3 21.3
5.9 1.2 5.1 6.7
6.1 4.7 6.5 13.9
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842. These figures include those who had zero livestock and produce.
Table 9.6 Career Paths of Tenants and Moving From Farm to Farm, Cramahe Township For each career path
Ladders
Average number of years in the province Average number of years tenants stay on their 1842 lot Average frequency of moves, i.e., move once every “x” years
Non-ladders
Leavers
Lifetimers
All tenants
29.8
20
9.3
26.7
21.7
17.6
10.2
6.5
17.5
13.2
21.5
8.9
5
13.6
12.6
Sources: lac, censuses for 1842, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, and 1891; and ao for all other pre-1851 censues and for assessments of 1808–70.
Table 9.7 Career Paths of Tenants and Place of Birth, Cramahe Township, 1842 Ladders
Non-ladders
Leavers
Lifetimers
All tenants
Place of birth
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
Canada US Overseas Totals
12 5 10 27
44 19 37 100
23 24 21 68
34 35 31 100
13 8 7 28
46 29 25 100
6 14 12 32
19 44 37 100
35 29 31 95
37 31 32 100
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842.
Statistical Tables
251
Table 9.8 Career Paths of Tenants and Religion, Cramahe Township, 1842 Ladders
Non-ladders
Leavers
Lifetimers
All tenants
Religion
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
Protestant Catholic Mixed Blank Other Totals
17 1 2 7 0 27
63 4 7 26 0 100
36 3 1 22 6 68
53 4 2 32 9 100
12 1 1 12 2 28
42 4 4 43 7 100
21 2 0 5 4 32
66 6 0 16 12 100
53 4 3 29 6 95
56 4 3 31 6 100
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842.
Table 9.9 Number of Moves Made by Ladder Tenants before Becoming Owners
Number of moves None One Two Three Four Totals
Leaseholders
Renters
Share tenants Crown reserves Clergy reserves
All ladder tenants
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
6 2 3
43 14 21
75 25
1 2 2
14 29 29
5
71
1
14
21 100
36 14 7 21 21 100
3 1
3 14
5 2 1 3 3 14
2 7
29 100
1 7
14 100
14 5 4 3 6 32
44 16 12 9 19 100
4
100
Sources: lac, censuses for Cramahe Township for 1842, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, and 1891; ao for all other pre-1851 censuses and for assessments of 1808–70; and ao, g.s. 4727, aid for Cramahe Township spanning the nineteenth century. “None” means that they moved onto their 1842 lot, stayed there, and purchased it. The category “All ladder tenants” equals the sum of leaseholders, renters, and share tenants and does not include Crown and clergy reserves as they are included in leaseholders.
Table 9.10 Career Paths and Landlord Type, Cramahe Township, 1842 Landlord
Reserve landlord Related landlord Farmer landlord Business landlord Totals
Ladders
Non-ladders
Leavers
Lifetimers
All tenants
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
11 5 3 6 25
44 20 12 24 100
17 9 26 7 59
29 15 44 12 100
4 7 15 2 28
14 25 54 7 100
13 2 11 5 31
42 7 36 16 100
28 14 29 13 84
33 17 35 15 100
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842. I was unable to clearly identify the landlord for eleven tenants.
Appendix B
252
Table 9.11 Transiency of 1842 Tenants and Owners over the Decades, Cramahe Township Tenants
Owners
Total
Those who leave in
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
the 1840s the 1850s the 1860s the 1870s Total number present in 1842 Total who leave over whole era
22 4 1 1 97 28
22.7 4.1 1 1
47 36 4 1 157 88
29.9 22.9 2.5 0.6
69 40 5 2 254 116
27.2 15.7 2 0.8
28.9
56.1
45.7
Sources: lac, censuses for Cramahe Township for 1842, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, and 1891; ao for all other pre-1851 censuses and for assessments of 1808–70. ao, g.s. 4727, aid for Cramahe Township spanning the nineteenth century. I have eliminated those who disappeared because of death, or likely death – for example, those who were very old in 1842 or retired and integrated into someone else’s household. I have only measured the transience of tenants while they were tenants, not once they became owners.
Table 9.12 Career Paths of Tenants and Land Tenure, Cramahe Township, 1842 Lease
Share
Rent
Career path
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
Ladders Non-ladders Leavers Lifetimers Sideways Down Totals
11 21 4 15 1 1 32
34 66 13 47 3 3
4 10 5 4 0 1 14
29 71 36 29 0 7
12 34 19 11 4 0 46
26 74 41 24 9 0
Source: lac, Canada West Census 1842. Specific tenure type information was not available for three tenants and the two who died young were not included. “Totals” excludes non-ladders.
Table 9.13 Tenure Type and Moving About in Cramahe Township For each tenure type Average number of years on their 1842 lot Average frequency of moves, i.e., one move every “x” years in township
Lease holders
Renters
Share tenants
Clergy reserves
Crown reserves
20.4
8.9
10.6
17.9
19.1
19.3
9.2
9.5
16.6
Sources: lac, censuses for 1842, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, and 1891; ao for all other pre-1851 censuses and for assessments of 1808–70; and ao, g.s. 4727, aid for Cramahe Township spanning the nineteenth century.
Statistical Tables
253
Table 9.14 Career Paths of Tenants and Assessed Value, Cramahe Township, 1842 Ladders Assessed value £ 1–24 25–49 50–99 100–149 150–199 200–249 250–299 300–349 350–399 400–450 Totals
Non-ladders
Leavers
Lifetimers
Sideways
Down
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
no.
%
2 4 11 3 2 2 1
68
20 14 18 7 1
84
13 4 7
96
5 8 8 7
70
1
100
1 2
100
1 26
32
16
4
62
0
0
1
2
100
3 30
2
100
25
100
30
100
4
100
3
100
Sources: lac, Canada West Census 1842 and ao, Assessment of 1842. Not all share tenants appeared in the assessment; hence, this table does not capture all ninety-five tenants whose careers were examined in this chapter.
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Abbreviations
a aid ao c c1842 c&a c&a clp Ch. Chy. Chrs. Gr. lac os rso S. Prov. C so suc ucca uc Ch. uccp uckb ucqb
Assessment Abstract Index to Deeds Archives of Ontario Census lac, Canada West Census 1842 Census and Assessment when they are combined, 1826–38 Census and Assessment when they appear separately for the same year Crown Land Papers Chancery Chancery Chambers Reports Grant’s Upper Canada Chancery Reports, produced 1849–92 Library and Archives Canada (formerly na, National Archives of Canada) Old Style Report, when used with ucqb and uckb Royal Statutes of Ontario Statute under the jurisdiction of the Province of Canada, 1841–66 Statute under the jurisdiction of Ontario, 1867 onwards Statute under the jurisdiction of Upper Canada, 1791 to 1840 Upper Canada Court of Appeal Upper Canada Chancery Reports Upper Canada Court of Common Pleas Upper Canada King’s Bench Upper Canada Queen’s Bench
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Notes
chapter one 1 William Thompson, Tradesman’s Travels, 97–8. 2 Rose, The Emigrant Churchman in Canada, 189. 3 This definition of tenant excludes those who both owned and rented at the same time. They are classified as owners for the purpose of this study. It also excludes squatters who had no legal authority to occupy the land. Owner refers in a legal sense to those holding the greatest interest in the property (the reversionary interest) and unless stipulated includes those with mortgages. I use the term “Upper Canada” throughout to refer to that area of present-day Ontario known as Southern Ontario. With Union government in 1840, Upper Canada became Canada West but was still commonly referred to as Upper Canada. At Confederation it became Ontario. 4 Tenancy is not viewed as a system or institution. In this regard, I have been greatly influenced by Kim, Landlord and Tenant in Colonial New York; and Vaughan, Landlords and Tenants in Mid-Victorian Ireland. 5 See for example Gagan, Hopeful Travellers; Elliott, Irish Migrants in the Canadas; Akenson, The Irish in Ontario; and Clarke, Land, Power, and Economics. 6 Darroch and Soltow, Property and Inequality, 205, 4–6. See also Darroch, “Scanty Fortunes,” 621–59; and McInnis, “The Size Structure of Farming, Canada West, 1861,” 313–29. This interpretation convincingly challenges the older version of a mid-century crisis in land that fuelled the growth of an urban labour force. See for example Gagan, Hopeful Travellers; and Katz, The People of Hamilton. 7 John C. Weaver, Great Land Rush, 95. 8 New, Land Sliding, 73.
258
Notes to pages 5–7
9 For liberal ideas regarding land see McKay, “The Liberal Order Framework,” 623–5; Reeve, Property, 82; Wood, Making Ontario, chapter 1; and Murton, Creating a Modern Countryside, 3, 6, 13. 10 The relationship of property in land and capitalism is quite controversial. The cornerstone of capitalism is the secure title to private property and the free disposal of it, but these features are ambiguous in their support of capitalism. Reeve, Property, 50–1. The relationship between liberalism and capitalism is also complex and controversial. The liberal state had established many of the material preconditions for industry before the emergence of a working class. McKay, “The Liberal Order Framework,” 628–9. 11 Kiernan, “Private Property in History,” 379. 12 McCurdy, The Anti-Rent Era in New York; and Huston, Land and Freedom. Much of the land was held in an archaic form of “lease in fee.” This was actually a grant and not a lease as understood in this book. The landlord had only the right of re-entry, not reversion. It was, however, still a landlord-tenant relationship. Similar vehement protest had occurred earlier in Maine between squatters and large proprietors. See Taylor, Liberty Men and Great Proprietors. 13 Escheat was based on the legal logic that landlords had not performed duties promised to the Crown on receiving their land; hence the land should be “escheated” (returned to the Crown), and then presumably sold to tenants. Bitterman, Rural Protest, 3–6, and “Rural Protest ... in Transatlantic Context.” 14 Robertson, Tenant League, chapter 12. 15 None of these reforms was implemented. For the relationship between the Irish Tenant League and the League on Prince Edward Island see Robertson, Tenant League, 64. 16 From 1879 to 1882 the Irish Land War wreaked havoc throughout the country. During the Irish Land War, 11,215 families were evicted and 11,320 agrarian outrages were recorded. Vaughan, Landlords and Tenants, 209. In 1881 the agitation spread to North America as Land League branches sprang up in the industrial towns of New England, the coal-mining communities of Pennsylvania and Ohio, and even the Far West. Walsh, “Irish Nationalism and Land Reform,” 253–69. 17 Huston, Land and Freedom, 194, 200. 18 McKay, “The Liberal Order Framework,” 627; and Loo, Making Law, introduction. The state is understood as a number of institutions that together constitute the state’s reality. It is also understood as a process, not just a thing, of regulation, legitimation, and authority. See Greer and Radforth, eds., Colonial Leviathan, introduction. 19 Weaver, Great Land Rush, chapter 4; Harris, Making Native Space, 52–3.
Notes to pages 7–10
259
20 See for example Christie, The Emigrant’s Assistant, 11. In the seigneurial system, lots were conceded to habitants who were made perpetual occupiers and such lots could be inherited, sold, or mortgaged; the seigneur, however, retained claim to perpetual annual dues, monopolies, and services. The system was abolished in 1854, though vestiges of it lingered on and were finally cleared up in 1940. Dépatie, Lalancette, Dessureault, Contributions; Dépatie et al., dirs., Habitants et Marchands, Vingt ans après; Noel, The Christie Seigneuries; Dechêne, “La rente du faubourg Saint-Roch,” 569–96, Habitants and Merchants; Greer, Peasant, Lord and Merchant; and Harris, The Seigneurial System. 21 Sandwell, “Rural Reconstruction,” 8. 22 See for example Clarke, Land, Power, and Economics; Noel, Patrons, Clients, Brokers; and Sandwell, Contesting Rural Space. 23 For the relationship between land and state formation see Curtis, Politics of Population; and Reeve, Property, 44, 56, 61, 81, 83. 24 Megarry and Wade, The Law of Real Property, 46, 619–27; Lawson, Introduction to the Law of Property, 63, 70, 118; and Simpson, A History of the Land Law, 73–4. 25 Paul W. Gates influenced a generation of historians on tenancy. He claimed it was a malfunction of faulty federal land policy. Gates, Landlords and Tenants, and “Land Policy and Tenancy.” Canadian work has tended to follow his example of viewing tenancy as a malfunction and, therefore, giving it surprisingly little attention. See for example Gates, Land Policies of Upper Canada; Gagan, Hopeful Travellers; Russell, Attitudes to Social Structure and Mobility; and Wood, Making Ontario. 26 Winters, Farmers without Farms, 3. Tenant agriculture existed in the staple crop regions of the Southeast, the specialty crop regions of the Northeast, dairy regions of the north-central states, grain-livestock regions of the prairies and plains, and the fruit, vegetable, and wheat regions of the Pacific slope. 27 John C. Clarke provides one of the most comprehensive bibliographies of this literature in his book Land, Power, and Economics. 28 For those approaching tenancy from the perspective of historical geography see for example Clarke, Land, Power, and Economics, chapter 7, and “Geographical Aspects of Land Speculation.” Johnson, “The State of Agricultural Development”; Widdis, “A Perspective on Land Tenure in Upper Canada”; and Wood, Making Ontario, 97–8. Urban historians in their analysis of urban spatial relations are paying more attention to the social history of real property relations. See Blackmar, Manhattan for Rent. 29 For scholars focusing on transaction costs as the reason for tenancy see for example Higgs, “Patterns of Farm Rental,” 469–70; Alston and Higgs,
260
30
31
32 33 34 35
36
Notes to pages 10–12
“Contractual Mix in Southern Agriculture,” 327–54; and Alston, “Tenure Choice in Southern Agriculture,” 211–32. For those placing emphasis on risk sharing see for example Cheung, The Theory of Share Tenancy, “Transaction Costs,” 23–42; and Reid, “Sharecropping as an Understandable Market Response,” 106–30, “Sharecropping and Agricultural Uncertainty,” 549–76, and “Sharecropping and Tenancy.” For those scholars who see tenancy as a natural outgrowth of a maturing agricultural system and as part of the agricultural ladder to ownership see Bogue, From Prairie to Cornbelt; Atack, “The Agricultural Ladder Revisited,” 1–25; Winters, Farmers without Farms, “The Agricultural Ladder in Southern Agriculture,” 36–52; and Heller, Jr, and Houdek, “Farm Tenants and Landlords,” 598–625. William Marr has examined tenancy and the agricultural ladder very carefully in Ontario. I am indebted to his work: “Tenant vs Owner Occupied Farms,” 50–70, “The Distribution of Tenant Agriculture,” 169–86, and “Nineteenth Century Tenancy Rates,” 753–64. Marx’s view on property is not clear. He defined all societies by reference to the means of production but it was not clear in his analysis whether property was part of the system of production or a consequence of it. In the postbellum American South, scholars of a Marxist bent have argued that tenancy was equated with labour exploitation and social control but even this has been contested by such scholars as Reid and Higgs. See Winters, Farmers without Farms,107. For historians using a Marxist framework of analysis on land tenure in Canada see Allan Greer’s thought-provoking analysis of the seigneurial system, Peasant, Lord and Merchant, and The Patriots and the People, chapter 9; also Johnson, “Land Policy,” 60. Property can refer to many things – material resources such as land or a toothbrush, legal relations, ideas, or concrete arrangements. In this book it is used in a very limited sense to mean land. Simpson, A History of the Land Law, 270. Loo, Making Law, 3–4, 11. See also Rubin and Sugarman, eds., Law, Economy and Society, introduction. Reeve, Property, 6–7, 10, 13; and Lawson, Law of Property, 59–62, 118, concerning the fragmentation of ownership The modern interpretation of property as “possessive individualism” seems to have developed in the seventeenth century, when property, despite its legal definition, came to be treated in common usage as a “thing” not a “right,” as private property. Before that, the liberal concept of ownership may have been less important, very indeterminate, or considerably different. Reeve, Property, 4, 15, 27, 47–9; and Kiernan, “Private Property in History,” 390. Wilson, A New Lease on Life, 8.
Notes to pages 12–19
37 38 39 40
41
42
43
44 45
46 47 48 49 50
51
261
Reeve, Property, 75. Huston, Land and Freedom, 111–15; and Taylor, Liberty Men, 25. Levi, “On Microhistory,” 99, 101, 114. For a historiography of approaches to family history by one of its leading proponents see Hareven, Families, chapter 1. For a discussion on family strategy see Moch et al., “Family Strategy,” 113–25; Wilson, “Tenancy as a Family Strategy,” 875–96; and Hareven, Families, 324–5. Sandwell, “The Limits of Liberalism,”449. For the centrality of family in rural history and its problematic relationship to liberalism see Sandwell, “Rural Reconstruction,” 1–32. Sandwell summarizes this recent work in “Rural Reconstruction.” For some key works in this regard concerning Canadian rural families see Cohen, Women’s Work; Loewen, Family, Church, and Market; Sandwell, Contesting Rural Space; Greer, Peasant, Lord and Merchant; Bouchard, Quelques Arpents; Sylvester, The Limits of Capitalism; and Wilson, “Reciprocal Work Bees,” 431–64. This debate goes back at least to the 1970s when E.P. Thompson published “The Moral Economy,” and James Henretta published “Families and Farms.” For a review of the subsistence versus market debate in Canada see Sandwell, “Rural Reconstruction,” 6. For a discussion of how economic anthropologists have approached this issue see Cheal, “Strategies of Resource Management,” 18. Wilk, The Household Economy, 26; and Grigg, Dynamics of Agricultural Change, chapter 7. Nonfamily and servants were relatively rare in households so I have used household and family interchangeably. Wilk, Household Ecology, xx. Curtis, Politics of Population, 9, 47–8. Ibid., 29. McCalla, Planting the Province, 3–4, 113–14, 119, 137, 161. The 1840s and 1850s have generally been understood as a watershed in Canadian economic and political history with grave repercussions for life on the land. Earlier interpretations argued that a mid-century crisis brought on by an economic downturn and land shortage increased the landless population by forcing people to leave the countryside, thus creating a cheap labour force to fuel the growth of capitalist relations in urbanizing Ontario. A number of scholars employing more systematic analysis now question the impact of these events and the existence of a crisis in land at mid-century. Darroch and Soltow, Property and Inequality, 205, 4–6; and McCalla, Planting the Province, 194, 240–1. The following description of Cramahe at mid-century is from Haw, Fifteen Years in Canada, 20; Illustrated Historical Atlas of the Counties of Northumberland and
262
52
53
54 55
56 57
58 59
Notes to pages 19–23
Durham; Smith, Smith’s Canadian Gazetteer; Sutherland, Sutherland & Co.’s Gazetteer; Cobourg Star, 21 July 1841, 3 and 17 September 1845; and Colborne Transcript, 19 January 1856; Trent University Archives, 92–1000, Henry Ruttan’s Response to Lord Sydenham’s Circular Letter, 1840; and lac, rg 5 b21, vol.1, Completed Emigration Questionnaire 1840–41, Newcastle District. The Mississauga surrendered the land that would become Cramahe Township and other parts of Southern Ontario in 1787 with the Bay of Quinte Purchase. After the treaty they were moved to Grape Island, and by 1837 many of their descendants were settled on the Alderville First Nations reserve in Alnwick Township. Argyris, How Firm a Foundation, chapter 1. For the white man’s conquest over native ways in Ontario see Baskerville, Ontario, chapter 5. The land was obtained from the native population in 1788 and first surveyed in July 1791. By 1796 its division into two-hundred-acre lots was complete. A number of local histories of the township describe these early years. See for example Broughton, ed., The History of Cramahe Township; Argyris, How Firm a Foundation; and Colborne Chronicle, Commemorative Paper, Colborne’s 125th Anniversary (27 June 1984). Local historian Percy Climo compiled several most useful binders of notes and clippings from his extensive newspaper research. Most of these can be found at the Colborne Public Library and the Cramahe Township Office, Castleton. Definition found in Russel, “Upper Canada: A Poor Man’s Country?” 130, 133. Manuscript censuses of 1842 and 1848; Appendix to the Third Volume of the Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada (Kingston: E.J. Barker, 1844), Appendix dd, Table 13; and Colborne Transcript, 19 January 1856. Even smaller settlements existed at Colborne Harbour (Port Cramahe) to the west of Colborne, and Morganston and Dundonald further inland. ao, Court Records, Unprocessed, Northumberland and Durham County’s, Crown Attorney/Clerk of the Peace, Poll Books 1842–48; and Trent University Archives, 92–1000, Henry Ruttan’s Response to Lord Sydenham’s Circular Letter, 1840. Based on the Enumerator’s summary of the Cramahe 1848 census, Cobourg Star, 17 May 1848. Colborne Transcript, 19 January 1856.
chapter two 1 McLachlan, “Acres of Your Own,” 155. 2 The Globe, 29 March 1887. He was mp for Essex 1867–78 and for Russell 1878–82.
Notes to pages 23–7
263
3 Lucas, ed., Lord Durham’s Report, 203. Durham’s Report is discussed at greater length later in the chapter. 4 Errington, The Lion, the Eagle, and Upper Canada, chapter 1; Mills, The Idea of Loyalty, chapters 1 and 2. 5 Bloch, “Robert Gourlay’s Vision of Agrarian Reform,” 110–28. 6 These dates run from the Enclosure Act of 1745 to the demise of enclosure with the Commons Act of 1876. 7 Alexander, Commodity and Propriety, 44, 50–1. 8 Ibid., 98. 9 Ibid., 1, 14; and Weaver, Great Land Rush, 12, 25–7. 10 Weaver, Great Land Rush, 179, 217. 11 Ibid., 77. 12 North and Thomas, The Rise of the Western World, 157; Reeve, Property, 61, 117. 13 Hume, Canada As It Is, 132. 14 Christie, The Emigrant’s Assistant, 90. 15 Hutton, Canada, 82–3. Hutton had once been a tenant farmer in Ireland and then farmed and taught in the Belleville area. 16 Cited in Russell, Attitudes to Social Structure, 90. 17 Everett, Iowa Farmer, 4 March 1858, 25, cited in Winters, Farmers without Farms, 89. Talbot was one of the few commentators in Upper Canada who thought that ownership had a disagreeable moral influence. In his experience, ownership translated into a wild independence that increased the covetousness, self-centredness, boldness, and disrespectfulness of the “lawless and unprincipled rabble” that immigrated. Talbot, Five Years, 68, 75, 77. 18 Hutton, Canada, 83. 19 Spalding, “The Country and the City,” 20. 20 Mill rehabilitated the idea of the peasant proprietor in Principles of Political Economy (1848). For a broader treatment of the rehabilitative potential of ownership see Dewey, “The Rehabilitation of the Peasant Proprietor,” 17–47. The Allotment Acts and the Smallholdings Acts of the late nineteenth century in England provided state loans to the working class to buy land. The 1887 Dawes Act in the us and Hayter Reed’s policy toward the native peoples in Canada’s Northwest both promoted ownership to create a stable, sedentary native population. Carter, “Two Acres and a Cow,” 353–77. 21 Moodie, Roughing it in the Bush, 143. 22 Dewey, “Peasant Proprietor,” 31–2, 36. 23 Mr Bidwell’s Speech, 3 and also J.K., “Plain Reasons for Loyalty, Addressed to Plain People” (Cobourg 1838), 2–3, both pamphlets at the National Archives, Ottawa, cited in Mills, The Idea of Loyalty, 48, 83.
264
Notes to pages 28–32
24 For example see Boulton, A Short Sketch, 8, 36; Talbot, Five Years, 100; lac, rg 17, vol. 2,325, “Completed Questionnaire by 41 emigrant farmers for the Minister of Agriculture, 1853,” especially Robert Cromar and Gerrard McCrea. 25 Doyle’s book was part of the promotional literature used by the Canada Company. Doyle, Hints on Emigration, 17. Emphasis his. 26 “A Ballad of New Scotland,” cited in Fowke, ed., Canada’s Story in Song, 45. 27 Talbot, Five Years, 100. 28 Boulton, A Short of Sketch, 8. 29 Russell, Attitudes to Social Structure, 88–9, and “Upper Canada: A Poor Man’s Country?,” 129–47. Parr and Danysk argue that the ideological sway the ladder had was more significant than its operation. Parr, “Hired Men,” 100; and Danysk, Hired Hands, 55. 30 ao, mu–2382, James Reid Papers, James Reid to Thomas Reid, 10 February 1825. 31 George Forbes to John Forbes, 20 April 1850, George Forbes Papers, Scottish Public Record Office, Edinburgh, cited in Russell, Attitudes to Social Structure, introduction. See also Canada Farmer 4 (15 April 1867): 121. 32 Canada Farmer 4 (15 April 1867): 121. See also Hume, Canada As It Is, 132. 33 McGrath, ed., Authentic Letters from Upper Canada, 110. 34 Russell, “Upper Canada: A Poor Man’s Country,” 144; Parr, “Hired Men,” 94; Danysk, Hired Hands, 55; and Danysk, “‘A Bachelor’s Paradise,’” 157. 35 Noel, Patrons, Clients, Brokers, 10–11; Russell, Attitudes to Social Structure, 88–9; and Smith, “Myth of the Self-Made Man,” 217. 36 Stuart, The Emigrant’s Guide to Upper Canada, 72–3. 37 Hutton, Canada: Its Present Condition, 82–3. 38 Russell, Attitudes to Social Structure, 5–9. Strangely enough, Russell has very little to say about tenants and their place in the hierarchy. 39 Kim, Landlord and Tenant in Colonial New York, 162. Turner, Frontier in American History, 80–3, was outraged by it. See also Smith, Virgin Land. 40 Cogswell, Jr, Tenure, Nativity and Age, 132. 41 lac, co 42, vol. 437, Reel b 341. “Report of the Clergy Reserves,” by R.B. Sullivan, Commissioner of Crown Lands, 28 March 1837, 441–7 (hereafter Sullivan Report 1837); and ao, rg 1 a-i–7, vol. 3, env. 2, 01007–8, clp, Clergy Reserve Legislation and Sales, Sullivan to His Excellency, 14 September 1839. 42 Clarke does the best job concerning different kinds of ownership. Land, Power, and Economics. 43 Zukin, Landscapes of Power, 11. 44 Hutton, Canada: Its Present Condition, 15. 45 Easton, Travels in America, 98.
Notes to pages 32–5
265
46 Godley, Letters from America, 171. Godley was the son of an Irish landlord who travelled widely in North America and was associated with Edward Gibbon Wakefield. Godley established a settlement scheme in New Zealand and was a supporter of colonial self-government. 47 The Canada Farmer 4 (15 February 1865): 57; and also Canadian Agriculturalist and Journal and Transactions of the Board of Agriculture of Upper Canada 7 (1855–56): 328. 48 Curtis, Politics of Population, 4–5. 49 Curtis, “On the Local Construction of Statistical Knowledge,” 416–34. 50 Curtis, Politics of Population, 273. 51 “Registry Act of 1795, 4th Session, 1st Parl.,” suc 35 Geo. 3 (1785), c. 5, 105. 52 Clarke, “Land and Law in Essex County,” 478. 53 Throughout the 1830s when some attempts were made to extend the franchise to leaseholders, there was doubt concerning the constitutional power of the assembly in franchise matters. Garner, The Franchise, 85–6, 107; Russell, Attitudes toward Social Structure, 119. 54 Garner, The Franchise, 6, 8–9. 55 Ibid., 3, 75. Morton takes the same view in “The Extension of the Franchise in Canada,” 73–4. The franchise obviously excluded many others who were too poor to meet the property qualifications. In 1791, in rural areas only, male owners over the age of twenty-one possessing real property for their own use and procuring a yearly revenue of forty shillings sterling above all charges could vote. In 1849 this was amended as follows: all male British subjects, over twenty-one, possessing property as freehold tenure with a deed having the clear value of ,44/5/1, could vote. “Elections Act of 1849," S. Prov. C. 12 Vic. (1849), c. 27, 209; Garner, The Franchise, 82–3. Adult farmer’s sons represented a large disenfranchised group. 56 Garner, The Franchise, 4. It is not clear whether this number reflected the total population or just adult males. 57 “District Councils Act 1841,” S. Prov. C. 4 and 5 Vic. (1841), c. 10; and Garner, The Franchise, 75. 58 Cobourg Star, 3 September 1845 and 17 September 1845. 59 Garner, The Franchise, 106. Only settlers who were freeholders or who possessed title deeds issued by the Canada Company could vote in Huron County. Occupant-purchasers, those with only a lease-to-buy agreement, could not. 60 lac, co 42, vol. 437, Sullivan Report 1837, 441. 61 Garner, The Franchise, 4, 75, 85, 106, 217; and “The Elections Act of 1849,” S. Prov. C. 12 Vic. (1849), c. 27. In 1849, the vote was not extended to purchasers of Crown land in Canada West or to tenants on the Huron Tract of
266
62 63
64
65
66
67 68 69
Notes to pages 36–7
the Canada Company whose leases contained an option to purchase. They held their land in a similar manner to settlers on the British American Land Company land. The discrepancy was viewed as racial and partisan legislation. Garner, The Franchise, 85. John was the youngest son of Joseph Brant. Upper Canada Assembly Journal, 21 November 1832, and 26 January 1835. No copy of the “Representation of the People Bill” survives in the government records. It made it to second reading, then died in committee thirteen days after its first introduction. Journals of the House of Assembly of Upper Canada, Session 1, 13th Par., 7 Wm iv, 8 November 1836; and 21 November 1836. There were doubts concerning the constitutional power of the assembly in franchise matters and fears for the political impact of an extension. Garner, The Franchise, 85–6. Tenants got the parliamentary vote in 1853 if their property was valued at fifty pounds currency actual value, or five pounds currency yearly value. At that time the franchise changed from one based on freehold tenure to one based on the assessment. They were scheduled to vote for the first time in 1854 but that had to be postponed as the act was further amended. The number of votes polled in the 1858 election showed an increase of eighty-eight percent over previous polls. A 330 percent increase occurred in the newly settled Huron-Bruce riding, and the increase was less in the more settled ridings such as Leeds-Grenville, which experienced a twenty-seven percent increase. Ibid., 110. The municipal vote was extended to tenants in 1858 as long as they were on the assessment roll without regard to the amount of their assessment. That same year, if their leasehold was valued at $800 (only $400 for freeholders), they could hold political office as reeve or councillor. In 1869 tenants could be elected as members of Parliament without regard to their property assessment. Schindeler, Responsible Government in Ontario, 95; Garner, The Franchise, 107; “Canada Statutes,” S. Prov. C. 16 Vic. (1853), c. 153. Craig, Upper Canada, 93; and Wise, “Robert Fleming Gourlay.” By the spring of 1818 Gourlay had lost his connections with speculators such as Thomas Clark and William Dickson who held large tracts of land. His attacks on the system of government and the charges of seditious libel against him severed these connections. Gourlay, General Introduction to Statistical Account of Upper Canada, ccccl; on his agrarianism see Bloch, “Robert Gourlay’s Vision,” 110–28. Gourlay, Statistical Account, 243–4, and General Introduction, ccccxlviii. Gourlay sent out hundreds of copies of his thirty-one-question survey to townships in 1817. Township meetings were held to answer his questionnaire and forty sets of answers were sent back to him. Question no. 27 asked about the
Notes to pages 37–40
70
71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81
82 83 84
267
prevalence and terms of share renting. Though much information concerning share renting was returned to Gourlay, he made no further comment on it elsewhere in his report. He and others paid much more attention to the infamous question no. 31 which asked respondents to explain the slow rate of progress in their area. For the questionnaire and answers see Gourlay, Statistical Account, 269–583. In one small paragraph he mentioned that Crown and clergy reserves were leased and gave the price of rent but made no further comment on leasing. Ibid., 232. Rasporich, William Lyon Mackenzie, 9. Agrarian idealists and civic humanists, unlike later classical liberals, put more emphasis on citizenship and the common good (property as propriety) and were often suspicious of the free market’s ability to create a good society. They shared with later liberals the individualist nucleus of liberalism. As an example of Mackenzie’s ambivalence about the market, he wanted to preserve agrarian society with tariffs if necessary yet also embraced the economic liberalism of free trade. This is an example of how property as propriety and commodity could exist together in a contradictory manner. Broadside, 27 November 1837, and Colonial Advocate, 21 July 1831, both cited in Fairley, ed., Selected Writings, 224, 243. Colonial Advocate, 27 April 1826, cited in Fairley, Selected Writings, 124. Colonial Advocate, 18 May 1824, cited in Fairley, Selected Writings, 175–6. See also Colonial Advocate, 9 September 1830, cited in Fairley, 183–4. Rasporich, Mackenzie, 5–6, 11. Wilson, Clergy Reserves, 218, 222. For example see Gourlay, Statistical Account, 255–8; and Mackenzie in The Constitution, 14 December 1836, in Fairley, Selected Writings, 101–2. Gourlay, Statistical Account, 269–74. Ibid., 232. Weaver, Great Land Rush, 149. lac, rg 1 l7, vol.34, pt 1, folder (1819–32), Records of the Executive Council, Miscellaneous Correspondence. See for example freeholders’ answers to Gourlay’s questionnaire in the London District, Gourlay, Statistical Account, 299; freeholders of Markham’s petition to the government, cited in Colonial Advocate, 10 March 1831, in Fairley, Selected Writings, 231–3, 236. Colonial Advocate, 10 March 1831, in Fairley, Selected Writings, 233. Alan Wilson is a rare exception in this regard. Wilson, Clergy Reserves, 219–20. Gourlay, Statistical Account, 623. The western section of Upper Canada complained most about the reserves. Longer settled and more populated districts such as Niagara and Midland had very few complaints about them. Gourlay
268
85
86 87
88 89 90 91 92
93 94 95
96 97 98 99
100 101
Notes to pages 40–4
gives a general summary and ranking of the reasons for slow settlement on pages 623–5. lac, rg 1 l7, vol. 34, pt 1, folder (1819–32). Unsigned account of the Crown and clergy reserves under lease, dated June 1821, Records of the Executive Council, Miscellaneous Correspondence. lac, co 42, vol. 437, Sullivan Report 1837, 438. Craig, Upper Canada, 235. Glebe land was different from Crown and clergy reserves as glebes were used for clergymen and school teachers. They were usually 200– to 400-acre lots near town sites. Lucas, ed., Lord Durham’s Report, 176–7. Perhaps a dozen such cases came to light. Wilson discusses the details of this case in Clergy Reserves, 133–4. Ibid., 219. Handbill reprinted in Read and Stagg, eds., Rebellion of 1837, 110–13. ao, rg 1 a-i–7, vol. 3, env. 2, pp. 01007–8, clp, R.B. Sullivan, Commissioner of Crown Lands to His Excellency, 14 September 1839. See also lac, rg 7 g12, vol. 62, 132, Governor General’s Office, Bagot to Stanley, 23 February 1842. Read and Stagg, Rebellion of 1837, lxv–vi; and Read, Rising in Western Upper Canada, 170–1. Read, Rising in Western Upper Canada, 18–19. They arrived too late to suppress the rising. lac, Upper Canada Sundries, vol. 180, 99277–9, Col Henry Ruttan to Col James FitzGibbon, Colborne 12 December 1837, reprinted in Read and Stagg, Rebellion of 1837, 290–1. Lucas, ed., Lord Durham’s Report, 176–9. Other committees also viewed the reserves as wasteland. See Lucas’s note on p. 204. Charles Buller’s Report, in Lucas, ed., Lord Durham’s Report, Appendix b, especially pages 52–60. Lucas, ed., Lord Durham’s Report, 181. Throughout the 1840s other religions were granted a share of the revenue from the clergy reserves, and the elected assembly won control over the funds and full executive responsibility of the reserves. In 1853 an imperial act (“Imperial Act,” S. Prov. C. 16 Vic. (1853), c. 21) repealed all provisions in previous imperial acts that related to the clergy reserves. This enabled the Canadian government in 1854 finally to sever the connection between church and state and hand clergy reserve revenue over to municipalities with the “Act to make better provision for the appropriation of moneys arising from the lands heretofore known as the Clergy Reserves by rendering them available for municipal purposes.” Bothwell, A Short History of Ontario, 50. Blackwell, “The Radcliffs of Amherst Island,” 26.
Notes to pages 44–9
269
102 See for example Harris, Reluctant Land; Russell, Attitudes to Social Structure; and Darroch and Soltow, Property and Inequality. Gagan’s now classic account of nineteenth-century rural life viewed tenancy as a mark of failure. Hopeful Travellers, 99, 102, 147–8. See also Glazebrook, Life in Ontario, 174. 103 Clarke, Land, Power, and Economics, 427.
chapter three 1 Talbot, Five Years Residence, 179. 2 The District Land Boards of Upper Canada were responsible for implementing the Crown and clergy reserve system. Moorman, “The District Land Boards,” 135–6, 142. The rents from the clergy reserves constituted the whole fund used to support the clergy of the Church of England. The interest on clergy reserve sales was paid to the receiver general and the principal from the sales was invested in the public funds of the United Kingdom of Britain and Ireland. lac, co 42, vol. 437, Sullivan Report 1837, 449. Military and school reserves were created and gradually put to use for those purposes. As described in an earlier note, glebe lands were different from the Crown and clergy reserves. Glebes were lots of 200 to 400 acres located near town sites and usually reserved for the use of Church of England clergymen or school teachers, but they were sometimes used by other denominations as sites for parsonages. Reserves were also set aside for native people and later became known as Indian reservations. 3 The Crown and clergy reserves were both leased under the same system. No new leases were made after 1 March 1833. The system was deemed to be badly run and not as remunerative as it should have been. Wilson, Clergy Reserves, 35–6, 100, 102. 4 Another seventeen percent was being used to support the Church of England and other denominations as glebe land and endowments. The remaining land was not yet disposed of. lac, co 42, vol. 437, Reel b 341, “General Statement showing the total number of Acres set apart for the Clergy in the Province of Upper Canada and their application to the 23rd day of November 1836,” found in lac, co 42, vol. 437, Sullivan Report 1837, submitted to the civil secretary, copy enclosed in Sir F. Bond Head’s despatch to Lord Glenelg, 24 April 1837, 453. The pre–1837 figures are taken from Alan Wilson, Clergy Reserves, 36–7; ao, rg 1 c-ii–3, vol. 6, clp, “Lists of Clergy Lessees, all districts 1802–1811”; and ao, rg 1 b-iii, vol. 10, clp, “Recapitulation of the Number of Leases of Crown Reserves ... on 25 December 1827.” 5 For example see these records for Cramahe Township: ao, rg 1 c-iv, clp, Cramahe Township Papers, ms658, Reel 92; and ao, rg 1 b-ii, clp, Clergy
270
6
7 8
9 10 11
12
13 14
15 16 17
Notes to pages 49–50
Reserve Rent Accounts, Newcastle District, Series a vol. 5, Series b vol. 8, Series c vol. 17. Free land continued to be given to United Empire Loyalists until 1851. Prior to 1825 large free grants were given to military claimants, United Empire Loyalists, magistrates and barristers, executive and legislative counsellors. Indeed whole townships were given to some individuals. From 1791 to 1804 grants were altogether gratuitous, then from 1804 fees and settlement duties were put into effect. The clergy reserves were opened for sale in 1827. Karr, The Canada Land Company, ix–xi. The Canada Company records are at the Archives of Ontario. The company was in operation until 1953. Karr, The Canada Land Company, 105–7. Not everyone was enthusiastic about this new leasing system. Smith in Smith’s Canadian Gazetteer and Canada criticized it for discouraging desirable settlers and encouraging poor settlers to take up land who were not interested in improving it. He felt it retarded the development of the Huron area. H.J. Johnston, “Immigration,” 210. Karr, The Canada Land Company, 124. Ibid., 61. When King’s College received the Crown reserves, about half went to Upper Canada College and the other half remained with King’s College. Usually the reserves of a whole area or township went to one or the other institution. Records for both after 1827 are held at the University of Toronto Archives. Introduction of the finding aid to a68–0010, Office of the Chief Accountant and a schedule of these reserves before they were given over to King’s College can be found in ao, rg 1 c-ii–3, vol. 8, clp, “Schedule of Crown Reserves in Upper Canada which have been either leased or applied for, 1827.” This method, really the only feasible one given the surviving records, has some limitations. First, not everyone promptly registered their freehold status in the land records. Second, only tenants who agreed to pay taxes for their landlord’s property or had taxable livestock or other movable goods of their own were listed in the assessment records. Clarke, Land, Power, and Economics, Table 7.4, 320. Clarke, “Geographical Aspects of Land Speculation,” 93; Widdis, “Perspective on Land Tenure,” 96; Johnson, “State of Agricultural Development,” 130; and Gagan, Hopeful Travellers, 34, 36. Gagan, Hopeful Travellers, 34, 36. Widdis, “Perspective on Land Tenure,” Table 4.3, 96. These figures for Cramahe are for farm tenants and do not include urban tenants. The 1820 figure was calculated by matching the 1820 assessment with the aid. c1848; and Censuses of Canada 1870–71, vol. 3, 36. Of sev-
Notes to pages 54–6
18 19
20
21
22 23 24 25 26
27
28
29
271
enty-four occupiers of land in 1820, thirty-two were owners, thirty-nine were tenants, and three were squatters. Table v, Censuses of Canada 1665–1871, vol. 4. How “tenant” was defined in 1848 is unclear. Marvin McInnis’s maps for agriculture at mid-century were used to draw these conclusions, in Perspectives on Ontario Agriculture, chapter 1, figures 3, 4, 5; chapter 2, figure 2. Clarke, Land, Power and Economics, 437–8, argues that clergy reserve leases were not as popular in Essex County, Western District, because it was more remote. Haw, Fifteen Years in Canada, 106; Godley, Letters from America, 171; Rolph, A Brief Account, 108; William Micking, “Agricultural Report, County of Welland, 1854,” Journal and Transactions of the Board of Agriculture for Upper Canada (1855–56): 449. Von Thunen’s The Isolated State (1826) was translated into English in 1966. Conzen, Frontier Farming, 74; Widdis, “Perspective on Land Tenure,” 126; and John Clarke, “Geographical Aspects of Land Speculation,” figure 5, 93. Rose, Emigrant Churchman, 99. See Widdis, “Tracing Property Ownership,” 94–6, “Perspective on Land Tenure,” 126; and Clarke, “Land and Law in Essex County,” 475–93. Mr Dinsmore of Blanshard Township, for example, made this choice. Johnston, Pioneers of Blanshard, 153–4. Census of Canada 1870–71, vol. 3; Marr, “Tenant vs. Owner Occupied Farms,” 51; and Darroch and Soltow, Property and Inequality, 29. Atack and Bateman, To Their Own Soil, 110–11; Gates, “Land Policy and Tenancy,” 80; Cogswell, Jr, Tenure, Nativity and Age, 22, 28; and Winters, Farmers without Farms, 11. These conditions are carefully explained in Winters, Farmers without Farms, 21–3; and Cogswell, Tenure, Nativity and Age, 153. W.J. Brown explained the continuing high tenancy rates in old sections of Ontario in “Tenant Farming,” Farmer’s Magazine 7 (August 1914): 50. Darroch and Soltow, Property and Inequality, 1, 7, 10–11; Darroch and Ornstein, “Ethnicity and Class,” 9, 19; and Darroch, “Class in Nineteenth-Century Central Ontario,” 61. Pederson claims this was one of the main reasons for the decline in tenancy after 1940 in Wisconsin. Pederson, Between Memory and Reality, 31. For tenancy in twentieth-century Canada see Andarawewa, “Tenure Patterns,” 110–20; Packman, “The Landlord-Tenant Situation,” 20–3; Gilhooey and Dawson, “Land Tenure in Southwestern Ontario,” 41–3; Hudson, “LandlordTenant Relationships,” 37–43.
272
Notes to pages 56–8
30 Gagan, Hopeful Travellers, 36. Other studies have shown that as land acquisition increased so did tenancy. See Widdis, “Tracing Property Ownership,” 94–6; and Clarke, “Land and Law in Essex County,” 475–93. 31 The same process was at work along the Eastern Seaboard and in the American Midwest: Stiverson, Poverty in a Land of Plenty, 8; Cogswell, Tenure, Nativity and Age, 58; Yoder, “Rethinking Midwestern Farm Tenure,” 477–8. 32 Diller makes an important distinction between “functional derangement” (tenancy brought on by severe depression) and “functional tenancy.” Diller, Farm Ownership, Tenancy and Land Use, 52–3. See also Heller, Jr, and Houdek, “Farm Tenants and Landlords,” 599. 33 Talbot, Five Years, 179. 34 lac, rg 5 b21, vol. 1, Completed Emigration Questionnaire 1840–41. Hereafter, Questionnaire 1840–41. 35 Rolph, A Brief Account, 108; Ankli and Duncan, “Farm Making Costs,” 39–48; Johnston, “Immigration to the Five Eastern Townships,” 210–11; Danhof, “Farm Making Costs,” 317–59; Russell, “Upper Canada: A Poor Man’s Country?,”144; and Shirreff, Tour through North America, 362–5. 36 Canada Farmer 4 (15 April 1867): 121–2, and 2 (15 May 1870), 20; Canadian Agriculturalist (July 1854): 196; Journal and Transactions of the Board of Agriculture of Upper Canada 1 (Toronto: Thompson, 1856), 328; Rolph, A Brief Account, 108; Buchanan, Jr, Canada, 25; Hardy and Spence, Emigration, 82; Moore, A Tour through Canada, 48. Clarke found that interest rates were generally 4.5 – 6 percent in Essex County but others studying more central locations have found that they ranged from ten to fifteen percent and were the cause of foreclosure and outmigration. Clarke, Land, Power, and Economics, 294; Ankli and Duncan, “Farm Making Costs,” 40–1; and Gagan, “The Security of Land,”150–1. 37 Canada Farmer 4 (15 April 1867): 121. See also Logan, Notes of a Journey, 58; Talbot, Five Years, 197; Abbott, The Emigrant to North America,17–18; Shirreff, Tour through North America, 362–5; and Hardy and Spence, British Farmer’s and Labourer’s Guide, 82. 38 Lease-to-buy contracts were not leases. It was a sale of the fee simple payable in instalments. The landlord did not have a reversioner interest. See Doe d. Nugent v. Hessell (1846), 2 ucqb 194. Sometimes the contract stipulated at which point the landlord-tenant relationship ceased and the vendor-purchaser one took over. See Forge v. Reynolds (1868), 18 uccp 110 (Ont.). More about purchasing on instalments can be found in Clarke, Land, Power, and Economics, 429–31. 39 Smith, Canada, 522–3.
Notes to pages 58–9
273
40 For the choice of labouring or renting see Parr, “Hired Men,” 101–2. For agricultural labour more generally see Danysk, Hired Hands, and Crowley, “Rural Labour.” 41 Danysk, Hired Hands, 56–7. 42 Foster, Work and Wages, 4; Godley, Letters From America, 170–1; Hume, Canada As It Is, 63; Boulton, A Short Sketch, 41. 43 Rose, Emigrant Churchman, 99; Smith, Canada, 521; Moore, A Tour through Canada, 48; Farm and Dairy 18 (28 January 1909): 104; Dunlop, Tiger Dunlop’s Upper Canada, 81; Hardy and Spence, British Farmer’s and Labourer’s Guide, 41; Reports of Tenant Farmer’s Delegates, 19, 115; Stuart, Emigrant’s Guide to Upper Canada, 71–2. 44 Seymour, Farm Knowledge, 72. 45 University of Western Ontario, Regional Collection, box 4178, William Leslie Papers, presents the situation where an owner became a tenant in old age to be close to his son. Kim noted in his study that kinship settled many manors in colonial New York. Kim, Landlord and Tenant, 244–6. 46 According to an old British Statute of 1740, long in disuse but now revived, enemy aliens, in this case those of American birth, could not own land until they had become naturalized. This process involved their residing in the province for seven years, taking an oath of allegiance, and renouncing allegiance to any foreign state. The tangled and controversial “Alien Question” made it risky for American-born immigrants to purchase land until it was clarified exactly whom aliens included. For several years it was hotly debated whether it included those Americans who had emigrated prior to the war and currently owned land and held political office. Would they have to renounce their status? Finally a bill was passed in the Upper Canadian legislature in 1827 preventing American-born immigrants from owning land until they had completed seven years’ residence and taken the oath of allegiance. The new bill denied ownership of land to American-born immigrants who had arrived in the province since 1820, and had not already received land from the government, held public office, or taken the oath. Craig, Upper Canada, 121–2; and Romney, “Re-inventing Upper Canada.” 47 Wilson, Clergy Reserves, 46. 48 Other studies show that tenants were immigrants. Winters, Farmers without Farms, 35–6; Wilson, A New Lease On Life, 207; and Marr, “Tenant vs. Owner Occupied Farms,” 56. Cogswell found that as the century progressed the number of native-born tenants increased, in Tenure, Nativity and Age, 30, 39. It is not clear whether religion was an influential factor on tenure status. Cramahe figures show no difference between tenants and owners in this regard.
274
Notes to pages 59–62
49 Europeans were less likely to rent than North Americans in Voisey’s Vulcan, 138. Pederson also noted in her study that in Trempealeau County where Norwegians were settled, tenancy was far less common than in old-stock American areas. Between Memory and Reality, 29; and Yoder, “Rethinking Midwestern Farm Tenure,” 477–8. 50 Winters, Farmers without Farms, 78; Wilson, New Lease on Life, 207–8; Marr, “Tenant vs. Owner Occupied Farms in York County,” 55; and Darroch and Soltow, Property and Inequality, 63. 51 Cogswell found that a high proportion of older tenants in Iowa were recent arrivals. Tenure, Age and Nativity, 143. 52 For household types see Laslett, Household and Family in Past Time, introduction; Guinnane, “Intergenerational Transfers,” 456–76; and Greven, Four Generations, 15. 53 Married women could hold property after the legislation of 1872 and 1884. Inwood and Van Slightenhorst, “The Social Consequences of Legal Reform,” 1–33; and Inwood and Ingram, “The Impact of Married Women’s Property Legislation,” 405–49. 54 This was the case in rural Wisconsin. Pederson, Between Memory and Reality, 30. 55 Cogswell, Tenure, Nativity and Age, 153; and Winters, Farmers without Farms, 18–19. 56 This is not to be confused with the multilayered tenantry of the Old World where there were head tenants/middlemen, undertenants/subtenants, and cottiers, one subservient to the next. This did not exist in Ontario to the same extent because leases were generally not given out in great quantity to any one individual who would then sublet smaller parcels to many subtenants. A lessee could sublet his whole farm but covenants against subletting were fairly standard. 57 This was a common practice on the prairies; see Voisey, Vulcan, 135, 137. Four such people existed in the 1842 Cramahe census. They were classified for the purposes of this study as owners and were not included in the tenant category. 58 The conceptual basis for understanding common law in Canada regarding land has its historical origins in the English law of real property that emerged after the Norman invasion of England in 1066. From then on all land in England was held by the king. In Canada this means that land “owners” are not absolute owners but “tenants in fee simple of the Crown.” Conventional wisdom holds that the reversioner is the “owner” or the one with the greatest “interest” in the property, but really there is no absolute owner, and often lawyers do not talk of “ownership” at all. These concepts are discussed in Reeve, Property, 13–14, 18–21.
Notes to pages 62–4
275
59 For example lac, mg 24 i80, Thomas Spencer Niblock Letters, Thomas Niblock to Edward Niblock, 4 August 1852. 60 The English Statute of Frauds (1677) required that every lease should be in writing, otherwise it was only a tenancy at will. When an agreement was not written or covered an indefinite period, it was nevertheless part of the subject of leases and governed by the law of landlord and tenant. Megarry and Wade, The Law of Real Property, 619, 623–7. 61 Munro, The Backwoods’ Life, 29. 62 Brown, Autobiography of Thomas Brush Brown, 11. 63 Rose, Emigrant Churchman, 209. For examples of clearing leases elsewhere throughout the province see Questionnaire 1840–41, Gore District. Clearing did not include removing stumps. 64 Thompson, A Tradesman’s Travels, 97–8. 65 For combination cash/share/clearing arrangements see Munro, The Backwoods’ Life, 29; Lee v. Purdy (1846), 2 ucqb 193; Burrowes v. Cairns et al. (1846), 2 ucqb 288. These were also common on unbroken prairie land in nineteenth-century Iowa. Winters, Farmers without Farms, 132. 66 Lee v. Purdy (1846), 2 ucqb 193; Lewis v. Brooks (1852), 8 ucqb 576; Lundy v. Tench (1869), 16 Gr. 597 (Ontario Ch.); Irwin v. Hunter (1869), 19 uccp 391. 67 Bogue found that in the Grand Prairie region of the US improvement leases represented about one-third of all tenant contracts in the early years but by 1900 represented less than one percent, in Patterns from the Sod, App. b and 133. 68 Share tenancy as it existed in Upper Canada, the Canadian prairies, and the American Midwest is not to be confused with sharecropping in the American South. Sharecroppers in the American South had no capital at all and were forced under contract to buy their goods from local stores at inflated prices and high interest rates. Sharecropping was therefore associated with a permanently oppressed social class. Share tenancy, in contrast, frequently provided an entry into farming, a foothold on the agricultural ladder. Voisey, Vulcan, 137–8; Curti, The Making of an American Community, 145. 69 James Johnston, Notes on North America, 275; Canada Farmer 2 (15 March 1865): 88; Easton, Travels in America, 98–9; Hume, Canada As It Is, 63–4; and Evans, The Emigrant’s Guide, 79. 70 Economists debate the pros and cons of share tenancy. Whereas some such as Reid have argued that share leases “reduced” risk for the tenant, others such as Winters argue that they only “disperse” it. Share leases could be just as inflexible as cash leases by preventing farmers from altering their production plans to take advantage of changing prices and conditions. Some argue that share tenancy was attractive to newcomers and the inexperienced
276
71
72 73 74
75 76
Notes to pages 64–6
because the landlord took responsibility for the management of the farm and the marketing of its produce. Winters found that the young and foreign were not attracted to share arrangements and therefore concluded that it was risk dispersion and the type of farming (especially grains), not opportunities for managerial assistance, that attracted people to share arrangements. Winters, Farmers without Farms, 61, 64–5; and Reid, Jr, “Sharecropping in History and Theory,” 426–40, and “Sharecropping and Tenancy in American History.” At township meetings held throughout Upper Canada in 1817, resident landowners answered thirty-one questions put to them by Robert Gourlay. The only one concerning tenancy asked, “If any land is let on shares; to what extent this is practised; and what the ordinary terms.” Most responses stated that shares were not common and generally were let at one-third to one-half the produce. In Walpole and Rainham, London District; Trafalgar, Barton, and Waterloo townships, Gore District; Bertie, Louth, and Stamford townships, Niagara District; and Thurlow Township, Midland District, share renting was considered to be quite common. Gourlay, Statistical Account of Upper Canada, 269–74. For discussion of what the various forms of share agreements entailed see Hume, Canada As It Is, 63–4; Easton, Travels in America, 98–9; Evans, The Emigrant’s Guide, 79; James Johnston, Notes on North America, 275; lac, rg 5 b21, vol. 1, Questionnaire 1840–41; and Seymour, Farm Knowledge, 73–5. William Spencer to friends in West Sussex, 6 May 1833, in Cameron, Haines, and McDougall Maude, eds., English Immigrant Voices, 117–19. Hume, Canada As It Is, 63–4; and Evans, Emigrant’s Guide, 79. Ankli and Duncan, “Farm Making Costs in Early Ontario,” 38–9; Easton, Travels in America, 98–9; James Johnston, Notes on North America, 275; and lac, rg 5 b21, vol. 1, Questionnaire 1840–41. It is possible that in cash crop growing areas share arrangements remained popular whereas in areas of mixed farming their popularity declined. Field crops were much easier to divide than livestock, and price fluctuations for crops like wheat or tobacco encouraged risk sharing. One might expect that share contracts remained popular in the Niagara region, though further research is necessary. Lean times may also have seen a return to share contracts. This was the case in 1930s Iowa. Friedberger, Farm Families and Change, 52. Friedberger, Farm Families and Change, 52; Farmer’s Magazine 7 (August 1914): 51. Squatters increasingly became a political issue on the clergy reserves after sales were adopted in 1827 and rent collections became more rigorous. The government, however, realized that many squatters had resided on their lots
Notes to pages 66–7
77 78
79
80
81
82
83
277
for years and had made substantial improvements. In 1835 the executive council decided to grant respectable and improving squatters the same pre-emption rights and responsibilities as regular leaseholders – but only after they had paid their backrent. Many squatters came forward, claiming they had always intended to obtain a lease, that they were respectable, and that they had made improvements. Several examples can be found in lac, rg 1, l7, vol. 30, Letters and Petitions re Clergy Reserves, Leases 1820–40; and the Township Papers. For Cramahe see, for example ao, rg 1 c-iv, clp, Cramahe Township Papers, ms 658, Reel 92, 820, 821, 826, 846; and Reel 93, 1189. For more on squatters see New, Land Sliding; Little, “Contested Land,” 381–412; Taylor, Liberty Men and Great Proprietors; Weaver, Great Land Rush, 74–6, 79–80, and chapter 7; and Karsten, Between Law and Custom, 146–87. lac, War Office 44/35 f.67, S. Thomas, Jr, to R. Byham, 24 June 1847. This meant they did not have a lease, a real interest, or a transferable interest in the land. They were nevertheless governed by the law of landlord and tenant. Megarry and Wade, The Law of Real Property, 619, 623–6. Year-to-year tenants were those who had no term but an annual rent had been reserved, and therefore, it was considered year to year. They were also tenants who might previously have had a term of years but were now “holding over” by staying on the property with permission but for no set term. For examples of these indefinite contracts that entered the high courts see Houghton v. Thompson (1866), 25 ucqb 557; Counter v. Morton (1852), 9 ucqb 253; and McClenaghan v. Barker (1844), 1 ucqb 26. “An Act to simplify the transfer of real property in Upper Canada, and to render certain rights and interests therein liable under execution,” S. Prov. C. 12 Vic. (1849), c. 71; and “An Act to amend the Act to simplify transfer,” S. Prov. C. 14 and 15 Vic. (1851), c. 7. The following cases entered the high courts and involved agreements that were not formal written agreements. See for example Donkin v. Crombie (1862), 11 uccp 601; Houghton v. Thompson (1866), 25 ucqb 557; Montgomery v. Spence (1863), 23 ucqb 39; Wilcoxson v. Palmer (1839), Rob. & Jos. Dig. 2057 (Ont.); McClenaghan v. Barker (1844), 1 ucqb 26; Lee v. Purdy (1846), 2 ucqb 193; and Doe Dem Lynde v. Merritt (1846), 2 ucqb 410. Winters, “Tenant Farming in Iowa,” 145–6, and Farmers without Farms, 73–4; Huston, Land and Freedom, 80; Duncan, “Legal Protection of the Soil in England,” 83; for Wales see Jones, “Glamorgan Custom and Tenant Right,” 6–7. This was the case in California too; see Friedberger, Farm Families and Change, 52. Duncan, “Legal Protection of the Soil,” 86, 89.
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Notes to pages 67–71
84 For arguments against annual and short-term tenancies see Journal and Transactions of the Board of Agriculture of Upper Canada 1 (1855–56): 328, 448. 85 lac, rg 5 b21, vol. 1, Questionnaire 1840–41; James Johnston, Notes on North America, 275; Evans, Emigrant’s Guide, 78–9; Hardy and Spence, Ontario as a Home, 29; Croil, Dundas, 206; and Canada Farmer 4 (15 April 1867): 121–2. 86 The inclusion of a life in a lease had qualified the tenant to vote in the old country, but such was not the case in Ontario. For an analysis of the rise and fall of leases for lives in Ireland see Wilson, New Lease on Life, 27–8. An example of a lease for three lives in Upper Canada can be found in Doe d. Graham v. Newton (1847), 3 ucqb 249 (ca). “Life leases,” or the “tenant for life” (as distinct from leases for lives), and “lease-to-buy” contracts were not landlord-tenant relationships but real conveyance in fee simple, i.e., ownership. A life lease was usually an intergenerational arrangement, a sort of maintenance agreement for the elderly parent. Maloch v. McEwan (1860), 9 uccp 467. 87 For examples of Indian reserves being let on these long leases see Harring, White Man’s Law, 40–50; 1842 Manuscript Census, Reel c–1345, Gore District, Brantford Township; and Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada 3, 149–50. 88 Leases could be mortgaged to raise money, for example, to build a barn. In 1851 a statute was passed referring to this practice: “An Act to amend the Act to simplify transfer,” S. Prov. C. 14 and 15 Vic. (1851), c. 7. How often this happened is unclear and I have found no other evidence of it. Tenants could also raise money through chattel mortgages, which used their livestock and other moveable, personal goods as collateral. Some of these survive; see for example Chattel Mortgages, in ao, rg 22, Court Records, Unprocessed, Northumberland and Durham Counties, County Court, Chattel Mortgages 1871. 89 Canada Farmer 2 (15 February 1865): 57. 90 Canada Farmer 1 (15 September 1864): 270; 2 (15 February 1865): 57; 4 (15 April 1867): 122; and 4, no.2 (15 January 1872):19.
chapter four 1 McNab’s settlers in McNab Township seem to have had title to the land as freeholders but had to pay him a quit rent as their superior and he retained their grants until their agreements were fulfilled. They did not have a landlord-tenant relationship. Fraser, Last Laird of McNab; McDiarmid, “The Original Emigrants to McNab Township,” 13–24; Dictionary of Canadian Biography,
Notes to pages 71–4
2 3 4
5 6
7 8 9 10 11
279
vol. 8, s.v. “Archibald McNab, 17th Chief of Clan McNab”; Hessel, McNab – The Township; Wild, McNab: The Last Laird. Clarke, Land, Power, and Economics, 300. McCalla, The Upper Canada Trade, 154; and Gray and Prentice, “Exploring the Price of Farmland,” 234–5, 236. For Cramahe Township see Canada West Census 1842; ao, rg 1 a-vi–8, vol.16, clp, “Return of Inspection, Newcastle District 1844 Clergy Reserves” (hereafter Inspection 1844); and University of Toronto Archives, a68–0010, I, Group b, 1, vol. 129, Office of the Chief Accountant, “Land Survey of 1840 Newcastle District.” For the American Midwest see Friedberger, Farm Families and Change, 49, 56; Winters, Farmers without Farms, 76; and Heller, Jr, and Houdek, “Farm Tenants and Landlords,” 620–1. Robert Diller called this type of tenancy “functional” as opposed to tenancy resulting from “functional derangement in farm property” brought on by depression etc., in Farm Ownership, Tenancy and Land Use, 52–3. For Canada see “Renting Farms,” The Canada Farmer 2 (15 February 1865): 57–8; Croil, Dundas, 206; Johnson, “Land Policy, Population Growth and Social Structure,” 44; Russell, “Upper Canada,”140, 144; Dick, Farmers ‘Making Good’, 126; and Sylvester, The Limits of Capitalism, 140. Gates, Land Policies of Upper Canada. By the 1830s several colonization attempts had shown that investment in wildland could be profitable. Many Scottish gentlemen had purchased property in Upper Canada with the intention of colonizing it, for example, William Dickson, John Galt, and Adam Fergusson. Irish gentlemen such as Colonel Thomas Talbot and Richard Talbot were colonizers too. In 1823 and 1825, Peter Robinson, as part of a government experiment at systematic colonization, was responsible for settling the Peterborough area. The Egremont Settlement near Woodstock and the Glengarry Settlement were also organized settlement schemes. For an overview of these schemes see Wilson, A New Lease on Life, 52–3; McLean, The People of Glengarry, 188–204; and Cameron and McDougall Maude, Assisting Emigration to Upper Canada, 173–93. None of these colonization projects was based on tenancy. Taylor, The Forest Admiral Vansittart, offers the fullest account of Vansittart’s life. For Mount Cashell’s life and his Canadian estates see Wilson, A New Lease on Life, chapters 1 and 2. Wilson, A New Lease on Life, 71. Ibid., 46. Rose, Emigrant Churchman, 202. Other evidence, however, suggests that Vansittart sometimes placed more emphasis on honour and service than
280
12
13
14
15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24
Notes to pages 74–7
financial matters. Though observers believed he was a man of unlimited resources, an image he no doubt tried to uphold, financial difficulties in England had hastened his move to Canada, and financing his Canadian estates was a constant challenge. Taylor, The Forest Admiral Vansittart, 38, 94, 96. ao, clp, General Correspondence of the C.C.L., Admiral Vansittart to Hon R.B. Sullivan, 13 September 1826; also cited in Guillet, Valley of the Trent, 63–4. Vansittart also bought extensive property in the townships of Eldon, Fenelon, and Mariposa, and in Victoria County to augment his naval grants there. When Vansittart arrived in 1834, they quarrelled and the partnership was dissolved. Vansittart was upset because Drew had all the land in his name and had made investments in Vansittart’s name of which he disapproved. Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, s.v. “Andrew Drew” at http://www.biographi.ca; and Ireland, “Andrew Drew and the Founding of Woodstock,” 229–45. Fred Williams, “Admiral Vansittart’s Historic House,” The Mail (18 May 1936); and Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 20 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1960); and Mrs Spencer Hunter, “Admiral Van Sittart” (paper presented to the Oxford Historical Society, Woodstock Public Library, 31 March 1967). In 1841 he was made a vice-admiral. Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, s.v. “William Craddock Bettridge,” at http://www.biographi.ca; and Elliott, “Parish of Woodstock,” 90, 93. Jameson, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles, vol. 2, 124. London Free Press, 26 August 1961; and Morgan, Sketches of Celebrated Canadians, 423–6. Langton, Early Days in Upper Canada, 156; and Kirkconnell, County of Victoria Centennial History, 79. Though the admiral was likely involved in his tenanted estates in Bexley and Woodstock, little evidence remains of the details. Woodstock did not have its own newspaper until 1842 and estate records have not been located. One might infer from his will, in which there is no mention of rental income, that by then he had sold his leased lands. Wilson, A New Lease on Life, 55. This percentage is calculated on the rental for specific lots on Amherst Island and their assessed value. Wilson, A New Lease on Life, 64–5. Ibid., 64–7. The amount was calculated by two appraisers, one chosen by the tenant and one by the proprietor. Ibid., 54. Jameson, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles,124–6. For both houses see Rolph, A Brief Account, 244; Hunter, “Admiral Van Sittart”; and The Mail, 18 May 1936; Elliott, “The Parish of Woodstock,” 89.
Notes to pages 77–81
281
25 Suggitt, Roses and Thorns, 255; Langton, A Gentlewoman in Upper Canada, 130; Guillet, Valley of the Trent, xxxviii; and Woodstock Public Library, Vansittart file, Edwin C. Guillet, “A Log House of Many Additions.” 26 Wilson, A New Lease on Life, 73–4, 103; and Ireland, “Andrew Drew,” 229–45. 27 Byers and McBurney, The Governor’s Road, 238; and Kirkconnell, County of Victoria Centennial, 79–84. 28 Godley, Letters From America, 177. 29 Wilson, A New Lease on Life, 72–3. 30 Taylor, The Forest Admiral Vansittart, 108. 31 Ibid., 99; and Woodstock Public Library, Admiral Vansittart File. 32 Rolph, Emigration and Colonization, 341, 345–6. 33 Ibid., 70–2. 34 Trent University Archives, 77–1009, Last Will and Testament and various Codicils of Vansittart, 1836–43. 35 Obituary of Mrs Isabella Vansittart, The Sentinel Review, 29 October 1912, 1. 36 Morgan, Sketches of Celebrated Canadians, 428–9. 37 Canada Farmer 2 (15 February 1865): 57. 38 Ellis, Landlords and Farmers, 258, 264–6; and Robertson, The Tenant League, 25–9. 39 Lucas, ed., Lord Durham’s Report, 218–26. 40 London Herald, 25 March 1843. With respect to the Woodstock Herald, not all issues have survived for 1843. 41 Illustrated Historical Atlas of Oxford County, Ontario; and Illustrated Historical Atlas of Frontenac, Lennox and Addington,1878. 42 lac, q Series, 374–1, Colborne to Goderich, 3 February 1832, 118–19. 43 lac, State Book b, Chief Justice Elmsley’s Report, 20 April 1798, 141–7. See also lac, rg 1 l7, vol. 24, Records of the Executive Council of Upper Canada, Second Elmsley Report of 1800, located at the front of the ledger entitled “Crown and Clergy Reserve Leases: Reports and Proceedings Concerning Land L.C., 6. 44 By then no new leases were being made. ao, rg 1 a-i–7, vol. 3, env. 2, ms892, Reel 1, 01004–5, clp, Clergy Reserve Legislation and Sales. 45 lac, rg 1 l7, vol. 34, pt 1, folder 1812–18, Records of the Executive Council, Miscellaneous Correspondence. Rents remained the same throughout the 1840s. For rents elsewhere in this era see lac, rg 5 b21, vol. 1, Questionnaire 1840–41. 46 McQueen, “Report on the County of Huron,” 173–4. See also Widder, Information for Intending Emigrants, 8; and H.J. Johnston, “Immigration to the Five Eastern Townships,” 210–11.
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Notes to pages 81–4
47 Lessees could accrue a rate of six percent interest on their deposit per annum. Widder, Information for Intending Emigrants, 8. 48 The Canada Company had an agent in nearly every town. Hume, Canada As It Is, 20. 49 Before 1819 sheriffs kept records of rents received and arrears. Up until the 1820s the bulk of the records of the clergy reserves were located in the surveyor general’s office. A minute book offered a formal account of the proceedings and decisions in the executive council on matters of policy. A journal indicated the rents due. A set of ledgers contained accounts of each lessee, showing when the lease commenced, when it would end, what fines were due, and the annual progressive increase in rent. A general index provided an alphabetic index by township of all clergy lots, a numerical index of the lots, and an alphabetic index of lessees. A filing book recorded the date of petition with the applicant’s name, the lot payed for, and the fate of the petition. It was indexed alphabetically. Wilson, Clergy Reserves, 31. 50 Wilson, Clergy Reserves, 32, 39–40; and Finding Aid at lac, rg 1 l7, Records of the Executive Council. Examples of these various documents can be found in lac, rg 1 l3, Upper Canada Land Petitions. The petitions are indexed by surname and leases are usually grouped separately at the end of each letter group, behind petitions for attaining free Crown land or buying it. Sometimes information about the lessee is available on these petitions – their service in the War of 1812, for example, or the number of years they had been in the district – but often they are rather sparse documents. A fiat was a decree issued by the government that indicated their recognition that the individual wanted to settle. If the original lessee died or assigned his or her right to another, a different process occurred. Researchers need to be aware that lists of lessees on Crown and clergy reserves that continued to be drawn up for years refer to these original lessees (when often they had long since assigned their right to others) and not the current leaseholders or occupants. 51 Only where there was no policy to cover a given situation or where two parties were in dispute would cases be forwarded to the executive council. 52 Once clergy reserves were opened for sale in 1827, Peter Robinson acted as the agent for the sale of leased lands and vacant reserves under his role as commissioner of Crown lands. The Clergy Corporation continued to look after leases. 53 Until the late 1840s his receipts from the clergy reserves are considered to be fairly accurate. Wilson, Clergy Reserves, 101. 54 The real coordinator of the clergy reserves, Thomas Bouthillier, had become the Assistant commissioner of Crown lands. The executive council would still oversee the fixing of rents and prices as recommended by local surveyors,
Notes to pages 84–6
55
56 57
58 59 60
61
62
63
64 65
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land agents, Baines, and Bouthillier. Though some issues such as timber mining, squatting, and arrears continued to vex administrators, local agents were given more control, kept better records, and were more punctual in returning their collections. Wilson, Clergy Reserves, 190–1, 195–6. With the Act of Union, the clergy reserves in what would become “Canada West” remained separate from those of “Canada East.” The agricultural report to the government in 1858, following a particularly bad year, reported that hundreds were in arrears and at the mercy of the company, but that the number of distraints had been “tens.” Journal and Transactions of the Board of Agriculture of Upper Canada 2 (1858): 174. Arrears are discussed in detail in chapter 6. Widdis, “Motivation and Scale,” 341–4. The term speculator wasn’t generally used in the nineteenth century but has been the focus of several scholars who seek to define it: Clarke, Land, Power, and Economics, chapters 7 and 8; Widdis, “Perspective on Land Tenure”; and Shannon, “Brokers, Land Bankers.” Widdis, “Perspective on Land Tenure,” 184; and Clarke, Land, Power and Economics, chapters 7 and 8. Widdis, “Perspective on Land Tenure,” 160. By mid-century speculators held much less land than in the early years of settlement in Elizabethtown Township. Widdis, “Perspective on Land Tenure,” 51, 70. In Essex County, the greatest speculation took place in the era leading up to the beginning of a sales policy in 1825. Clarke, Land, Power, and Economics, 334, 357. Shannon, in “Brokers, Land Bankers,” 95–6, identified the “quick flipper.” Swierenga, Pioneers and Profits, 1968, found that large speculators were not inclined to take tenants but preferred the freedom to sell at any time, 255. Widdis has distinguished between the classical speculator, the land banker, investing farmer, and corporate speculator (i.e., the Canada Company) in “Perspective on Land Tenure,” 166–70. After the acts of 1819 and 1824, the taxpayer’s word regarding his or her holdings had to be verified and the surveyor general furnished lists of all those who had been granted land. Cultivated land was rated at twenty shillings per acre and wild land at four shillings per acre. The rate of taxation was set at one penny to the pound so that cultivated acreage was taxed one penny per acre and wild land one-fifth of this. “The Assessment Act of 1819,” 59 Geo. 3, c. 7, ss. 4 & 12. Manning, Assessment, 58, 187–8, 391. Clarke, Land, Power, and Economics, 175, 177, 371, 375. Settlement duties were required as early as 1763 but were not enforced. They were abolished
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68
69
70 71 72 73
74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82
Notes to pages 86–91
between 1835 and 1841, in part owing to politicians who were also land speculators and who pressed to have them removed. For clearing leases see Rose, Emigrant Churchman, 208. See also Munro, The Backwoods’ Life, 29; lac, rg 5 b21, vol. 1, Questionnaire 1840–41, Gore District. For a lease where statute labour or the cost of hiring others to perform it were stipulated see University of Western Ontario, Regional Collection, D. Cameron Papers, box 4014, file 14, Lease for Dennis Demarars, 1892. Columbia University, Butler Library x325/t 63, vol. 1, 78–79, Hawke to Sullivan (21 February 1837), cited in Cameron and McDougall Maude, Assisting Emigration, 156. Obituary, Peterborough Review, 27 February 1857; Trent University Archives, 89–002–9, Howell Fleming Legal Collection, Zaccheus Burnham Estate, files a1–a70 contain leases and contracts, e11 contains a schedule of Crown deeds in Burnham’s possession at mid-century, F5 contains his last will; Mulvany et al., History of the County of Peterborough; and lac, rg 5 b21, vol. 1, Questionnaire 1840–41. Trent University Archives, 77–005, Williams Family Papers. “Estate of the Late John Tucker Williams” and many farm leases can be found in box 1, folder 2. These prices for purchasing and leasing land were reasonable at the time. Rose, Emigrant Churchman, 201–2; 205–6. Buchanan, Jr, Canada, 83. Hume, Canada As It Is, 63. Buchanan, Jr, Canada, 83. For other examples of landlords selling land to their tenants with mortgage financing see Major Robert Perceval Maxwell on Amherst Island in Wilson, A New Lease on Life, chapter 5; and Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt, chapter 2, on Illinois and Iowa. Gagan, Denison Family, 4, 12, 18. Croil, Dundas, 206–7. Glazebrook, Life in Ontario, 174. Canadian Agriculturalist and Journal and Transactions of the Board of Agriculture of Upper Canada 15 (January 1863): 9–11. Gagan, Denison Family, 22. Canadian Agriculturalist and Journal and Transactions of the Board of Agriculture of Upper Canada 15 (January 1863): 9–11. Radforth, “The Shantymen,” 212. Bogue, Prairie to Corn Belt, chapter 2; and John Weaver, Great Land Rush, 77. Land Registry Abstract; ao, rg 1 c-iii–3, vol. 1, clp, Clergy Reserve Sales Register 1829–1924, Register No.1. Joseph A. Keeler corresponded frequently with the Honourable Peter Robinson concerning his own interest and on
Notes to pages 92–4
83
84
85
86 87 88 89
90
91
285
behalf of others interested in buying clergy reserve property. ao, rg 1 c-iv, ms658, Reel 92, 174–8, 180–1, 239, 280, clp, Cramahe Township Papers. For the Keeler family history see Keeler, Keeler Family, 145–6, 240–1; Colborne Public Library, Nancy Foy Cameron, “The Keelers” (c. 1990), 21–3; The Colborne Chronicle, commemorative paper, Colborne’s 125th anniversary (27 June 1984); Argyris, How Firm a Foundation, 24–8, 34, 56–63, 129, 168; and Trent University Archives, 69–001, box 5, folder 9, no. 206, Marryat Papers. The historical evidence for “Old Joe” actually bringing settlers to the area is slim at best. See Colborne Public Library, Percy L. Climo, “Cramahe Township Survey and Settlement”; and Illustrated Historical Atlas of the Counties of Northumberland and Durham. ao, rg 1 b-ii, vol. 5, clp, Account Book: Clergy Reserve Leases, Newcastle District 1802– 21, Series “a,” 8; and vol. 8, Account Book: Clergy Reserve Rent Accounts “b” Series, Newcastle District 1802–58, 86; University of Toronto Archives, a68–0010, Series i, Group b, 1, vol. 129, Office of the Chief Accountant, Land Survey of 1840 Newcastle District, 107; and the Census of 1842 for Cramahe Township. The land registry abstract for the town lots shows this quite plainly. “Little Joe” was also a man with a large amount of property and considerable success in business and politics, establishing the first newspaper, The Transcript, a bank in Colborne, and serving as mp for East Northumberland from 1867 to 1873. Illustrated Historical Atlas of the Counties of Northumberland and Durham. For his leased and freehold properties see Abstract Index to Deeds (hereafter aid) and Census and Assessment (hereafter c & a) 1842. Obituary, c. 1892, Colborne Public Library, Scrapbook. For his properties and tenants see aid; and c & a 1842. c & a 1842; McBurney and Byers, Homesteads, 147–8; and Cobourg Star, 21 July 1841, 25 October 1843, 27 December 1843, and 20 August 1845. Of the fifty landlords only forty-one could be identified with specific lands. Of these forty-one landlords, fifty-one percent owned their land outright, seventeen percent had mortgages, nineteen percent owned and leased additional land, and twenty-two percent did not own at all but were tenants themselves. Compiled from c1842; a1842; and aid. Voisey noted that in the area surrounding Vulcan, landlords often owned less property than their tenants who were large owner/renters. Voisey, Vulcan, 215. For American studies with a similar conclusion see Diller, Farm Ownership, 52–3; Winters, Farmers without Farms, 18–19, 78; Pederson, Between Memory and Reality, 29–30, 265; and Salamon and O’Reilly, “Family Land Developmental Cycles,” 529. Canada Farmer 2 (15 February 1865): 57.
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Notes to pages 94–7
92 The confusion over whether a landlord had sufficient title to distress or evict if he had not completely satisfied his mortgage or if he defaulted on his payments is debated between three judges in Ashford v. McNaughton (1854), 11 ucqb 171 (ca). For similar cases see Simpson v. Hutchinson (1859), 7 Gr. 308 (uc Ch.); Matthie v. Rose (1852), 9 ucqb 602; Penn v. Lockwood (1850), 1 Gr. 547 (uc Ch.); Hartley v. Jarvis (1850), 7 ucqb 545; and Lewis v. Brooks (1852), 8 ucqb 576. 93 lac, mg 24 i80, Thomas Spenser Niblock Letters 1849–1852, especially 29 July 1852, and 4 August 1852. 94 Graham, Greenbank, 164, 179. 95 Roughly half of the married women owning property in Guelph in 1891 had tenants, and one-third of the widows had tenants. Inwood and Ingram, “The Impact of Married Women’s Property Legislation,” 405–49. See also: Effland, Rogers, and Grim, “Women as Agricultural Landowners,” 250; and Holderness, “Widows in Pre-Industrial Society,” 423–42. 96 University of Guelph Archives, Dougall Family Papers, Margaret Fowlie to Brother, 7 May 1865, and 21 August 1865. 97 Graham, Greenbank, 291. 98 c & a 1842, c1851/2; and Cobourg Star, 1 August 1838. 99 Nicholson d. Spafford v. Rea (1833), 3 os 84 (ucqb). 100 Graham, Greenbank, 191–2. 101 Ramirez, On the Move, 36, 45–6. 102 University of Guelph Archives, Dougall Family Papers, 15 January 1857, 22 March 1864, 2 June 1865, and 8 August 1866. 103 Cobourg Star, 6 August 1845; c1842; c1848; and aid, lots 14 and 15, con. 1. 104 “Leasing Small Farms,” Canada Farmer 4 (January 1872): 19; and Easton, Travels in America, 98. 105 c & a 1842; his wife’s obituary, no date, Colborne Public Library, scrapbook; and John and Hilary Fowler, “Fowler Pottery – Village of Colborne” unpublished paper in the private possession of Margaret and Roger Lee, Colborne. 106 c & a 1842. 107 Easton, Travels in America, 98. 108 Evans, The Emigrants Guide, 78; and Friedberger, Farm Families, 88. 109 ao, mu 2382, James Reid Papers, letters of 1 March 1847 and 20 September 1856. Liam Kennedy examines the assets and costs for heir and donor; see “Farm Succession in Modern Ireland,” 478–9. Friedberger, in his study of inheritance in the cornbelt, 1870–1950, argues that real estate was heavily discounted for intrafamilial purposes; see “The Family Farm and the Inheritance Process,” 12. One of the main objects of transferring property in the
Notes to pages 97–101
110 111
112
113 114
115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123
124 125
126 127
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Saguenay was to set up as many children nearby as possible even if doing so meant sacrificing profits. Bouchard, Quelques Arpents, 220. ao, b–452, Reel gs–4731, Cramahe Township Copybooks, Deed Book, Will of Elijah Ketchum, 8 May 1856. Relatives accounted for one-quarter to one-third of the landlords in the American Midwest in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Friedberger, Farm Families and Change, 56; and Harbaugh, “Twentieth-Century Tenancy and Soil Conservation,” 101. For understanding intergenerational transfers see Snell, “Maintenance Agreements for the Elderly,”197–216; Kennedy, “Farm Succession,” 477–99; and Bouchard, Quelques Arpents, 206. Salamon, Gengengacher, and Penas, “Family Factors,” 29–30; and Yoder, “Rethinking Midwestern Farm Tenure,” 477. ao, Cramahe Copybooks, Deed Book a, Instrument 171, Reel gs–4730, Will of Nathan Gould; c1842; aid, lot, 19, con. 2; Township Papers, no. 92, 362; and Scrapbook, Colborne Public Library, obituary of Seth Burr Gould, 1894. Farmer’s Advocate (15 February 1898): 76; Canada Farmer 4 (January 1872): 19, and 2 (15 February 1865): 57–8. Rose, Emigrant Churchman, 196–7. Munro, Backwoods’ Life, 29. Irwin v. Hunter (1869), 19 uccp 391; for other complaints about informal agreements see Canada Farmer 2 (15 February 1865): 57. Elliott, Irish Migrants in the Canadas, 212. Wallis v. Harold (1864), 23 ucqb 279 (ca). Doe Dem Lynde v. Merritt (1846), 2 ucqb 410. Evans, The Emigrants Guide, 78. For example Lee v. Purdy (1846), 2 ucqb 193; Donkin v. Crombie (1862), 11 uccp 601; Houghton v. Thompson (1866), 25 ucqb 557; Montgomery v. Spence (1863), 23 ucqb 39; Wilcoxson v. Palmer (1839), Rob. & Jos Dig. 2057 (Ont.); and McClenaghen v. Barker (1844), 1 ucqb 26. Lee v. Purdy (1846), 2 ucqb 193. “An Act to Simplify the Transfer of Real Property in Upper Canada, and to render certain rights and interests therein liable under execution,” S. Prov. C. 12 Vic. (1849), c. 71. S. Prov. C. 14 and 15 Vic. (1851, 1852), c. 7. Doe Dem Lynde v. Merritt (1846), 2 ucqb 410. The court sided with the landlord, saying that the landlord’s verbal notice to quit was sufficient since both landlord and tenant had understood the terms of the fall 1844 agreement.
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Notes to pages 103–7
chapter five 1 Roebuck, “Rent Movement,” 98; O’Grada, “Agricultural Head Rent,” 385–92; and Large, “The Wealth of the Greater Irish Landowners,” 28–34. 2 See appendix a for detailed analysis. 3 Hutton, Canada, 29; and Hardy and Spence, Ontario as a Home for the British Tenant Farmer, 29. 4 Wild land had other uses too, such as for grazing livestock, and as a source of fuel, maple sugar, game and berries. It was expressly stated that clergy reserve rents were not to be based on the actual improved value of the land (i.e., cleared acres, buildings, etc.) but at rents as they were established by regulation on the land in its unimproved state. This was so that tenants could reap the value of their improvements. lac, rg 7 g12, vol. 63, Governor General’s Office, uc: Letterbooks of Despatches to the Colonial Office, 1799–1867, Sir Charles Bagot to Lord Stanley, 18 July 1842, 130. 5 Darroch has examined rental and freehold advertisements in the 1860s. Rental ads were less common, which led him to speculate that tenancy had a more stable status than normally presumed and that the market was somewhat weak; see “Scanty Fortunes and Rural Middle-Class Formation,” 651. 6 Clarke, Land, Power, and Economics, 230; Gray and Prentice, “Exploring the Price of Farmland,” 233, and figure 1; and Emery, Inwood, and Thille, “Hecksher-Ohlin in Canada,” 27, 44. 7 See the high turnover of leaseholds amongst Cramahe tenants at mid-century in chapter 7, Table 7.1. 8 Haw, Fifteen Years in Canada, 107. 9 lac, rg 1 l7, vol. 24, Records of the Executive Council, Report of the Executive Council to His Grace, the Duke of Portland, 8 August 1800, 14. 10 Canada Farmer 2 (15 March 1865), 88. James Johnston, in Notes on North America, 275, noted that per acre land rented for two dollars or about two and a half bushels of wheat in the Gore District. 11 Smith, Wealth of Nations, 248. 12 McCalla, Planting the Province, appendix c, Tables c.1 to c.3; and McInnis, Perspectives on Ontario Agriculture, chapter 1. 13 lac, rg 1 l7, vol. 24, Records of the Executive Council, Report of the Executive Council to His Grace, the Duke of Portland, 8 August 1800, 14. 14 Initially, it was recommended that the annual rent payment for the first seven years of the lease should be ten shillings or three bushels of wheat, for the second seven years twenty shillings or six bushels of wheat, and for the last seven years thirty shillings or nine bushels of wheat. Ibid., 17. By 1819 these
Notes to pages 107–9
15 16 17
18 19
20 21
22 23 24 25
26
289
amounts were raised and stayed in effect into the 1830s. According to the regulations of 13 April 1819, for the first seven years rent was thirty-five shillings or ten and a half bushels of wheat, for the second seven years it was seventy shillings or twenty-one bushels of wheat, and for the third seven years it was 105 shillings or thirty-one and a half bushels. These figures are taken from the clergy reserve leases made out to Cramahe tenants in the early 1830s and located in the township papers of Cramahe. The government had the power to decide whether rent would be in cash or grain. James Johnston, Notes on North America, 275. Godley, Letters from America, 171. But as scholars now point out, the rise in wheat prices, and we might assume rents, had begun at an earlier date so that such major political events as the Crimean War, the Reciprocity Treaty with the us (1855–66), and the American Civil War (1861–65) had a more subtle, less determining role in the flux of wheat prices. McCalla, Planting the Province, 240. Clarke, Land, Power, and Economics, 239–42. McCalla and McInnis have been largely responsible for this revisionist interpretation of the role of wheat in early Upper Canada. McCalla, Planting the Province, chapter 5; and McInnis, Perspectives on Ontario Agriculture, chapters 1 and 2. Smith, Canada, 535; and Canada Farmer 4 (15 April 1867): 121. Major Walter James Brown, “Tenant Farming,” Farmer’s Magazine 7 (August 1914): 50–2; Farm and Dairy (1916); and Todd, Young Farmer’s Manual. Usury laws set the legal interest rate at no more than six percent. This law was repealed in 1853. Penalties for usury were abolished but it was established that interest charged over six percent was unenforceable. McCalla, Planting the Province, 407n72; and Weaver, Great Land Rush, 250. Todd, Young Farmer’s Manual, 88–9; and Farm and Dairy 35 (14 September 1916): 4. This trend has been identified in other studies: Winters, Farmers without Farms, 23; and Wilson, A New Lease on Life, 214. Godley, Letters from America, vol. 1, 171. For specific examples of renting having to compete with freehold see Maxwell’s experience on Amherst Island in Wilson, New Lease on Life, 123, 125–6; and see Talbot, Five Years Residence, 138–9. Talbot wrote this book to warn immigrants of the claims of land agents. At one point he attacked clergy reserve rents for not being competitive enough with freehold prices. His comparison was unfair but nicely illustrates the need for rents to be a better deal than freehold. I thank Kris Inwood for contributing these points.
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Notes to pages 109–11
27 Darroch argues that an active land market existed in the 1860s, that land was still available to buy, and that there was no land crisis as such. “Scanty Fortunes,” 647, 651. 28 This was true of freehold as well. Clarke, Land, Power, and Economics, 236. 29 Haw, Fifteen Years in Canada, 108. 30 Evans, The Emigrant’s Guide, 78–9. 31 These figures are calculated from the 1842 census category of “Average Money rent of farm, farmed by each family.” The census gave rent in dollars. I have converted it to currency. Figures for the Newcastle District as a whole were filled out by Henry Ruttan, sheriff of the District in 1840 on an emigration questionnaire. He was in an excellent position to know about rents as he was the collector for the clergy and Crown reserve rents and the server of writs. He reported that the average purchase price of partially cleared and fenced land was three pounds per acre (sixty shillings). Purchase prices ranged anywhere from ten to one hundred shillings. Improved lands could be rented for five to twelve shillings, sixpence per acre. lac, rg 5 b21, vol. 1, Questionnaire 1840–41. 32 Smith, Canada, 535. 33 The Canada Farmer 4 (15 April 1867): 121. 34 Smith, Canada, 535. 35 lac, rg 5 b21, vol. 1, Questionnaire 1840–41. 36 Hardy and Spence, Ontario as a Home, 28. These prices referred to freehold prices, but rents were equally sensitive to location and demand. 37 Inflation was not a dominant factor in the years under study. Clarke, Land, Power, and Economics, 237–45; and Gray and Prentice, “Exploring the Price of Farmland,” 234–6. 38 Wilson, New Lease on Life, 21. 39 These rents were set according to what was known as the Second Elmsley Scheme 1800. Lessees were also subject to pay two shillings and sixpence to the secretary of the Province when they received their lease to cover the costs of stationary and “engrossment.” ao, rg 1 a-i–7, vol. 3, env. 2, on ms 892 Reel 1, clp, Clergy Reserve Legislation and Sales, 01004–5. If a lot was over or under two hundred acres then the rent had to be adjusted accordingly. This adjustment procedure is discussed in ao, rg 4–4–01, vol. 1, Attorney General Pre-Confederation Records, General Correspondence, file 5 January 1803. 40 Abbott, The Emigrant to North America, 88–9. Progressive rentals were common in other frontier areas; see Bumsted, Land, Settlement, and Politics, 61, 149. An example of a private landlord using a progressive rental can be found in University of Guelph Archives, xr1 ms a120018, Goodwin Haines Collection,
Notes to pages 111–12
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42 43
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45 46 47 48
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50 51
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Indenture of a Lease, Daniel Rasselssi of Woodhouse, London District, to Hugh Alexander, 1805. lac, rg 1 l7, vol. 34, pt 1 (folder 1812–18), Records of the Executive Council, Misc Correspondence, “Table Shewing the Rents reserved upon the Renewal of a Lease of the Crown or Clergy Reserves ... after the expiration of the original Lease which had been issued under the Regulations 13 April 1819.” No new leases were issued after 1883 but renewals continued. This table indicated that once leases issued under the 1819 scale of rents expired in the 1840s and 1850s, they would be renewed at more than double the rent. It is not clear whether this renewal price ever took effect. Even if it had, lessees would have paid only tenpence, or less than one shilling per acre per year. This topic is discussed in detail in chapter 7. lac, rg 7 g12, vol. 63, Reel h1107, Governor General’s Office Upper Canada: Letterbooks of Despatches to the Colonial Office, 1799–1867, Bagot to Stanley, 18 July 1842, 130. In the early nineteenth century it was not uncommon even for urban tenants to pay in a combination of cash and produce. Tenants renting town lots from Alexander Mcdonnell (his spelling) in the town of York paid mostly by cash but occasionally by wheat, potatoes, posts and boards, and other “sundry conveyances.” lac, mg 24 i8, vol. 31A, MacDonell of Collachie Family, Rents 1817–23, 52–73. Rose, Emigrant Churchman, 209. Clearing land cost three to four pounds. If ploughing and sowing were included it cost four to five pounds. Rose, Emigrant Churchman, 226. Winters, Farmers without Farms, provides an extended discussion comparing cash and share rents, 57, 69, 131–2, 136, 139–40. Gourlay, Statistical Account of Upper Canada, 288, 312–13, 316, 360, 372–3, 386–7, 390, 447, 475. Correspondents from townships in the Western, London, Gore, Midland, and Niagara districts responded to Gourlay’s question no. 27, which asked about the prevalence and terms of share renting. Boulton, A Short Sketch, 38; Howison, Sketches of Upper Canada, 236; Foster, Work and Wages, 4; and Charles Stuart, The Emigrant’s Guide to Upper Canada, 72. Transactions of the Board of Agriculture in Upper Canada for 1860–1863, 24, as quoted in Robert Jones, History of Agriculture in Ontario, 68n4; Croil, Dundas, 206; and Canada Farmer 13 (15 May 1876): 92. Tenants would only pay one-third of their produce if they themselves were providing everything but the land and buildings. Winters, Farmers without Farms, 77. Croil, Dundas, 206.
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Notes to pages 113–19
52 Rose, Emigrant Churchman, 197–8. 53 Godley, Letters from America, 171. 54 This became an issue worthy of discussion in the early twentieth century when dairy farms were more prevalent. See Farm and Dairy 36 (18 October 1917): 5; Farmer’s Advocate (21 September 1905): 1318; and Canadian Farm 13 (3 November 1916): 4. 55 During the War of 1812 merchants throughout Upper Canada briefly shifted to payment in cash rather than kind. McCalla, Planting the Province, 33. It is impossible to know the proportion of tenants who paid cash rents. From the records I have used I would say they were the most common form of payment. This may be a reflection, however, of the greater ease with which cash rents could be collected, hence recorded. Gourlay, Statistical Account of Upper Canada, asked about the prevalence and terms of share renting. The respondents reported that it was common in most areas of the province, but information on cash rents was not gathered, so no comparison is possible. 56 Canada Farmer 2 (15 February 1865): 57. 57 Dowling, “Tenant Right,” 316–18, 321, 325. 58 Kim, Landlord and Tenant, 187. 59 Farmer’s Advocate (21 September 1905): 1318. 60 Clarke, Land, Power, and Economics, 258. 61 This was possible for Amherst Island where rent represented only 12.5 percent of a tenant’s surplus production. Wilson, A New Lease on Life, 212–13. 62 An example of such a negotiated rent price can be found in the correspondence of landlord William Stewart. lac, mg 24 d101, William Stewart Family Papers, Letter no. 201, Stewart to Elliott Johnston, 22 November 1849.
chapter six 1 One recent exception is McCurdy, The Anti-Rent Era. 2 Common law was made by judges who decided individual cases and worked case by case developing principles based on the accumulation of previous cases. Upper Canadian courts could not make new common law for themselves. Any judge-made legal changes were subject to review by Britain’s Privy Council, and the Colonial Office could deny royal assent to changes the legislature made. Not until the Colonial Laws Validation Act of 1865 were legislatures given more freedom. Karsten, Between Law and Custom, 8, 518–19. 3 Alexander, Commodity and Propriety, 125; and Simpson, History of the Land Law, 280, 290–1. 4 The liberal aims of land law are discussed in the following: Huston, Land and Freedom, 94, 143; Simpson, History of the Land Law, 273–4; Alexander, Com-
Notes to pages 119–21
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modity and Propriety, 97, 99, 106, 112, 118–19; Dewey, “Peasant Proprietor,” 33; Hurst, Law and the Conditions of Freedom, chapter 1; and Weaver, Great Land Rush, 25. My understanding of how property and contract law relate comes from correspondence with Jim Phillips and his article with Brock, “Commercial Lease,” 989–1,040. Other useful sources on property law set within the larger social and philosophical context, are Reeve, Property; Rubin and Sugarman, eds., Law, Economy and Society; and Risk, “The Law and the Economy.” One of the standard criticisms of landlord-tenant law in the late nineteenth century and today is that it is too close to its historical roots and not contractual enough. Phillips, “Commercial Lease,” 1,039, 1,024. See for example Denison v. Nation (1861), 21 ucqb 57. In correspondence with Jim Phillips, 22 February 2001, he explains that “if the landlord says he or she will repair the fences, and fails, you can enforce that in court. You sue on the covenant, which is considered a form of contract, separate from the conveyance of the estate. The court will say either repair the fence or pay damages. BUT, and this is the point and the distinction with other kinds of relationships which we put in the ‘contracts’ box, the tenant cannot say – you failed to repair the fence, so I’m giving up the land and not paying rent.” The property aspect of the bargain supercedes the contract part of the bargain. A covenant is the written terms of the lease. In 1850, when district courts became county courts, this was extended to fifty pounds. Until 1845 no appeal from district court could be made to a superior court; one could only apply for a new trial by the same court. For this reason some cases were entered in the superior Court of King’s Bench when they were actually within jurisdiction of the district court. From 1876 onwards, any appeals from district courts were to be heard by the Court of Error and Appeal. In 1849 the Court of Queen’s Bench was joined by a new Court of Common Pleas to ease the caseload of the Queen’s Bench. To understand the courts as complex and changing entities see Banks, “The Evolution of the Ontario Courts”; and the finding aid to the court record collection at ao, rg 22. All the different types of court records available at the Archives of Ontario were sampled for what they could reveal, i.e., minute books, proceedings, writs of execution, termbooks, transcripts etc. Case files can be useful if you know the landlord’s name and are willing to look through every case they brought to court in order to locate those involving tenants. See for example ao, rg 22, Court Records, App. r, Series 431, boxes 1–37, District Court of
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the Newcastle District, Case Files. Judgment rolls can be useful because they give the action (e.g., ejectment), name of plaintiff, defendant, and judgment. But such work is painstaking and it is not clear if ejectment refers to a landlord-tenant relationship. See for example ao, rg 22, Court Records Unprocessed, Northumberland and Durham Counties, High Court Justice, Queen’s Bench Judgment Docketbook, 1856–76. For ejectment books see ao, rg 22, Series 133, vol. 1–8, Court Records, Court of King’s Bench, Ejectment Books, 1834–52; ao, rg 22, Court Records Unprocessed, Northumberland and Durham Counties, High Court Justice Ejectment Book, 1851–52; and ao, rg 22, Court Records Unprocessed, Northumberland and Durham Counties, High Court Justice Queen’s Bench Judgment Docketbook, 1856–76. The judges’ benchbooks at the Archives of Ontario run from 1847 to 1886. ao, rg 22, Series 390, Court Records, Benchbooks. The benchbooks of R.B. Sullivan might be useful but those of J.B. Robinson, William Henry Draper, Robert Easton Burns, J.B. Macaulay, and others are very difficult, if not impossible, to read owing to their handwriting, abbreviations, and faded ink. Some sheriff’s records exist at the Archives of Ontario; see for example ao, rg 22, Court Records, Unprocessed, Northumberland and Durham Counties, Sheriff, Ledger “b” 1873–83 and Daybook 1879–83. Others can be found scattered across the province in other archives amongst personal papers. For example lac, mg 24 i26, Alexander Hamilton and Family Papers 1790–1839. He was sheriff of the Niagara District 1818–37. Even his account with the bailiff (vol. 46) contained nothing regarding the seizure of goods for arrears. Legal change in the British colonies tended to come through legislators and not jurists. Risk, “Law and the Economy,” 96, 98, 101, 107; and Karsten, Between Law and Custom, 504–19. Lisa Talbot searched the Canadian Abridgement database at the University of Toronto Library for cases pertaining to landlords and tenants for 1830–80 and copied and summarized the actual cases as they appeared in the law reports. Her insight on individual cases and changes over time is greatly appreciated. For the state’s increasing authority see Loo, Making Law, 64–5, 7; and Curtis, Politics of Population, 13, 18. For Upper Canada see “An Act to amend the Law respecting Real Property, and to render the proceedings for recovering possession thereof in certain cases, less difficult and expensive,” suc. 4 William iv (1834), c.1. For other countries see Huston, Land and Freedom, 99, 144; Alexander, Commodity and
Notes to pages 123–7
20 21
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23 24 25 26
27
28 29
30 31 32 33
34
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Propriety, 107, 119; Dewey, “Peasant Proprietor,” 33; and Friedman, A History of American Law, 114. Dewey, “Peasant Proprietor,” 19–20; McCurdy, The Land Wars, 39; and Friedman, History of American Law, 235–6, 239–40. The specifics of individual acts might relate to farm rentals in terms, for example, of goods that were distrainable or samples of farm leases; but generally the law of landlord and tenant related to all such relationships, commercial, urban, etc. Only a few statutes were passed in the 1830s following the collapse of wheat markets. For example “An Act to regulate the Costs of Levying Distresses for Small Rents and Penalties,” S. Prov. C. 1 Vic. (1837–38), c. 16. Risk notes the outburst of commercial and property legislation at mid-century. Much of it, he argues, was to encourage private initiative; see “Law and Economy,” 102. McCalla, The Upper Canada Trade, chapter 7. This was also the case in other British colonial and American states; see Risk, “Law and Economy,” 102; and Weaver, Great Land Rush, 124–5. Morton, The Critical Years, chapter 1; and Garner, The Franchise, 107, 110–11, 317–18. Radical tenants in the United States believed that independent ownership should be guaranteed as a “natural right” and not subject to the laws of the marketplace. Huston, Land and Freedom, 166. Canada Farmer supported tenancy, arguing that it gave new farmers a good start, but criticized short-term verbal agreements with vague covenants that led to misunderstandings and slovenly farming. Five articles appeared in the 1860s and only two appeared in the 1870s. Canada Farmer 1 (15 September 1864): 270; 2 (15 February 1865): 57–8; 2 (15 March 1865): 88; 4 (15 April 1867): 121–2; 4, no. 1 (15 January 1872): 19; and 13 (15 May 1876): 92. Wilson, Clergy Reserves, 40. ao, rg 4–4–01, vol. 1, General Correspondence, Attorney General Pre-Confederation Records, W. Hands, Sheriff of Western District to J.B. Robinson, Attorney General, 23 February 1819. Ibid., Hands to Robinson, 15 August 1815. Wilson, A New Lease on Life, 126–7. Canada Farmer 1 (15 September 1864): 270. Other New World landlords behaved this way too; see Kim, Landlord and Tenant, 208–14, 219–21. On Irish and English estates, in contrast, agents were quite successful in collecting rents. Vaughan, Landlords and Tenants, 114–15. ao, rg 4–4–01, vol. 1, General Correspondence, Attorney General Pre-Confederation Records, Hands to Robinson, 15 August 1815.
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Notes to pages 127–8
Wilson, A New Lease on Life, 123, 127. Canada Farmer 1 (15 September 1864): 270. Wilson, A New Lease on Life, 65. Wilson, Clergy Reserves, 40–5. Arrears on Crown reserves totalled £1,060 and on clergy reserves £1,158. Presumably these amounts represented the accumulative rents and arrears from when leases first were signed up to 4 April 1811. Thereafter, in reports, the rents received were for a specified period, usually one year, but arrears seem to have represented those accumulated over the years (though this is not specified) and not the amount owing for just that particular year. ao, rg 1, Series b-iii, vol. 5, clp, Clergy Reserve Rent Calculations 1811–17; and lac, rg 5 b34, vol. 36, Records of the Inspector General of Upper Canada and Clerk of the Council, Receiver General’s Statements of Rents Due, Paid or in Arrears on Leases of Crown Reserves. lac, rg 1 l7, vol. 34, pt 1, folder 1812–32, Records of the Executive Council, Misc. Correspondence, Returns, etc., on Crown and Clergy Reserves, John Spencer to Secretary to his Ex. The Lieutenant Governor, 30 December 1815. D’Arcy Boulton, Attorney General to Lieutenant Governor, 4 December 1816, lac, rg 1 l7, vol. 34, pt 1, folder 1812–18, Records of the Executive Council, Miscellaneous Correspondence. Recapitulation of the Number of Leases of Crown Reserves, of Rents Received and the Arrears of Rent on the 25 March 1817, lac, rg 5 b34, vol. 36, Records of the Inspector General of Upper Canada and Clerk of the Council; and ao, rg 1 Series b-iii, vol. 5, clp, Clergy Reserve Rent Calculations 1817–18. When the Crown leases were transferred to King’s College starting in 1827, such arrears as existed continued to be the property of the Crown, and King’s College now joined in the difficult task of collecting rent. lac, rg 1 l7, vol. 34, pt 1, folder 1819–32, Records of the Executive Council, Miscellaneous Correspondence, “Amount of Rents Received by the Commission of Crown Lands on account of arrears due on the Crown Reserves.” For rent ledgers and aggregate rent accounts for King’s College see University of Toronto Archives, a68–0010, Section i and ii, Office of the Chief Accountant. lac, co42, vol. 437, 441. “Report of the Clergy Reserves,” by R.B. Sullivan, Commissioner of Crown Lands, 28 March 1837. lac, rg 1 l7, vol. 34, pt 2, Records of the Executive Council of Upper Canada, Miscellaneous Correspondence, Abstract of Arrears on Clergy Reserves, 8 September 1835. ao, rg 1 a-i–7, vol. 3, env. 2, clp, Clergy Reserve Legislation and Sales, R.B. Sullivan to His Excellency, 14 September 1839.
Notes to pages 128–30
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45 In 1842, arrears were eighty-four percent of the rental. ao, rg 1 b-iii, vol. 29, clp, Financial Services Branch, Return of the Amount of Arrears due upon leased Clergy Reserves, 30 June 1842. 46 Wilson, Clergy Reserves, 135. In an atmosphere of such laxity, when lessees were distrained or evicted, it stood out as persecution. 47 For example see ao, rg 1 b-ii, vol. 5, clp, Series a, Account Book: Clergy Reserve Leases, Newcastle District 1802–21. These are arranged by leaseholder’s name. The account books for the clergy reserves make it abundantly clear that irregular payments and lax enforcement were the rule for rich and poor farmers. Donald Campbell, local landlord and speculator, was just as likely to have arrears as a poor leaseholder such as Garrett VanWicklan. For VanWicklan and Campbell see ibid., Series c, rg 1 b-ii, vol. 17, p. 54,119. 48 ao, rg 1 b-ii, Series a, vol. 5, 19, clp, Account Book: Newcastle District; and Series c, vol. 17, 119. 49 McDonald v. Peck (1859), 17 ucqb 270 (ca). 50 English common law was not clear on the rights of a mortgagee to collect rent, distrain, and evict; and hence, these cases entered the high courts for judgment. One landlord, for example, had mortgaged his property to a building society, and when it was discovered that he had not satisfied his mortgage payments, two judges ruled he had insufficient title to distress. Ashford v. McNaughton (1854), 11 ucqb 171 (ca). Judge Robinson disagreed, arguing that the landlord had title unless he defaulted on his mortgage payments and this landlord had not. The question before the court, in such a case, was who had the right to distrain? This case and others suggest that, while landlords generally preferred to tolerate arrears, those who were in trouble themselves did not have that option, and in such cases both parties were particularly vulnerable.“An Act to alter and settle the mode of proceeding in the action of Ejectment,” S. Prov. C. 14 and 15 Vic. (1851), c. 114 had made it easier for such landlords to evict, but judges interpreted the statute in different ways. See: Simpson v. Hutchinson (1859), 7 Gr. 308 (uc Ch.). For similar cases involving desperate landlords see Matthie v. Rose (1852), 9 ucqb 602; Penn v. Lockwood (1850), 1 Gr. 547 (uc Ch.); and Hartley v. Jarvis (1850), 7 ucqb 545. 51 ao, rg22, Ser. 390–6, box 47, env. 3, Court Records, Benchbooks of William Henry Draper, Assize, Queen’s Bench, Toronto, January 1852. 52 Pulver v. Yerex (1860), 9 uccp 270. 53 Haydon v. Crawford (1834), 3 os 583 (ucqb). 54 These seizable goods could belong to the tenant or others such as a subtenant, lodger, relative, or friend. Later in the century the list of exemptions
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56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66
67 68 69
Notes to pages 131–3
became much longer and more complicated. Nichols, The Farmers’ Manual, 123. Keele, Township Laws, 84–6, Laws of Upper Canada, 149–56. See also for the later period McNab, Magistrate’s Manual, 214–15; Clarke, A Treatise on the Law of Landlord and Tenant; and Mullin, The Landlords’ and Tenants’ Manual. Bittermann, “Women and the Escheat Movement,” 23–38; and Robertson, Tenant League, 49, 63–4. Vaughan, Landlords and Tenants, 206. McCurdy, The Anti-Rent Era, 41. Hurst views this as a trend in contract law in general over the century. See Law and the Conditions of Freedom, 14, 66. “An Act to Regulate Costs of Levying Distresses for Small Rents and Penalties,” suc 1 Vic. (1837–38), c. 16. “An Act for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors in Upper Canada, and for the Purposes Therein Mentioned,” S. Prov. C. 8 Vic. (1844–45), c. 48 s.23. S. Prov.C. 16 Vic. (1852–53), c.177. “Insolvent Debtors Court Act,” S. Prov. C. 22 Vic. (1859), c.18; and “Act Regulating Distress for Small Rents,” S. Prov. C. 22 Vic. (1859), c. 23. “Act to Protect the Goods of Lodgers and Borders against Distresses for Rent Due to the Superior Landlord,” so 43 Vic. (1880), c. 16. “Division Courts Act,” S. Prov. C. 22 Vic. (1859), c. 19. The Globe, 29 March 1887. For bills abolishing distress see Journals of the Legislative Assembly for the Province of Ontario 17, Session 1884, 92, 145, 167; ibid., 20, Session 1887, 20, 42, 130. “Act Respecting Distress for Rent,” so 50 Vic. (1887), c. 23. For discussion of Bill 113, as it was known, see The Globe, 29 March 1887, 5 April 1887. The Globe, 29 March 1887. Replevin is an action to regain possession of personal property unlawfully retained on giving security to try the title and respond to the judgment; also recovery of property by such action. In cases of replevin, if the tenant gave security to the sheriff of twice the value of his goods, they would be returned to him immediately. If the court then found in favour of replevin, the tenant would recover twice the value of the goods taken and the full costs. If the tenant could not afford security, they could take the landlord to court on an action of trespass or trover. Trespass was to proceed against the landlord for wrongfully entering onto the tenant’s land. Trover was the action to recover the value of personal property of the plaintiff wrongfully withheld. In cases of irregular distress, if the court found in the tenant’s favour, the tenant did not reclaim the whole distress, but only the damages sustained by the irregularity. Keele, Township Laws, 80, 92–3.
Notes to pages 134–9
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70 Ferrier v. Cole (1858), 15 ucqb 561. The following year, “An Act Regulating Distress for Small Rents,” S. Prov. C. 22 Vic. (1859), c. 23 provided recourse to tenants who had been wrongfully or improperly distrained by others hired by the landlord. For other cases of irregular distress see McClenaghan v. Barker (1844), 1 ucqb 26; and Campbell v. Baxter (1864), 15 uccp 42. In McClenaghan v. Barker, the tenant took his landlord to court hoping to catch him on a technicality concerning the timing of distraint and thereby test the “Real Property Act of 1844,” S. Prov. C. 4 Will. (1844), c. 1. s.20. He lost the case. 71 Castle v. Rohan (1852), 9 ucqb 400. 72 Bickle v. Beatty (1859), 17 ucqb 465. 73 A landlord could either re-enter or distrain but not both. They are mutually exclusive remedies. 74 Forcible entry acts were enacted as part of English statute law as early as the 1300s and thereafter. Megarry and Wade, The Law of Real Property, 660–4; Keele, Laws of Upper Canada, 142–3. 75 Keele, Township Laws, 68–9, 70–1, 73–5, 94–5, 105–6, and Laws of Upper Canada, 140–2, 144–6, 163–6. 76 Vaughan, Landlord and Tenants, 29. 77 See for example lac, rg 1 l3, vol. 250, “h” Bundle Leases 1799–1838, Petition no. 5, Upper Canada Land Petitions, Petition of Isaiah Hall. 78 See for example University of Toronto Archives, a68–0010, Section iii, Group b, Office of the Chief Accountant, Cramahe, Asa Houghton (lot 24, con. 4), Avery Perry (lot ll, con. 7) and Levi Dudley (lot 16, con. 6) on Crown reserves. Other landlords did this too. See Wilson, A New Lease on Life, 127. 79 The property in question was lots 10 and 11, con. 8, Horton Township, Renfrew County. lac, mg 24 d101, William Stewart Family Papers, William Stewart Letterbook, Letters from Stewart to Elliott Johnson and Farrell from 19 January 1848 to 24 July 1850; Elliott, transcriber and ed., 1842 and 1851 Census of Renfrew County. 80 lac, mg 24 d101, William Stewart Family Papers, William Stewart letterbook, Stewart to Elliott Johnston, 22 November 1849. 81 On any issue, not just ejection, tenants were most vulnerable in the absence of a written lease. Where no lease clearly outlined both parties’ rights, there was little to protect a tenant, and the court tended to side with the landlord. See for example Donkin v. Crombie (1862), 11 uccp 601; Houghton v. Thompson (1866), 25 ucqb 557; Montgomery v. Spence (1863), 23 ucqb 39; Wilcoxson v. Palmer (1839), Rob. & Jos. Dig. 2057 (Ont.); McClenaghan v. Barker (1844), 1 ucqb 26; Lee v. Purdy (1846) 2 ucqb 193; and Doe Dem Lynde v. Merritt (1846), 2 ucqb 410. In contrast, where written leases
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existed, clauses guarding tenants’ right to their crops and improvements, for instance, gave the court reason to find in their favour. See for example Haydon v. Crawford (1834), 3 os 583 (ucqb); Campbell v. Buchanan (1858), 7 uccp 179; Campbell v. Baxter (1864), 15 uccp 42; and Smart v. Stuart (1837), 5 os 301 (ucqb). Legislation over the period that clarified property rights therefore tended to protect the tenant. “An Act to amend the Law respecting Real Property, and to render the proceedings for recovering possession thereof in certain cases, was less difficult and expensive”; suc 4 Will. iv (1834), c.1. “An Act to simplify the transfer of real property in Upper Canada, and to render certain rights and interests therein liable under execution,” S. Prov. C. 12 Vic. (1849), c. 71; “An Act to alter and amend the practice and proceedings in actions of Ejectment in Upper Canada,” S. Prov. C. 13 and 14 Vic. (1850), c. 57; “An Act to amend an Act passed in the twelfth year of Her Majesty’s Reign, entitled, An Act to simplify the transfer of real property in Upper Canada, and to render certain rights and interests therein liable under execution,” S. Prov. C. 14 and 15 Vic. (1851), c. 7; and “An Act to alter and settle the mode of proceeding in the action of Ejectment,” S. Prov. C. 14 and 15 Vic. (1851), c. 114. Houghton v. Thompson (1866), 25 ucqb 557. “An Act respecting over-holding tenants,” so 31 Vic. (1868), c. 26. This replaced the previous act entitled “Act to afford more expeditious remedy as regards tenants overholding wrongfully in Upper Canada,” S. Prov. C. 27 and 28 Vic. (1864), c. 30. The Globe, 29 January 1868. Later “An Act respecting Landlords and Tenants and Distress,” so 49 Vic.(1886), c. 29, reduced the time in arrears to fifteen days. “Common Law Procedure Act,” S. Prov. C. 19 Vic. (1856), c. 43. University of Toronto Archives, a68–0010, Section iii, Group b, Cramahe, Lot 11, Broken Front, Office of the Chief Accountant, Roger Bagly to Bursar of King’s College, 29 September 1833. Trent University Archives, 77–005, box 2, folder 1, Williams Family Papers, L.D. McKinnon to A.T.H. Williams, 20 June 1881.
chapter seven 1 I thank Jim Phillips for providing helpful advice on an earlier draft and helping me to find a research assistant, Lisa Talbot. I gratefully acknowledge Lisa’s assistance in locating, summarizing and answering my many questions concerning statute and case law. Thanks also to the members of the Legal History Workshop for their challenging questions and enthusiastic support.
Notes to pages 144–7
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2 Thompson, Customs in Common, 97, 102. And also see Jones, “Glamorgan Custom and Tenant Right,” 9; and Dowling, Tenant Right, 11, 326–7. For more on custom and its relation to freehold and leasing see Osborne, “Manorial Wastes, Encroachments and Industry in Glamorganshire,” 268; and “Commonlands, Mineral Rights and Industry,” 231–49. 3 Dowling, Tenant Right, 241–2. In the public realm vertical ties received greater acknowledgment than horizontal ties. Coates, Metamorphoses, 110. 4 Dowling, Tenant Right, 93. 5 Bannister argues that custom under the naval government in Newfoundland was not the product of working-class culture or a construct used against an encroaching capitalist form of regulation but developed within the common law tradition. Bannister, The Rule of the Admirals, 15. 6 For historicity see Dowling, Tenant Right, chapter 2; and for productive usage see Weaver, “Frontiers into Assets,” 17. The idea that adding labour to land gave one maker’s rights appeared as a formal theoretical argument with John Locke. See Weaver, Great Land Rush, 62, 74, 81–7; and Karsten, Between Law and Custom, 119, 125. 7 Bannister argues that a decentralized Imperial system exerted a relatively low level of political and legal control and so custom figured prominently in America. Rule of the Admirals, 16. 8 Kim, Landlord and Tenant, 221–3; Stiverson, Poverty in a Land of Plenty, 21, 35; Huston, Land and Freedom, 27–8; Voisey, Vulcan, 45. 9 Risk, “The Law and the Economy,” 105. 10 Clarke’s chapters on fixtures and emblements are particularly useful in understanding what was considered the personal property of the farm tenant. Clarke, Treatise on the Law of Landlord and Tenant, chapters 18 and 22. 11 If the lease explicitly stated that the tenant had the right to re-enter and remove the crops, then the law distinguished between products of the soil, which were a result of man’s annual planting, labour, and cultivation (i.e., grains, vegetables, etc.), and those that did not require annual cultivation but were the natural products of the soil (i.e., hay, fruit, etc.) even though they may have been planted initially. The first class was regarded as the personal property of the tenant, the second class as part of the land, and hence the landlord’s. Tenants had no difficulty with this distinction. Campbell v. Baxter (1864), 15 uccp 42. See also Clarke, Treatise on the Law of Landlord and Tenant, 762–5; and Roberts, The Farmer’s Business Handbook, 167–9. 12 Burrow v. Cairns et al. (1846), 2 ucqb 288. A custom had legal force if it could be proven to be an approved and well-recognized method of doing things in a given locality that in effect was established as a rule through its long continued usage. The common law could only disallow custom if it
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15
16 17 18 19 20 21
22
Notes to pages 147–51
failed this test. Clarke, Treatise on the Law of Landlord and Tenant, 665. According to English jurisprudence, “time immemorial” or “time out of mind” was where no man then living had heard or known any proof to the contrary. Custom in the New World was rarely ancient. The time needed for it to become entrenched was not nearly as long as one would think. What made a custom legitimate was how it was perceived by contemporaries and whether it worked and prevented problems. Bannister, Rule of the Admirals, 16, 346. Risk, “The Law and the Economy,” 95–6, 112–18. Written records had greater legal standing than traditional rights in regions of recent European settlement. Coates, Metamorphoses, 110, 113; and Dickinson, “La conception populaire de la tenure,” 163–72. For how custom conflicted with the emerging liberal order see Dewey, “Peasant Proprietor,” 22. Clarke, Treatise on the Law of Landlord and Tenant, 767; and see Re Boyle (1854), 2 pr 134 (uc Ch.); Campbell v. Buchanan (1858), 7 uccp 179; Campbell v. Baxter (1864), 15 uccp 42; and Stewart v. Hunter (1869), 2 Chy. Chrs. 335 (Ont). Canadian Agriculturalist and Journal and Transactions of the Board of Agriculture of Upper Canada 14 (November 1862): 647. University of Guelph Archives, Goodwin-Haines Collection, Indenture, James Prentice to Kirby Zimmerman, 10 November 1874. Dewey, “Peasant Proprietor,” 22. Tenants on pei sold their improvements too. Bittermann, Rural Protest on Prince Edward Island, 236. McCalla, Planting the Province, 28–9; and Russell, “Upper Canada: A Poor Man’s Country?” 130, 136–8. lac, co 42, vol. 437, Reel b 341, Sullivan Report 1837, 440. These surveys exist for many townships at the following repositories. For Cramahe Township see University of Toronto Archives, a68–0010, i Group b, 1, vol. 129, Office of the Chief Accountant, Land Survey of 1840 Newcastle District; and ao, rg 1 a-vi–8, vol. 16, clp, “Return of Inspection, Newcastle District 1844 Clergy Reserves.” I have tabulated this information for reserve tenants and linked it with the census of 1842, to arrive at aggregate figures and the personal details for John McFall (lot 28, con.1). The rest had improvements valued at only £43 below the value of the land. Those with larger improvements than the value of the land tended to reside in the front half of the township; in general they were more than thirty years of age, North American in origin, and had been in the province an average of twenty-six years. Those with improvements worth less than the value of the land tended to reside in the back concessions, they were slightly younger, and they had been there less time. Settlers’ improvements outstripping the
Notes to pages 151–3
23
24 25
26
27
28
29 30
31 32
33 34
35 36 37 38
303
value of the land can also be seen in early New York State. Kim, Landlord and Tenant, 257. ao, rg 1 a-i–7, vol. 3, env. 2, ms892, Reels 01011–12, clp, Clergy Reserve Legislation and Sales, Sullivan to His Excellency the Governor of Upper Canada, 14 September 1839. lac, co 42, vol. 437, Reel b 341, Sullivan Report 1837, 437–54. Even squatters, according to the custom of the frontier, were allowed to sell their improvements to the rightful owner of the land when he came into possession of it. See Ankli and Duncan, “Farm Making Costs in Early Ontario,” 38; and Little, “Contested Land,” 381–412. Sullivan, Clergy Reserve Legislation and Sales, 01008; and lac rg 7 g 12, vol. 36, 130, Governor General’s Office, Charles Bagot to Lord Stanley, 18 July 1842. Karr, The Canada Land Company, 107. The Canada Company would not reimburse tenants for improvements if their lease simply expired or was ended for some other reason. Several Canada Company leases exist in the University of Guelph Archives, xr1 ms a125058, Goodwin-Haines Collection. “An Act respecting the property of Religious Institutions in Upper Canada,” S. Prov. C. 22 Vic. (1859), c. 69. Custom could also become law when it was recognized by a court. It would only be accepted if it were a local variation of the common law and did not break any of its fundamental principles. Bannister, Rule of the Admirals, 15, 108. Ibid.; and Donaldson, Baydon’s Art of Valuing Rents, 205. “An Act to facilitate the leasing of lands and tenements,” S. Prov. C. 14 and 15 Vic. (1851), c. 8; and “An Act Respecting the short form of leases,” S. Prov. C. 22 Vic. (1859), c. 92. Later in the century sample farm leases were equally silent on the issue of improvements. Nichols, The Farmers’ Manual, 86–7. Rose, Emigrant Churchman, 209. Farmer’s Magazine 10, no. 1 (November 1916): 11; Indenture (five year lease), University of Guelph Archives, xr1 ms a125081, Goodwin-Haines Collection, James Prentice to Kirby Zimmerman, Lincoln County, 10 November 1874. Donaldson, Baydon’s Art of Valuing Rents, 206–7. Centennial Museum Peterborough, mg 8–7 (a) I, no. 2, 71–007, box 20, folder 1. Benson v. Bailey, 7 September 1832, Peterborough County Court Records, Legal Proceedings – Civil – Queen’s Bench. Wilcoxson v. Palmer (1839), Rob. & Jos. Dig. 2057 (Ont.). McFattridge v. Talbert (1845), 2 ucqb 156. The details of their movements are found in Wilson, “Tenancy as a Family Strategy,” 885–6. Donkin v. Crombie (1862), 11 uccp 601.
304
Notes to pages 153–5
39 See for example Houghton v. Thompson (1866), 25 ucqb 557. 40 lac, rg 1 l7, vol. 30, Letters and Petitions re: Clergy Reserve Leases 1820–40, John Small to Peter Valleau, 3 August 1825. Settlers in the northeastern frontier of the United States often seized and destroyed each others’ improvements in the contest to prove title to the land. Taylor, “‘A Kind of Warr,’” 3–26. 41 Reeve, Property, 13–14, 19–21; and Megarry and Wade, The Law of Real Property, 698. Selling one’s interest in leased property, or “tenant right” as it is usually know in Ireland and England, has recently received the attention it has long deserved; see Vaughan, Landlords, and Tenants; Guinnane and Miller, “Bonds without Bondsmen”; Wilson, A New Lease on Life; Wilson “Tenancy as a Family Strategy”; and Dowling, Tenant Right. 42 University of Guelph Archives, xr1 ms a120018, Goodwin-Haines Collection, Indenture of Lease, 25 November 1805. Canadian tenants did not use the term “tenant right” but usually referred to the practice as selling their leasehold, their right, or their interest. 43 lac, rg 7 g12, vol. 62, 131, Governor General’s Office, Bagot to Lord Stanley, 23 February 1842. 44 Wilson, A New Lease on Life, 35. 45 Vaughan’s work and my own previous work probe the economic dimension of what was being sold. See Vaughan, Landlords and Tenants, chapter 4; and Wilson, New Lease on Life, 33–5, 214–16. More recently Dowling has highlighted the “right to something beyond” the lease, and the softer variables that are used to substantiate this claim. Dowling, Tenant Right, 7, 26, 83,133. 46 ao, rg 1 c-ii–2, vol. 6, ms693–Reel 187, clp, Fiats – Leases, New Regulations, bundle 1601–88, Petition, Jacob Killman, 12 May 1834. Killman was petitioning to buy the glebe which he was then leasing. He was unsuccessful for a variety of reasons hinted at in the accompanying documents. In the end, the government renewed his lease for another twenty-one years. Petitions for leases can be found in lac, rg 1 l3, Upper Canada Land Petitions. Often petitioners specified that they had served in the War of 1812 and gave the number of years they had been in the area. 47 The 1798 Elmsley Scheme, which set out the original leasing terms, was later modified in 1800 so that there would be no option for renewal. lac, rg 1 l7, vol. 24, Records of the Executive Council of Upper Canada, the Second Elmsley Report of 1800 is located at the front of the ledger entitled “Crown and Clergy Reserve Leases: Reports and Proceedings Concerning Land L.C., 6. Instead, the privilege of renewal would rest with the government. Until 1819 some leases contained clauses for renewal and others did not. In 1819 a standard clause for the option of renewal was inserted in all new leases. ao,
Notes to pages 155–6
48 49
50
51
52 53 54 55
56
305
rg 1 a-i–7, vol. 3, env. 2, ms892, Reel 1, 01004–5, clp, Clergy Reserves Legislation and Sales. Despite this desire to maintain influence over lessees, renewals were usually granted. Records of renewal can be found in lac, rg 1 l7, vol. 29, Proceedings in Council re: Leases and Clergy Reserves 1816–37. Altogether 108 leases were renewed over these years. Only three were not recommended and no reasons were given. This record gives the name of the lessee, township, and lot and specifics whether arrears must be paid and whether the lease is being renewed under a new name. ao, f129, Series b–3, vol. 136, Canada Company Papers, Land Accounts and Schedules. The monetary value of the right of pre-emption seems to have risen or fallen with the imperial Parliaments’ attempts to increase or slow the number of reserves they put on the market for sale. lac, co 42, vol. 437, Reel b 341, 440 Sullivan’s Report 1837, 448. ao, rg1 a-i–7, vol. 3, env. 2, clp, Sullivan to His Excellency the Governor, 14 September 1839, Clergy Reserve Legislation and Sales; and Wilson, Clergy Reserves, 249. On Saltspring Island, bc, settlers with pre-emption certificates sold and transferred their rights. Sandwell, Contesting Rural Space, 72. On Canada Company land leaseholders had the option to purchase at any time for a price that had been fixed at the time of signing the lease. In the meantime, their rent payments were not considered to be instalments on the purchase price (this made their relationship one of landlord and tenant). The fixed purchase price, however, did not include the lessees’ improvements, which meant that they were allowed to benefit from their improvements and the increased value of the land. Once the lease was converted into a freehold, rent payments stopped and purchase payments began. At the end of the lease the lessees, if they chose not to buy, could renew their lease for another ten or twelve years at an increased rate. Widder, Information for Intending Emigrants, 8. Vaughan, Landlords and Tenants, 93. See for example Cobourg Star, 12 January 1842, 1; and 8 November 1848, 4. University of Guelph Archives, xr1 ms a12058, Goodwin-Haines Collection, Canada Company Leases. This was largely because leaseholders who wanted to convert to freehold had to prove their legal title to the current lease. Transfers for the clergy reserves can be found in the Township Papers at the Archives of Ontario, and Crown reserves are found in the University of Toronto Archives. See specific examples below. Montgomery v. Spence (1863), 23 ucqb 39 made it clear that unless the transfer of a lease was under seal, the original tenant, though no longer
306
57 58
59 60 61
62 63
64
65 66
67
68
69 70
71
Notes to pages 157–60
responsible for the rent, could still be responsible for the covenants in the lease. Smith, Daniel Fowler of Amherst Island, 129, 132. University of Toronto Archives, a68–0010, Section iii, Group b, Office of the Chief Accountant, Cramahe Township, Assignment, Robert Scott to Samuel McCracken, 6 April 1849, lot 28, con. 3. Fazakas, The Donnelly Album, 43. Wilson, Clergy Reserves, 220. See for example, ao, rg 1 a-i–7, vol. 4, env. 2, clp, “List of transfers and other documents relating to 55 petitions sent herewith, Thos. Baines,” 31 January 1846 in Vaughan and Chinguacousy Township (Home District). ao, rg 1 c-iv, ms658, Reel 92, clp, Cramahe Township Papers. See for example, Cramahe Township Papers. See also Account Books: Clergy Reserve Leases for Newcastle, 1802–59, Series a: vol. 5; b: vol. 8; and c: vol. 17. Information for these three individuals is taken from Cramahe Township Papers; c & a for the 1840s; and the Clergy Reserve Inspection, 1844. Joseph Porter was on lot 27, con. 6; Elisha Porter was on lot 33, con. 2; and Alvin Dudley was on lot 20, con. 4. E. Porter appears as Jacob Cummings in the Clergy Reserve Inspection. Wilson, A New Lease on Life, 214. Though no precise connection has been proven between rents and the price of selling the lease, it was generally agreed in Ireland in this era that the lower the rent, the higher the tenant right. Vaughan, Landlords and Tenants, 72. In 1859 the lien a landlord had on a tenant’s property was limited to one year’s backrent. “Insolvent Debtors Court Act,” S. Prov. C. 22 Vic. (1859), c. 18. In 1887 a landlord had first dibs on an insolvent tenant’s interest but could only get one year’s arrears if there were other creditors. “Act Respecting Distress for Rent,” so 50 Vic. (1887), c. 23. ao, rg 1 a-i–7, vol. 3, env. 2, ms892, Reel 1, 01008–9, 01012, clp, Clergy Reserve Legislation and Sales, Sullivan to His Excellency the Governor, 14 September 1839. Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, d.3817, Moore Hill Papers, William Perceval to Maxwell, 7 April 1859, Amherst Island. Carswell also appears as Caswell and Cornell. The case in all its complexity is detailed in Fazakas, Donnelly Album, 43–4, 63–4; the London Daily Advertiser, 11 February 1880; and Reaney, Donnelly Documents, xxx, 47. Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, d.3817, Moore Hill Papers, William Perceval to Maxwell, 7 April 1859, Amherst Island.
Notes to pages 160–3
307
72 Stiverson, Tenancy in Nineteenth-Century Maryland, 21; Kim, Landlord and Tenant, 223; and Huston, Land and Freedom, 27. 73 For the other ways Irish landlords tried to control the practice see Dowling, Tenant Right, 304–5. Some Irish landlords bought the tenant right themselves from their tenants, hoping to end the custom on their estates, confirming the strength of the custom and the old adage “If you can’t beat them join them.” 74 Maxwell on Amherst Island did this too. Such stipulations were not part of the clergy and Crown reserve leases. 75 This clause had to be reinforced by a forfeiture clause and then the lease might be ended. In the early twentieth century it was established that landlords in England could only refuse the new tenant on “reasonable grounds.” It was up to the tenant to show that withholding consent was unreasonable, i.e., that the assignee’s references were satisfactory and the new tenant posed no threat to the landlord’s interest. Megarry and Wade, The Law of Real Property, 698–9. 76 lac, rg 7 g12, vol. 62, 131, Governor General’s Office, Bagot to Lord Stanley, 23 February 1842; and see also lac, co 42, vol. 437, Reel b 341, Sullivan’s Report 1837, 448. 77 Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, d.3817, Moore Hill Papers, William Perceval to Maxwell, 7 April 1859, Amherst Island; and Dowling, Tenant Right, 253, 255. As eviction procedures became more streamlined and favourable to the landlord by mid-century, this may have put them in a stronger position to convince tenants to sell their tenant right. See previous chapter. 78 Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, d.3817, Moore Hill Papers, William Perceval to R.P. Maxwell, 13 July 1858; and Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, d.3817, Moore Hill Papers, 27 October 1858. Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, d1556/2/1/441, Perceval Maxwell Papers, R.P. Maxwell to Willy, 8 December 1858. Maxwell’s estate policy concerning tenant right in Ireland, in Canada, and the Finnegans are outlined in Wilson, A New Lease on Life, 112–14, 120–1, 127–8, 214. 79 For a full examination of these different views of property see Alexander, Commodity and Propriety. 80 lac, co 42, vol. 437, Reel b 341, Sullivan’s Report 1837, 437–54. 81 Rolph, Emigration and Colonization, 346; and Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, d.3817, Moore Hill Papers, S. Perceval to R.P. Maxwell, 6 November 1857. 82 University of Western Ontario Regional Collection, box 4178, William Leslie Papers, Richard Leslie to Parents, 12 May 1837.
308
Notes to pages 163–5
83 Indenture, Richard Henderson to J. Murphy, 29 August 1835; and Indenture, J. Murphy to William Leslie, 5 August 1836, both in the William Leslie Papers, box 4178. 84 Vaughan, Landlords and Tenants, 90; and Dowling, Tenant Right, 245–6. In 1851 a statute was passed referring to this practice: S. Prov. C. 14 and 15 Vic. (1851), c. 7. I have found no other evidence of leases being used for collateral. This was not the same as a formal mortgage of freehold property. Tenants borrowed money by using their livestock and personal property as collateral in chattel mortgages. See ao, rg 22, Court Records, Unprocessed, Northumberland and Durham Counties, County Court, Chattel Mortgages 1871. 85 Cubitt later reneged on his agreement and was taken to court. Gibson v. Cubitt (1839), 5 os 711 (ucca). For a similar arrangement see University of Toronto Archives, a68–0010, Section iii, Group b, Office of the Chief Accountant, Cramahe Township, Assignment, Robert Scott to Samuel McCracken, 6 April 1849, lot 28, con. 3. 86 He then gave the possession of the north half to his son, Ebenezer, Jr. In the early 1850s Ebenezer, Sr, died and William Kelly assigned his twenty-five acres back to another son of the late Ebenezer, Silvester Sammis. By 1856 the Sammis boys, Silvester and Ebenezer, had regained title to the two hundred acres, and then they sold their rights to the lease and became freeholders nearby. “Inspection 1844,” lot 20, con. 8; and Cramahe Township Papers, no. 1062–73. Also c & a records, and the aid. 87 Informal transfers can be identified in the census and assessment records the year the name of the household head changes from that of the father to the son. For example see the Shannons on lot 15, con. 5 in c1842; the Dickinsons, lot 31, con. 3 in c&a 1826; the Hicks lot 15, con. 5 in a1845 and a1847; the Rays, lot 28, con. 1 in c1848. 88 Formal transfers of leases can be found in the Crown reserve records at the University of Toronto and the Township Papers. See for example ao, rg 1 c-iv, ms658, clp, Cramahe Township Papers: Sammis on lot 20, con. 8 – Reel 93, 1073; Merrill on lot 20, con. 8 – Reel 93, 1057; Bradd on lot 15, con. 1 – Reel 92, 87–90; Warner on lot 27, con. 6 – Reel 93, 904; Porter on lot 27, con. 6 – Reel 93, 896. University of Toronto Archives, a68–0010, Section iii, Group b, Office of the Chief Accountant, Cramahe Township, Reddick on lot 21, con. 1. The Sammis transfer did not include financial details. 89 ao, rg 1 a-ii-1, vol. 5, clp, “Reports on Leases No 2 1823–57”; c&a 1826 and 1830; ao, rg 1 c-ii-3, vol. 1, clp: Leases: Misc Records; and Clergy Reserve Inspection 1844, “Dockets of Leases of Clergy Reserves, 1802–35.” Leaseholds could be legally bequeathed. Simpson, A History of the Land Law, 76.
Notes to pages 165–9
309
90 After his father died in 1857, David purchased the freehold of the farm and sold half of the lot to his brother John. The two brothers and their families continued to farm side by side for decades. For Bradds see Cramahe Township Papers; lot 15, con.1, Reel 92, no. 73–90, 99; and aid lot 15, con.1. The Reddicks provide another case of transferring leases down the generations until freehold status was achieved. See University of Toronto Archives, a68–0010, Section iii, Group b, Office of the Chief Accountant, Cramahe Township, lot 21, con.1; and University of Toronto Archives, a68–0010, Section i, Group b, 1, vol. 129, Office of the Chief Accountant, “Land Survey of 1840 Newcastle District.” 91 Friedberger, Farm Families and Change, 82; and Diller, Farm Ownership, Tenancy and Land Use, 136. 92 Dowling, Tenant Right, 277–9, 327; Jones, “Glamorgan Custom,” 10, 14; Weaver, “Frontiers into Assets,” 41; and Taylor, Liberty Men and Great Proprietors, 231. 93 Dowling, Tenant Right, 118. 94 lac, co 42, vol. 437, Reel b 341, Sullivan Report 1837, 437–54; Wilson, Clergy Reserves, 127, 220, and “The Clergy Reserves: ‘Economical Mischiefs,” 297.
chapter eight 1 Fiddick became a freeholder in 1842. Information for these people was taken from the 1842 census and assessment for Cramahe Township. Except for Eliza, none of the other women’s names are known as they do not appear in the censuses for the 1840s or 1851–52 or the cemetery records. 2 Winters gives an overview of conventional economic theory concerning tenancy in Farmers without Farms, 29, 92. 3 Such arguments seem reasonable, but often the evidence gathered in support has been impressionistic, anecdotal, and tainted by tenancy’s implied threat to the yeoman ideal. During the 1930s, for example, tenancy generated much scholarly and public debate and became enmeshed in larger controversies over conserving the nation’s soil, private property, the role of the state, and the general welfare of American society. Tenant farming was equated with erosion of the soil and ultimately the erosion of society. Such notions had old ideological roots and continued to influence attitudes toward tenancy for decades. Harbaugh, “ Twentieth-Century Tenancy and Soil Conservation,” 96–7; and Rasmussen, “‘Never a Landlord for the Good of the Land,’” 71, 85.
310
Notes to pages 169–72
4 Duncan, in assessing English agricultural history, urges scholars to pay more attention to the sociolegal arrangements and their impact on agriculture. See “Legal Protection for the Soil of England,” 76, 93–4. 5 Sandwell, “Rural Reconstruction,” 1–32; “The Limits of Liberalism,” 423–50; and Contesting Rural Space, 152–8. 6 Cohen, Women’s Work; Osterud, Bonds of Community; Errington, Women and Their Work in Upper Canada; and Loewen, Hidden Worlds, chapter 3. 7 An innkeeper, waggon maker, and sawyer, for example, were tenant farmers in 1842. Two more who self-identified as farmers in 1842 showed up as a weaver and shoemaker in 1848. Four were tenant farmers in 1842 and continued to farm in 1848 but called themselves labourers that year. 8 All three types may have been created by a lease – a written agreement for a fixed term – but for the purposes of clarity here, only leases of more than seven years’ duration will be called leases. 9 See appendix a for a full discussion of the census. 10 One cannot simply assume that tenants had fewer assets than owners or less overall debt (i.e., mortgage payments). The market for leases complicates this assumption. 11 Cobourg Star, 21 July 1841. 12 For the lumber trade in Cramahe see Sutherland, Sutherland & Co’s Gazetteer, 15; Trent University Archives, 69–001, box 5, folder 4, Marryat Papers, Hastings Press, 13 March 1892; and Trent University Archives, Colborne Transcript, 19 January 1856, 3. 13 This evaluation of the land is taken from contemporary accounts and more recent soil surveys. Crofton, Cobourg Star, 21 July 1841; and Hoffman and Acton, The Soils of Northumberland County. 14 In the 1852 census only eleven farms were listed as having orchards; ten of them were owner-operated farms, one was a tenant farm. 15 Marr found a similarity in farm crop structure across the province, despite different farm sizes and levels of development. See “The Allocation of Land to Agricultural Uses,” 202. 16 For a very useful overview of the County Agricultural Society and farming in this era see the following compilation and transcriptions of old newspaper clippings: Percy L. Climo, ed., “Fairs, Farms and Exhibitions: Northumberland County Agricultural Society 1828–49,” at the Colborne Public Library. Also see Riddell, “Farming in Northumberland County, 1833–95,” 143–9; lac rg 5 b21, “Completed Emigration Questionnaire 1840–41,” vol. 1, Newcastle District; and Trent University Archives, 92–1000, 9–13, Henry Ruttan’s Response to Lord Sydenham’s Circular Letter, 1840. He was sheriff of the Newcastle District.
Notes to pages 173–6
311
17 For farm size and improved acres see Wilson, A New Lease on Life, 209–10; Leo Johnson, “The State of Agricultural Development,” 129–31; and Cogswell, Jr, Tenure, Nativity and Age, 49, 59. 18 For example see Leo Johnson, “The State of Agricultural Development,”131–2. 19 Marr, “Tenant vs. Owner Occupied Farms,” 68. 20 Wilson, A New Lease on Life, 211; and Winters, Farmers without Farms, 98. 21 Wilson, A New Lease on Life, 211–12; and Winters, Farmers without Farms, 98–101. 22 Canadian Agriculturalist and Transactions of the Board of Agriculture 6 (1854): 196. 23 Canadian Agriculturalist and Journal 15, no. 9 (September 1863): 333. 24 Journal and Transactions of the Board of Agriculture of Upper Canada 1 (1855/56): 351. 25 Ibid., 449. 26 Cobourg Star, 2 March 1842; and Newcastle Farmer 2, ser. 3 (1847): 23, found in Cramahe Township Public Library, Cramahe Township: Miscellaneous Information file. 27 Newcastle Farmer 2, ser. 8 (1848): 68. Fiddick became a freeholder in 1842. Information for these tenant farmers was taken from lac, 1842 census and ao, 1842 assessment for Cramahe Township. 28 Ken Sylvester found the life cycle to be the most decisive predictor of farm size concerning owners. “All Things Being Equal,” 35–60. 29 McInnis’s provincewide sample put the average farm size in 1851 at 109 acres occupied, with 37.5 percent improved. McInnis, Perspectives on Ontario Agriculture, 59. 30 Tenants held 37.2 percent of the total number of acres occupied in the first concession, 43.4 percent in the second concession, and 41.1 percent in the seventh concession where Castleton is located. 31 Owners held 1,036 acres of improved land in 1842 in the first two concessions. Tenants held 1,253 acres of improved land. 32 Unoccupied lots in concessions three and six and in the north-west corner of the township can be explained largely by the presence of wetland and areas that were too irregular and steep for cultivation. Hoffman and Acton, Soils of Northumberland County, and associated soil survey map for Cramahe Township. 33 When it came to cutting timber, the English common law regarding “waste” applied. From the 1830s to mid-century, Chief Justice Sir John B. Robinson of the Queen’s Bench narrowly interpreted the law forbidding tenants to cut valuable timber unless specifically granted authority. Others in the high
312
34 35
36 37 38
39
40
Notes to pages 176–7
courts believed that English rules should be more flexible in Upper Canada where enjoyment of the land could often only occur after timber had been cut. This view dominated by mid-century. For cutting timber see Karsten, Between Law and Custom, 126–8. Duncan, “Legal Protection for the Soil,” 83–4. Keele, Laws of Upper Canada, 149, gives the legal stance concerning covenants. For later statutes that further clarified and standardized covenants see “An Act to Facilitate the Leasing of Lands and Tenements,” S. Prov. C. 14 and 15 Vic (1851), c. 8: and “Act Respecting Short Form of Leases,” S. Prov. C. 22 Vic. (1859), c. 92. For suggestions of what one might include and actual farm leases with detailed covenants see Canadian Farmer 5 (22 September 1911): 2; Trent University Archives, 86–028, box 1, folder 11, John Bee Collection, Farm Lease (1 November 1873), Robert McCaures to John Bee, Cavan Township, Durham Co.; Trent University Archives, 82–021, Series a, box 1, folder 4, Kerr Family Papers, Farm Lease (13 June 1885), W.F. Kerr to Michael Flaherty; and University of Western Ontario: Regional Collection, box 4014, file 14, D. Cameron Papers, Lease, c. 1892. Canada Farmer 2 (15 March 1865): 88. Keele, Township Laws, 71. You could sue on the covenant, which is considered a form of contract, separate from the conveyance of the estate. The court might rule, for example, that a tenant was to repair the fence or pay damages. Hume, Canada As It Is, 63–4; and Evans, The Emigrant’s Guide, 79. This specific advice regarding improved land was given to prospective share tenants. Canada Farmer 13 (15 May 1876): 92. It took one and a half years to get a pig ready for market, and two to three years to fatten a steer for market. To divide the profits from a dairy herd could be particularly difficult. Milk, cheese, butter, new calves, and the sale of any of these might all be divided. See Ontario Farmer (1 February 1929): 6. In the first half of the nineteenth century, share arrangements were reasonably straightforward and simply divided the produce; see lac, mg 24 d101, Reel h–1305, W. Steward Family Papers, Farm Memo Book of Share Tenant in the Ottawa Area, 1849–51; and Haydon v. Crawford (1834), 3 os 583 (ucqb). Some contracts even determined who could show the animals at the fair and benefit from the prizes won. For very complicated share agreements see University of Guelph Archives, Goodwin-Haines Collection, Indenture James Prentice to Kirby Zimmerman, Louth Township, 10 November 1874; and Trent University Archives, 84–020/88/6, Court Records, Northumberland and Durham, Court of Common Pleas, Brighton Township, Mumford v. Proctor. Writing in the Canada Farmer, one commentator on the state of affairs
Notes to pages 179–88
41 42
43 44
45 46 47 48 49
50
51 52 53
313
argued that “the spirit of our people is apt to rebel against the constant supervision of a proprietor.” Presumably for this reason, older, more experienced farmers found share tenancy unattractive. Canada Farmer 2 (15 February 1865): 57. Nearly seventy percent of all share tenants lived in the area from the broken front to the fourth concession. The front townships of Cramahe produced good green crops (hay, clover, turnips) whereas the rear concessions were known for their wheat. Throughout the province farmers were known to grow wheat in the newly cleared fields and leave the older clearings in hay or pasture, or sow them with oats, rye, or buckwheat. Walter Crofton, Cobourg Star, 21 July 1841; and Jones, History of Agriculture in Ontario, 73. Harbraugh, “Tenancy and Soil Conservation,” 101. The propensity for share tenants to be tillage rather than livestock farmers was also found in the Western District of Upper Canada, and the state of Wisconsin: Leo Johnson, “State of Agricultural Development,” 138; and Curti, The Making of an American Community, 144. Inwood and Roelens, “‘Labouring at the Loom,’” 222. Canada Farmer 2 (15 February 1865): 57. They also had the greatest percentage of improved acres given over to corn of any tenure type. Corn was not just for human consumption but fed to hogs. There was a market for hogs at Keeler’s wharf; Colborne Transcript, 19 January 1856. Writers in the farm press in later years expressed this view: Farm and Dairy 35 (14 September 1916): 4, and 36 (18 October 1917): 5; Farmer’s Magazine 7 (August 1914): 51; Seymour, Farm Knowledge, 72–8; and Winters, Farmers without Farms, 102. Joseph D. Reid, Jr, argues that the main advantage of share arrangements is that they are potentially more flexible and could be used to facilitate risk reduction. The landlord and tenant might, for example, alter crop production plans in response to weather and market conditions. See for example “Sharecropping in History and Theory;” and the classic work of Cheung, The Theory of Share Tenancy. Winters, Farmers without Farms, 64. He rented a section of lot 30, con.3, with fifteen uncultivated and seventeen cultivated acres. ao, Assessment of 1847. Scholars have found that as farm size increased, farmers concentrated more on grains such as wheat. Leo Johnson, “The State of Agricultural Development,” 136; Marr, “The Allocation of Land to Agricultural Uses,”197, “Did Farm Size Matter? An 1871 Case Study,” 298; and McInnis, “Marketable
314
Notes to pages 190–4
Surpluses in Ontario Farming, 1860,” 395–424, “The Size Structure of Farming, Canada West, 1861,” 313–29. In Cramahe Township those who grew no wheat had on average 21.6 improved acres. Those who grew wheat had on average 47.4 improved acres on their property.
chapter nine 1 See: Bogue, From Prairie to Cornbelt; Atack, “The Agricultural Ladder Revisited,” 1–25; Winters, Farmers without Farms; his “The Agricultural Ladder in Southern Agriculture,” 36–52; Heller, Jr, and Houdek, “Farm Tenants and Landlords,” 598–625; and Marr’s numerous articles: “Tenant vs Owner Occupied Farms in York County,” 50–70, “The Distribution of Tenant Agriculture,” 169–86, and “Nineteenth Century Tenancy Rates in Ontario’s Counties,” 753–64. The agricultural ladder in the prairie West was shorter and tenancy often not an intermediary rung at all. In fact, tenants were usually owners who used renting as a way to expand their operations. Danysk, Hired Hands, 52. 2 Haw, Fifteen Years in Canada, 107. For other examples of this same sentiment see Boulton, A Short Sketch of the Province of Upper Canada, 36–8; lac, rg5 b21, vol. 1, Completed Emigration Questionnaire 1840–41, Niagara District; Croil, Dundas, 212; and Farm and Dairy 35 (14 September 1916), 4. 3 Hardy and Spence, Emigration, 62–3, 65. Local boys used the ladder too. William Johnston, Pioneer Settlers of Blanshard, 242. See also lac, rg17, vol. 2,325, Emigrant Farmer Questionnaire 1853 – see John Lightfoot and Ewan McLean in particular; Munro, The Backwoods’ Life, 1969, 29; and Croil, Dundas, 197–8. 4 Phelps, “The County Atlases of Ontario 1875–1982”; and May, County Atlases of Ontario. Only Leeds and Grenville, and Peterborough were not done in this era. Illustrated historical atlases were created much later for them in 1973 and 1975 respectively. Of all the atlases, Wellington County has the most extensive biographies. Donald Winters, using similar county biographical sketches for north-central Iowa, found that of 438 successful farmers, forty-eight percent had begun as tenants. Winters, Farmers without Farms, 79. Bogue ran a similar test in Prairie to Cornbelt, 56. 5 Hardy and Spence, Emigration, 65; and see Mr Thomas Lee of Norfolk County, 61. 6 Croil, Dundas, 197–8. 7 Munro, The Backwoods’ Life, 29–30. 8 William Courtnage, Niagara District, Upper Canada to His Brother and Sister, 10 January 1837, quoted in Cameron, Haines, and McDougall Maude, eds., English Immigrant Voices, 255–7.
Notes to pages 194–8
315
9 Gerard Bouchard, Quelques Arpents, 160, 162, 199, 220. 10 They are counted in the tenant for life or “lifetimers” category. 11 Winters found that sixteen to eighteen percent of tenants in the Iowa counties he studied persisted and became owners. Farmers without Farms, 82. 12 These five tenants moved out of agriculture but not out of the township. I have not counted them in the ladder, leaver, lifetimer, or downward categories as they had no common identifying characteristics, were such a small group, and took up other occupations that were not clearly ranked by contemporaries as being above or below tenant farmer – shoemaker, machinist, sawyer, and labourer who owned land. None of them, for example, climbed down the ladder to landless labourer status. 13 Only three percent of renters moved down the ladder in Winter’s study of Iowa. Farmers without Farms, 6, 28. 14 Darroch and Soltow, Property and Inequality, 43, 63. 15 McCalla, Planting the Province, 15. 16 Baskerville, “Chattel Mortgages and Community in Perth County, Ontario,” 615–17. Chattel mortgages for Cramahe have survived for 1871 but do not include any of the 1842 tenant farmers. ao, rg 22, Court Records, Unprocessed, Northumberland and Durham Counties, County Court, Chattel Mortgages 1871. 17 See appendix a for a discussion of the assessment. 18 Friedberger found that this was also the case in late-nineteenth-century Iowa; see Farm Families and Change, 50. 19 Yoder asserts that this created two separate unequal tenancy systems in the American Midwest: one consisting of inheriting owner’s sons, and the other consisting of people without assistance. The divide was not as sharp in Cramahe Township. Not all those who rented from relatives would inherit. Yoder, “Rethinking Midwestern Farm Tenure,” 459, 468–9. 20 Heller, Jr, and Houdek, “Farm Tenants and Landlords,” 623; and Yoder, “Rethinking Midwestern Farm Tenure,” 470–1, 478. 21 The Sales and Improvement Act of 1827 introduced government land sales on credit and for the first time clergy reserves could be sold. An imperial statute of that year authorized the sale of one-quarter of the clergy reserves but not more than one hundred thousand acres in any one year. Terms of sale were an initial payment of ten percent of the purchase price, with the remainder to be paid in nine years by annual instalments of ten percent with interest on each as it became due. Imperial Statute 7 & 8 Geo. 4, ch. 62. These terms remained in place until 1841. By 1839 the supply of clergy reserves authorized for sale was exhausted and sale by auction to nonleaseholders came to an end. The remaining lots for sale were reserved
316
22
23
24
25
Notes to pages 198–9
for those who could prove they had had clear title of pre-emption based on leasehold, substantial improvements, and occupation. ao, rg1 a-i–7, vol. 3, env. 2, ms892, Reel 1, 01009, clp, Clergy Reserves Legislation and Sales. Then in 1841 new regulations stipulated that all sales were to be cash only and in full. Lessees or their assignees had twelve months from the day the land was put up for sale to produce the “money in hand.” Furthermore, lessees were expected to pay the full improved value of their property and would receive only a twenty-five percent discount for improvements. They were now therefore expected to buy back their improvements. Not surprisingly, sales slowed considerably. Wilson, Clergy Reserves, 161–3; and Imperial Act 38, 4 Vict. Chap. 78. In December 1842 the government returned to deferred payments and a purchase price that was equal to the unimproved value of the land. lac, rg7 g12, vol. 63, 132, Governor General’s Records, Bagot to Stanley, 18 July 1842. The new system, while a great improvement over 1841, was not as favourable to the lessee as the original one of 1827; lessees were expected to pay one-third (not one-tenth) down, the rest in four equal annual instalments (instead of ten), and an additional six percent interest on the purchase money from the time the lease had expired. lac, rg7 g12, vol. 62, Governor General’s Office, Bagot to Stanley, 23 February 1842, 131, and 19 March 1842, 201. Then in September 1845, owing to complaints, the policy reverted to the 1827 terms, which came into effect in 1847. ao, rg1 a-i–7, vol. 3, env. 5, ms892, Reel 2, 0011228850, clp, Clergy Reserve Legislation 1836–62. The six percent interest, a new feature added in 1845, was a source of concern. Wilson outlines a test case of a tenant who wanted to buy clergy reserve land but felt that this interest on the 1844 valuation penalized him for his improvements. See Clergy Reserves, 186. University of Toronto Archives, Office of the Chief Accountant, a68–0010, i Group b, 1, vol. 129, “Land Survey of 1840 Newcastle District”. ao, rg1 a-vi–8, vol. 16, clp, “Return of Inspection, Newcastle District 1844 Clergy Reserve,” Cramahe Township was done in November 1844 by Charles Butler and Archibald Macdonald of Hamilton Township, and John Haycock of Otonabee Township. I have left the Harnden property out of these calculations as they lived on Salem Creek and had a sawmill on their property so that it was much more valuable than the agricultural properties. The average price the government wanted was ninety-nine pence per acre; the average price tenants were willing to pay was sixty-four pence per acre. One-third (three tenants) of those with improvements valued at more than the worth of the land in its unimproved state bought their land. Almost
Notes to pages 199–200
26
27
28
29
30 31 32 33
34
317
one-quarter (six) of those with less-valuable improvements purchased their land. Sometimes lessees asked that special arrangements be made. Vincent Coleman, for example, wanted to purchase his clergy reserve but had $266 in arrears. He asked the commissioner of lands if he could have the arrears added to the rent and pay instalments on the whole. It would seem that Coleman and the commissioner were able to reach some agreement because two years later, Ambrose Coleman, likely his son, received the patent on the property. ao, rg1 c-iv, ms658, Reel 93, no. 1012, clp, Cramahe Township Papers, 5 August 1861; and aid for Cramahe Township, lot 31, con. 7. Canada Company tenants had the option to purchase at any time for a price that had been fixed when the lease was signed. In the meantime, their rent payments were not considered to be instalments on the purchase price. The fixed purchase price did not include the lessee’s improvements, which meant that he was allowed to benefit from his own improvements and the increased value of the land. Once the lease was converted into a freehold, rent payments stopped and purchase payments began. Widder, Information for Intending Emigrants, 8. This figure includes those who purchased the only property they had ever farmed (Table 9.9) and those who occupied other land before acquiring their 1842 lot. Comparable information on property values was attainable for sixteen individuals. Ten moved to less-valuable property, and six moved to more-valuable property. Only two purchased larger farms. Complete information for comparing cultivated acres on the rented and newly purchased farms was available for only eleven individuals. On average the new purchase had fourteen fewer cultivated acres. Five moved onto farms where a greater percentage of the farm was cultivated. Cogswell, Tenure, Nativity and Age, 141, 146. Wilson, A New Lease on Life, 216. William Johnston, Pioneers of Blanshard, 153–4. When children reached marriageable age, families often moved to marginal lands where grown children helped clear the land or to urban areas where they contributed to the family income. Loewen, Diaspora in the Countryside, chapter 8; Little, Crofters and Habitants, 136–7; Ramirez, On the Move, 43, 145–6; Elliott, Irish Migrants in the Canadas, 221–4; Wilson, A New Lease on Life, 216; Bouchard, Quelques Arpents, 243–4; and Sylvester, Limits of Rural Capitalism, 15, 22. For George Walker Junior’s career on lot 27, con. 4 see c&a 1830–38; c & a 1839–71; aid; Clergy Reserve Inspection 1844; ao, rg1 b-ii, vol. 8, clp,
318
35
36
37
38 39
40 41
42
43
Notes to pages 201–03
Account Book: Clergy Reserve Rent Accounts “b” Series, Newcastle District, 24; Cramahe Township Papers, 712; ao, rg1 b-iii, vol. 29, clp, Financial Services Branch, “Return of the Amount of Arrears due upon leased Clergy Reserves, 30 June 1842” & vol. 32, 1848; and Cobourg Registry Office, Will of George Walker, Cramahe Township, lot 27, con. 4, Dec. 1869, a133. For Thomas Ventress on lot 20, con. 2 see c&a 1832–38; c & a 1839–61; Clergy Reserve Inspection 1844; Township Papers; ao, rg1 b-ii, vol. 8, 132, clp, Account Book: Clergy Reserve Rent Accounts “B” Series, Newcastle District. ao, gs 1–1129, no. 3769, Northumberland and Durham County, Wills in Surrogate Court, Will of Seth Burr Gould; ao, gs–4730, no. 171, Cramahe Township Copybooks, Deed Book a, Will of Nathan Gould; aid lot 19, con. 2; obituary of Seth Burr Gould, 1894, Scrapbook, Colborne Public Library; Cobourg Star, 8 February 1832. Tenant Duncan McDonald also moved out of tenant status when he was willed land by Alex McDonald in 1849. ao, gs–4730, no. 171 Cramahe Township Copybooks, Deed Book a, Will of Alex McDonald. Gilbert Weller’s career is pieced together from the following sources: a1842 and 1852, c1842, 1844, 1850, 1852. He appears as an innkeeper 1845–47 in ao, rg 22, Series 29, vol. 5, Court Records, Court of General Quarter Sessions of the Peace, Minutes at Cobourg for Northumberland and Durham Counties. He appears as owner of the Castleton Hotel – Sutherland, Sutherland & Co’s Gazetteer. Ives: c1842, 1850,1852, 1861; Clergy Reserve Inspection 1844, lot 25, con. 1; and aid lot 25, con.1. ao, gs 1–1100, no. 473, Northumberland and Durham County, Wills in Surrogate Court, Will of Julius Mortimer Ives. For information on his sons see a1861, 1869; c1861, 1871. aid lot 18, con. 3. David Gagan’s history of Peel County, considered by many to be the classical account of farm life in Ontario, is an example of this; see Hopeful Travellers, 117, 120. Mays, “A Place to Stand,” 196; Lockwood, Montague, 161–4; Gagan, Hopeful Travellers, 123; Norris, “Household and Transciency,” 399–415; and Lewis, “Rooted in the Soil,” 35–54. Cogswell, Jr, Tenure, Nativity and Age, 134, 138; Widdis, “Tracing Property Ownership,” 92–4, 96; Widdis, “Perspective on Land Tenure,” 100, 111; Voisey, Vulcan, 33–4; Gagan, Hopeful Travellers, 118–19; Friedberger, “The Family Farm and the Inheritance Process,” 8; and Wilson, A New Lease on Life, 215–17.
Notes to pages 204–08
319
44 Little also found this to be the case in his study Crofters and Habitants, 95. 45 Friedberger, Farm Families and Change, 52. 46 Wilson, A New Lease on Life, 214–16; Kim, Landlord and Tenant, 266; and lac, co 42, vol. 43, Reel b341, 437–54, Sullivan’s Report 1837. 47 Widdis, “Tracing Property Ownership,” 96. 48 Clarke, Land, Power, and Economics, 612n122; and Heller and Houdek, “Farm Tenants and Landlords,” 616, Table 6. 49 c1841 and 1842; a1841 and 1842; aid lot 15, con. 6. See also Samuel Carl, James Carr, and Almore Wait who rented from relatives but did not inherit. 50 Known variously as Lawnsbury, Lonsberry or Lousbury: c&a 1835–38; c & a 1839–42. Ketchum: c1842, and aid lot 20, con. 5. The Lawnsburys and Platt Ketchum seem to have come from the US at about the same time and perhaps had known each other there. In the 1871 census, a David Lonsberry, possibly William’s son, shows up as an African labourer in Hamilton Township. 51 Miars or Mears: c&a 1835–38; c & a 1839–81; University of Toronto Archives, a68–0010, Section iii, Group b, Office of the Chief Accountant, Cramahe Township, lot 11, con. 1, Bagley to Sprentall, 31 March 1843; Trent University Archives, 89–002, box 9, folder 5, Howell Fleming Legal Collection, Leases and Wills of Zacheus Burnham Estate, Haldimand County. 52 See for example William Johnston, Pioneers of Blanshard, 254; Hardy and Spence, Emigration, 62; and Gagan gives examples of tenants leaving Peel County to purchase homesteads in Manitoba; see Hopeful Travellers, 122–4. 53 Skinner: c&a 1831–38; c & a 1839–47; lac, rg31, vol. 828, Reel c–9985, 5, 1871 Census, schedule 4, Northumberland East, c–3, Brighton Township. 54 The number of young women cannot be determined as the census only counted women in the age categories fourteen to forty-four, and forty-five and upwards. 55 Shannon: c1842; William’s arrears appear under Thomas Shannon, his father who was the original lessee, in the following two documents: ao, rg1 b-iii, vol. 29, clp, Financial Services Branch, “Return of the Amount of Arrears due upon leased Clergy Reserves, 30 June 1842,” and vol. 32, “Amounts due on Clergy Reserve Leases, 1848”. 56 Stiverson in Poverty in a Land of Plenty makes this point regarding tenants who leased for generations in eighteenth-century Maryland, 139. Barron also suggests that those who stayed behind had more social connections in the community; see Those Left Behind, 87. Marr’s work using the 1871 census found that tenants over the age of forty-two were less literate than owners; might also explain their permanent status as tenants. Marr, “Tenant vs. Owner Occupied Farms,” 59–60.
320
Notes to pages 208–11
57 University of Toronto Archives, a68–0010, Section iii, Group b, Office of the Chief Accountant, Cramahe Township, lot 11, con. 1 and broken front, Peter Irish to Bursar, 25 May 1853. Also c1842, a1847 and 1852, and University of Toronto Archives, a68–0010, i Group b, 1, vol. 129, Office of the Chief Accountant, Land Survey of 1840 Newcastle District, lot 11, con. 1. 58 Heller and Houdek argue that “voluntary non-climbers” in Southern Michigan were “Big Tenants” who were well able to purchase a smaller farm but preferred a large-scale rented operation. This was not the case in 1842 Cramahe. “Farm Tenants and Landlords,” 618–20. 59 lac, rg7 g12, vol. 63, Reel h–1107, 132, Governor General’s Office, Bagot to Stanley, 18 July 1842. 60 The following documents show the transfer taking place. Haynes: ao, Deed Books, East Northumberland County, Cramahe Township, Maintenance Lease 1859, lot 27, con. 2; McMahon: c1842, c1850 and a1847; Clement: a1842 and 1843; Garbutt: a1844 and 1845, c1852; Cryderman: c1848, and aid lot 17, con.10; Hicks: a1845, 1846 and 1847, c1848; Bradd: Cramahe Township Papers, Reel 92, Assignment 7 March 1857, 87–90; Merrill: ibid., Reel 93, Assignment 23 April 1860, 1057; Porter: ibid., Reel 93, Assignment 7 May 1853, 896–7. 61 Cramahe Township Papers, Reel 92, lot 15, con. 1, 78–90, 99; and aid. 62 Porter: a1847; Cramahe Township Papers, Reel 93, Assignment 7 May 1853, 896–7; Purdy: a1845 and 1848, c1850 and 1852; Shannon: c1871; Sprintall: aid lot 17, con. 2; and c1871. 63 Shannon was listed as a “stationary” in c1881 and a gardener in c1891. Hilton was a labourer in c1881. Ainsworth was landless in c1850. Barney was landless in c1861. Hubbell sold his lease because of arrears; Cramahe Township Papers, Reel 92, instrument 14 May 1846, 767. It is always possible that a tenant farmer could end up in the poorhouse: Stewart, “The Elderly Poor in Rural Ontario,” 217–33. 64 a1825, c1842, and c&a 1832. 65 Edward: c&a 1827. William, Jr: c&a 1831; and Office of the Chief Accountant, a68–0010, iii, b, lot 24, con. 4. 66 c&a 1836 and 1837; a1840. 67 Edward: ao, rg1 a-vi–8, vol. 4, clp, “Inspection and Valuation reports, Newcastle District 1831–37,” Cramahe, 1833; a1839; and “Inspection 1844”. John: c1842. George: c&a 1837 and a1844. 68 a1869; and aid lot 28, con.1. 69 Illustrated Historical Atlas, 81–2, and aid lots 23 and 24, con. 2, and lot 28, con. 1 and Broken Front.
Notes to pages 211–21
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70 Canada Farmer 4 (15 April 1867): 121–2; Farm and Dairy 18 (28 January 1909): 104. 71 Sarah and/or John Michael: c&a 1831–38; c & a 1839–42; then John Michael thereafter, aid lot 18, con. 2. 72 Benedicts: ao, rg1 b-iii, vol. 29, clp, Amounts due on Clergy Reserves 1842, and vol. 32, Amounts due on Clergy Reserves 1848; c&a 1832–38; c & a 1839–47. 73 Blakley: c&a 1838; c & a 1839–50. In 1856 he had a fancy goods store in Castleton. Ledwith: c & a 1842–61. 74 Allen: c&a 1837–38; c & a 1839–52.
conclusion 1 I have benefited greatly from exchanging views with Doug McCalla on the simplified stories of our rural past. The self-sufficient pioneer, happy neighbours, healthy children, and wheat farming are just some of the images that have received, or are in need of, greater scrutiny. 2 Darroch and Soltow, Property and Inequality, 64. 3 Stuart, The Emigrant’s Guide, 71–2; Dunlop, Tiger Dunlop’s Upper Canada, 81; Smith Canada: Past, Present and Future, 535; and Hutton, Canada, 29. In Cumming v. Hill (1842), 6 os 303 (ucqb) the words “agree to let or hire” are deemed to be words that make a document a lease. 4 Munro, The Backwoods’ Life, 29; and Canada Farmer 13 (15 May 1876): 92.
appendix a 1 The 1842 census and all other censuses and assessments I have used to trace individual people are manuscript and nominal records (the door-to-door handwritten folios) and have not been published. They can be found in the following archives, which are also listed in the bibliography. Archives of Ontario rg 21 Municipal Records – Section a, Newcastle District, Census and Assessment 1803–50, ms Reels 2 and 3. For Cramahe Township this includes: censuses 1803–7, 1809–10, 1812–23, 1825, 1839–41, 1848 and 1850 on Reel 2; and the census and assessments that were combined for the years 1826–38, and assessments for the years 1808–25, 1839–47 on Reel 3. (The 1848 census and the 1842 assessment that I refer to in the tables and notes, sometimes as a1848 or a1842, are in this set of records. Note that the 1842 census is not in this collection but at the lac.)
322
2 3
4 5 6 7
Notes to pages 221–6
rg 21 Municipal Records, United Counties of Northumberland and Durham Census, Assessment and Collector’s Rolls 1849–70. Library and Archives Canada ca1 ak21 051 1842, Reel c-1344, Canada, Census Returns of Ontario (Agricultural and Personal Census), Canada West Census 1842, Newcastle District, Cramahe Township, “Return of the Enumeration of the Inhabitants of Cramahe Township.” (This is the main source upon which nearly all my tables are based.) ca1 ak21 051 1851, Reel c-970, Canada, Census Returns of Ontario (Agricultural and Personal Census), Canada West Census 1851, Newcastle District, Cramahe Township, “Census Returns 1851–2, Township of Cramahe in the County of Northumberland.” The first sheet of the personal census is missing. ca1 ak21 051 1861, Reel c-1054 to c-1055, Canada, Census Returns of Ontario (Agricultural and Personal Census), Canada West Census 1861, “Colborne Village” (Reel c-1054); “Township of Cramahe in the County of Northumberland” Reel c-1054 and c-1055; and “Agricultural Census of Northumberland County” Reel c-1056. ca1 ak21 051 1871, Reel c-9984, Canada, Census Returns of Ontario (Agricultural and Personal Census), East Northumberland, Cramahe Division, Cramahe Township and Colborne Village, schedule 1 – Nominal Return of the Living, and Schedules 4 and 5 – Agricultural Returns ca1 ak21 051 1881, Reel c-13239, Canada, Census Returns of Ontario (Agricultural and Personal Census), East Northumberland, Cramahe Township, and Colborne Village, schedule 1 – Nominal Return of the Living ca1 ak21 051 1891, Reel t-6356, Canada, Census Returns of Ontario (Agricultural and Personal Census), East Northumberland, Cramahe Township and Colborne Village, schedule 1 – Nominal Return of the Living “An Act to Make Certain Alterations in the Territorial Divisions of Upper Canada,” S. Prov. C. 14 and 15 Vic. (2 August 1851), c. 5, 1801. W.C. Crofton, who later became secretary of Registration and Statistics, 1847–53, wrote about the 1842 census in the Cobourg Star, 3 and 17 September 1845. Cobourg Star, 8 November 1848, 2. Four dollars equalled one pound or twenty shillings in Halifax currency. Trent University Archives 92–1000, 13 Henry Ruttan’s Sheriff of Newcastle District, Response to Lord Sydenham’s Circular Letter, 1840. Can., Stat., 16 Vic., c. 153 (1853); and “The Elective Franchise Extension Act,” Can., Stat., 18 Vic., c. 87 (1855). These two acts abolished the freehold franchise and replaced it with one based on the assessment. By 1857 the level
Notes to pages 226–30
8
9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19
323
of assessment determined the municipal vote as well. “Act Respecting the Municipal Institutions of Upper Canada,” Can., Stat., 22 Vic., c. 99 (1858). Garner, The Franchise, provides the context for these acts, 107–13, 116. Manning, Assessment, 2–3. The Assessment Act of 1819 (59 Geo. 3, c. 7, ss4 & 12) required that the surveyor general provide the treasurer of each district with a list of lands granted or leased by the Crown. Manning, Assessment, 187–8. Burley, A Particular Condition in Life, 130. Twenty-one farms had more improved than cultivated land, and thirty-five had more cultivated than improved. In the first case, it is possible that land had been cleared that was not yet in use. In the latter case, it is possible that some pasture and meadow land was not considered improved as it had naturally growing grass or herbage on it. Manning, Assessment, 2–3. Assessment Act of 1850 (13–14 Vic., c. 67). This act was first reflected in the assessment for 1852 in Cramahe. Burley, A Particular Condition in Life, 129. ao, gs 4727, vols 1–3, Abstract Index to Deeds for Northumberland County (Cramahe Township), 1798–1956. ao, rg 1 c-iv, ms658, Reels 92 and 93, clp, Cramahe Township Papers. ao, rg 1 a-vi–8, vol. 16, clp, “Return of Inspection, Newcastle District 1844 Clergy Reserve,” Cramahe Township; University of Toronto Archives, a68–0010, i Group b, 1, vol. 129, Office of the Chief Accountant, “Land Survey of 1840 Newcastle District.” These early sources are discussed in Curtis, Politics of Population, 50–1. Cobourg Star, 17 May 1848.
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Bibliography
manuscript sources Archival research for this project was conducted over several years beginning in 1994. Since then many of the collections at the lac and ao have been reorganized and their citations changed. I have maintained the references in use at the time I did the research and hope I have provided enough detail for future researchers to trace the originals.
archives of ontario (ao) toronto b-452 Reels gs-4730 and 4731, Cramahe Township Copybooks, Deed Book f129 b-3, Vol. 12 and 15, Canada Company Papers, Registers of Lands in Newcastle District 1827–1880 f129 b-3, Vol. 136, Canada Company Papers, Land Accounts and Schedules g.s.4727, Abstract Index to Deeds, Cramahe Township, Vols. 1 and 2 (1798–1893) mu-2382, James Reid Papers rg 1 a-i-7, Vol. 3, env. 2, Crown Land Papers, Clergy Reserve Legislation and Sales, R.B. Sullivan, Commissioner of Crown Lands to His Excellency the Governor of Upper Canada, 14 September 1839 rg 1 a-i-7, Vol. 3, Crown Land Papers, Clergy Reserve Legislation 1836–62 rg 1 a-i-7, Vol. 6, Env. 2, Crown Land Papers, Surveyor General’s Commissions and Ministers Offices Papers, 1810–50 rg 1 a-ii-1, Vol. 5, Crown Land Papers, Surveyor General’s Reports, Reports on Leases 1823–57 rg 1 a-iv, Vol. 12, Crown Land Papers, Crown and Clergy Reserves in Newcastle District, 1803–05
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rg 1 a-iv, Vol. 29, Crown Land Papers, Schedules under the Assessment Act of 1822 rg 1 a-iv, Vol. 35, Crown Land Papers, Schedules of Clergy Reserves in the Newcastle District rg 1 a-iv, Vol. 36, Crown Land Papers, Clergy Reserves, all Districts, 1827 rg 1 a-vi-8, Vol. 16, Crown Land Papers, Return of Inspection Newcastle District 1844 Clergy Reserves rg 1 a-vi-8, Vol. 25, Crown Land Papers, Inspection Report in Newcastle District 1872 rg 1 b-ii, Series a, Vol. 5; b, Vol. 8; and c, Vol. 17, Crown Land Papers: Account Books: Clergy Reserve Leases, Newcastle District 1802-59 rg 1 b-iii, Vols. 5-9, Crown Land Papers, Financial Services Branch, Clergy Reserve Rent Calculations 1811-27 rg 1 b-iii, Vol. 10, Crown Land Papers, Financial Services Branch, Recapitulation of the Number of Leases of Crown Reserves ..., 1827 rg 1 b-iii, Vol. 13, Crown Land Papers, Financial Services Branch, Rents Received on Crown Reserves, 1828 rg 1 b-iii, Vols. 29 and 32, Crown Land Papers, Financial Services Branch, Arrears on Clergy Reserves, 1842 and 1848 rg 1 b-vi, Vol. 2, Crown Land Papers: Correspondence Files. General Correspondence of the ccl, Admiral Vansittart to Hon. R.B. Sullivan, 13 September 1826 rg 1 c-i-1, Vol. 43, Crown Land Papers, Petitions rg 1 c-ii-2, Vol. 6, Crown Land Papers, Petitions rg 1 c-ii-3, Vols. 1 and 2, Crown Land Papers, Dockets of Leases of Clergy Reserves 1802-35 rg 1 c-ii-3, Vols. 3-7 and 15, Crown Land Papers, Lists of Clergy Leases, 1802-29 rg 1 c-ii-3, Vol. 8, Schedules of Crown Reserves in Upper Canada, which have been either leased or applied for, 1827 rg 1 c-iii-3, Vol. 1, Crown Land Papers, Clergy Reserve Sales Register 1829-1924 rg 1 c-iii-5, Vols. 12 and 17, Crown Land Papers, Register Sales Under Regulations of 1859 rg 1 c-iv, Crown Land Papers, Cramahe Township Papers rg 4-4-01, Vol. 1, Attorney General Pre-Confederation Records, General Correspondence rg 21 Municipal Records – Section a, Newcastle District, Census and Assessment 1803–50, ms Reels 2 and 3. For Cramahe Township this includes: censuses 1803–7, 1809–10, 1812–23, 1825, 1839–41, 1848 and
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Wilson, Alan. “The Clergy Reserves: ‘Economical Mischiefs’ or Sectarian Issue.” Canadian Historical Review 42 (December 1961): 281–99. – The Clergy Reserves of Upper Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968. Wilson, Catharine A. A New Lease on Life: Landlords, Tenants, and Immigrants in Ireland and Canada. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994. – “Reciprocal Work Bees and the Meaning of Neighbourhood.” Canadian Historical Review 82, no. 3 (September 2001): 431–64. – “Tenancy as a Family Strategy in Mid-Nineteenth Century Ontario.” Journal of Social History 31, no. 4 (Summer 1998): 875–96. Wingate, Andrew. “The Colonel and His Flock: Thomas Talbot’s Settlement in Upper Canada.” Master’s thesis. University of Guelph, 1999. Winters, Donald L. “The Agricultural Ladder in Southern Agriculture: Tennessee, 1850–1870.” Agricultural History 61, no.3 (Summer 1987): 36–52. – “Agricultural Tenancy in the Nineteenth-Century Middle West: The Historical Debate.” Indiana Magazine of History 29 (June 1982): 128–53. – Farmers without Farms: Agricultural Tenancy in Nineteenth Century Iowa. Westport, ct: Greenwood Press, 1978. – “Tenant Farming in Iowa, 1860–1900: A Study of the Terms of Rental Leases.” Agricultural History 48 (1974): 130–50. Wise, S.F. “Robert Fleming Gourlay.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online at http://www.biographi.ca/en/ Wood, J. David. Making Ontario: Agricultural Colonization and Landscape: Re-Creation Before the Railway. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000. Yang, Donghyu. “Farm Tenancy in the Antebellum North.” In Strategic Factors in Nineteenth Century American Economic History: A Volume to Honor Robert W. Fogel, edited by Claudia Goldin and Hugh Rockoff, 135–56. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Yoder, Frank. “Rethinking Midwestern Farm Tenure: A Cultural Perspective.” Agricultural History 71, no.4 (Fall 1997): 457–78. Zukin, Sharon. Landscapes of Power. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
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Index
Abstract Index to Deeds, 32–4, 228–9, 270n12 Act Respecting Distress for Rent, 132 African-Americans, 206 agrarianists: 6, 24, 30, 36–7, 43, 267n70. See also Robert Gourlay, William Lyon Mackenzie agriculture, 9, 10; evaluation of census and assessment returns for, 225–6, 227–8, 323n11; and land tenure 26, 27, 175, 183–4, 188–9. See also tenancy, tenant agriculture agricultural ladder, 15, 28, 59, 166–7, 190, 191 (illus.), 260n29, 314n1; critique of, 190, 193, 212; falling down the, 211–13; how to climb, 191 (illus.), 192–3, 199–203, 212–13; and liberalism, 190–2, 212; and transiency, 204, 206–7. See also Cramahe Township, tenancy agricultural press, 35, 125, 211, 295n27 Ainsworth, Philip, 185, 209, 320n63 Alexander, Hugh, 154 aliens. See enemy aliens Allen, Obediah, 212 American Civil War, 110, 289n17 American Midwest, 59, 66, 71, 272n31, 274n49, 287n111, 315n19. See also Iowa
Amherst Island, 44; arrears, 126–7; land agent on, 116 (illus.); leaseholders buy land, 284n73; leases, 67, 116 (illus.), 238 (Table 7.2); rents, 110, 289n25; selling the lease, 156–7, 159, 160–3; tenant families on, 199; tenant farms, 173 anti-rent movement: New York, 5–6, 8, 79, 258n12 Arnot, Daniel, 41 arrears: accepted part of estate management, 102, 125–9, 137, 218, 283n55, 295n33, 296n39, 297n47; cases of, 125–6, 204, 208, 211–12, 283n55; landlord’s legal right regarding, 126, 306n67; as protest, 125–6; and purchasing freehold of reserve land, 199, 200; as renting on credit, 125; and selling improvements, 132, 137, 153; and selling lease, 156–7, 161; and third-party payments, 128–9; why they occur, 125–6. See also Canada Company leases, clergy reserve leases, Crown reserve leases Asselstine, Michael, 207 assessment records: generally, 32, 33, 194, 226–7, 283n63; for 1842, 223, 226–8; post-1842, 223, 230;
356
Index
pre-1842, 229–30; and wealth, 228, 322–3nn7, 8 Bagly, Roger, 142 Bagot, Sir Charles, 161 bailiffs, 117, 130, 131–2, 133–4 Baines, Thomas, 83, 128, 283n54 Bannister, Jerry, 301n5 Barney, Benjamin, 209, 320n63 Bathurst District, 232 (Table 3.3) Becher, Henry, 139 Belleville, 109 Benedict, Assizi, 212 Bentham, Jeremy, 118 Bexley, Baron, 72, 74 Bickle, Mr, 134 Biddulph Township, 160 Bidwell, Marshall Spring, 27 Black Donnellys, 160 Blackstone, William, 118 Blakley, Henry, 212 Blandford Township, 74 Blanshard Township, 199, 271n24 bond (owners with a bond/mortgage): definition for this study, 222. See also Cramahe Township, mortgages Boulton, Henry John, 28 Bouthillier, Thomas, 282n54 Bradd, David (Jr), 165, 309n90 Bradd, David (Sr), 165, 209 Bradd family, 309n90 Bradd, John, 309n90 Brant County, 191, 192 Brant, John, 35–6, 266n62 Brant, Joseph, 266n62 Brantford, 117, 133–4 Brantford Township, 67–8, 147 Brighton Township, 207 British American Land Company, 35, 266n61 British Isles, 66, 165. See also Ireland Brock District, 232 (Table 3.3)
Brockville, 55 Brown, George, 124 Brown-Dorion ministry, 124 Buchanan, A.C., 88, 90 Buller, Charles, 43 Burnham, Honourable Zaccheus, 87 (illus.), 88, 206 Burns, Justice Robert Easton, 134, 294n14 California: land movement, 5 Cameron, James, 104 (illus.) Campbell, Donald, 92–3, 197, 297n47 Canada Company: arrears, 283n55; creation of, 48; and franchise, 265n59, 266n61; general operation, 49–50, 270n7, 282n48; land sales, 50, 199, 264n25, 305n51, 317n27; as a political issue, 37–9, 41 Canada Company leases, 49–50, 67, 81–2 (illus.), 105, 111, 270n8; arrears, 84, 160; compensation for improvement, 151, 303n27, 305n51, 317n27; lease with option to buy freehold, 214, 265n59, 266n61, 305n51, 317n27; and pre-emption right, 156, 199, 350n51; renewal of, 155, 305n51; selling the lease, 156, 160–1 Canada West. See Upper Canada: definition of Carl, Samuel, 319n49 Carr, James, 319n49 Cartier-Macdonald ministry, 124 Casey, Willet, 210 cash renting: compared to share renting, 65, 112, 113; popularity of, 113. See also cash renters, rents cash renters (short-term): agriculture of, 181–5, 189, 239–47 (Tables 8.2–8.6, 8.9–8.22); household characteristics of, 181–3, 233–5 (Tables 3.5–3.9); location of, 62, 65, 182
Index (map 8.2); and rent, 104–12, 113; and short leases, 67, 181; social mobility of, 197, 210–11; and transiency, 205, 210–11, 251–2 (Tables 9.9, 9.12, 9.13). See also agriculture, Cramahe Township, rent, tenant capitalism: and the farm family, 13–14, 169–70, 217; and land, 5, 7, 10, 258n10; and leases, 8; and liberalism, 258n10; and tenancy, 22, 169–70, 217–19; and tenants, 144, 217–19 capital gains: and landlords, 108, 215; and tenants, 109, 154–5, 159, 200 Carswell, Joseph, 160, 306n70 Castle, Mr, 134 Castleton, 20, 91, 175, 201–2, census: 1842, 16–18, 33, 104, 169, 170, 194, 221–6, 290n31; 1848, 16, 33, 223; 1852, 33, 223, 230; 1861, 33, 230; 1871, 19, 33, 230; compiling and evaluation of, 16, 17, 32–3, 169, 170, 194; post-1842, 232, 230; pre-1842, 223, 229–30 chattel mortgages, 196–7, 278n88, 308n84 children: and the farm economy, 169–70, 180; and liberalism, 13; and primary sources, 16, 18; in tenant households, 234–5 (Tables 3.8–3.9); 249 (Table 9.4) Christie, James Alexander, 26 civic humanists, 267n70 Clark, Thomas, 266n66 Clark Township, 41 Clarke, John C., 44, 91, 107, 259n27, 264n42, 271n19, 272n36 Clear Grits, 36, 124 clearing land: cleared land defined, 149, 151, 275n65; cost of, 291n46; as form of improvement, 149 (illus.), 150 (illus.), 151; as form of rent, 62–3, 86, 94, 112, 122, 152,
357
193, 275n65; legality of cutting timber on rented land, 311n33; and social mobility, 196, 203, 212. See also improvements Clement, Joseph, 209 Clergy Corporation of the Church of England, 83, 127–8 clergy reserve leaseholders: conversion to freehold, 41, 198–9; number of, 41, 48–9; sources for, 82–4, 127–8; 39–41. See also clergy reserve leases, Cramahe Township clergy reserve leases: administration of, 82–4, 282–3nn49–55, 297n46; aim of, 80–1, 215; application for, 82–3; arrears on, 84, 126–8, 137, 199, 215, 296n39, 297nn46, 47; conversion to freehold of, 151, 155–6, 199, 305n55; and economic development, 161, 166–7; end of new leases (1833), 128, 269n3; improvements on, 111- 12, 149, 151, 199, 302n22, 316n21; leasing system technically ends (1867), 166; length of, 67, 80; number of, 48–9, 231–2 (Table 3.2), 271n19; old leases expire (1834), 151; pre-emption, 156, 161, 305n49, 316n21; renewal of, 42, 111, 151, 153, 155, 291n41, 304n47; rents, 80–1, 106–7, 111–12, 215, 237 (Table 5.3), 288n14, 290n39; selling improvements, 151; selling leases, 155, 156, 161–3, 204; system officially begins (1803), 8, 48; value historically of, 66–7, 216. See also clergy reserves, Elmsley Scheme (1798), leaseholders, pre-emption clergy reserves: administration of, 8, 24, 39, 269n2; creation of, 7–8, 24, 48, 269n2; and franchise, 35, 36; and historians, 40, 43–4, 216; idea of waste, 39–40, 43, 216; and King’s
358
Index
College, 48, 50; land sales (begin 1827), 48, 127, 155–6, 198–9, 212, 269n4, 315–16nn21, 22; as political issue, 36, 37, 38–41, 267–8nn84, 99; rental income financed, 269nn2, 3; secularization of (1854), 43, 48, 268n99. See also clergy reserve leases, Cramahe Township Clergy Reserves Secularization Act, 48 Climo, Percy, 262n53 Cobourg, 104 (illus.) Cochrane, Mr, 147 Colborne: at mid-century, 20, 91, 171, 172, 285n85; rent prices near, 109; tenants in and around, 97, 151, 157–9, 168, 175, 180, 183, 185, 207, 209, 210–11 Colborne District, 232 (Table 3.3) Colborne Harbour (Port Cramahe), 262n56 Colborne Harbour Company, 93 Colborne, Lieutenant-Governor Sir John, 41 Colborne Transcript, 20 Coleman, Ambrose, 317n26 Coleman, Vincent, 317n26 Colton, William, 158 Common Law Procedure Act of 1856, 140 Completed Emigration Questionnaire of 1840, 64, 236–7, 290n31 Conzen, Michael, 55 corn rent, 106 County Atlases of Ontario, 192 Courtnage, William, 194 courts: assize, 120–1, 130, 139; and clearing leases, 63; Court of Common Pleas, 130, 293n10; Court of Error and Appeal, 293n9; Court of King’s Bench (Queen’s Bench), 120–1, 130, 136, 139, 293nn9, 10; district courts, 120, 293n9; system of
courts in Upper Canada, 11, 120–2; tenants bring action against landlord, 100, 120, 132–5, 140, 298n69, 299n70; tenants vulnerable in, 66, 100–1, 120, 133, 138, 140, 141. See also custom, distraint, eviction, replevin, trespass, trover covenants: and agricultural choices, 175–6; and assignment of a lease, 305n56; breaking, 135, 136; could protect tenant, 299n81; in farm leases, 312n33; and improvements, 152, 303n30; prohibiting subletting, 136, 274n56; and settlement duties 86; and statute labour, 86, 284n66. See also husbandlike, leases Cox family, 210–11 Cox, Aaron, 210 Cox, Edward, 210–11 Cox, George, 210–11 Cox, Henry, 211 Cox, John, 210 Cox, William Jr, 210, Cox, William Sr, 209, 210 Cox, William (the third), 211 Craig, George, 90 Cramahe Township: agriculture generally, 19–20, 171–2, 239–247 (Tables 8.1–8.20), 313n42, 48, 314n53; arrears, 128; characteristics of tenant population in, 59–60, 151, 217, 233–5 (Tables 3.5–3.9), 239–53 (Tables 8.1–9.14); 171 (illus.); clergy reserves in, 51 (map 3.2), 71, 91, 94, 128, 151, 157–9, 197–202, 209, 210, 238 (Table 7.1), 251–2 (Tables 9.9, 9.10, 9.13); compared to other places, 18–21, 50; comparison of owners and tenants, 52–3 (maps 3.3–3.4), 174–6, 188–9, 233–5 (Table 3.5–3.9), 239–247 (Tables 8.1–8.22), 252 (Table 9.11); Crown reserves in, 51 (map 3.2), 71,
Index 91, 94, 151, 157–9, 197–9, 206, 208, 209, 210, 251–2 (Tables 9.9, 9.10, 9.13); early history of, 19, 91–2, 221, 262n52, 285n83; economy at mid-century, 19–21, 171–2; household types in, 235 (Table 3.9), 249 (Table 9.4); and the Keeler family, 91–2, 285nn83, 85; ladder tenants who later became owners, 195–203, 212, 248–53 (Tables 9.1–9.10, 9.12, 9.14), 316–17nn25, 26, 29; landlords in, 71, 91–2, 93–4, 95, 96 (illus.), 97–9, 235–6 (Tables 4.1, 4.2), 251 (Table 9.10), 285n89; leaseholders, 60, 168, 185–8, 186 (map 8.5), 189, 197–202, 233–5 (Tables 3.5–3.9), 239–47 (Tables 8.2–8.6, 8.9–8.22), 251–2 (Tables 9.9, 9.10, 9.12, 9.13); and liberalism, 20–1, 217; lumber industry in, 171–2, 179, 183, 201–2, 316n24; owners (deeded and mortgaged), 18, 52 (map 3.3), 53 (map 3.4), 233–5 (Tables 3.5–3.9), 239–47 (Tables 8.1–8.22), 252 (Table 9.11); rents, 104, 109, 238 (Table 7.1); share tenants, 59–60, 176–81, 178 (map 8.1), 189, 233–5 (Tables 3.5–3.9), 239–47 (Tables 8.2–8.6, 8.9–8.22), 251–2 (Tables 9.9, 9.12, 9.13), 313n41; short-term cash rental agreements, 168, 181–5, 182 (map 8.2), 189, 233–5 (Tables 3.5–3.9), 239–47 (Tables 8.2–8.6, 8.9–8.22), 251–2 (Tables 9.9, 9.12, 9.13); sources for, 16–18, 82–4, 157, 170, 194, 198–9, 221–30, 315n16; specific tenant examples, 128, 142, 151, 153, 157–9, 163, 164 (illus.), 165, 168, 176–7, 180, 183, 185, 187, 188, 200–3, 205, 207, 208, 210–12, 317n26, 319nn49, 50; tenant agriculture, 168, 176–81, 181–5,
359
185–8, 188–9, 217, 239–247 (Tables 8.1–8.20), 248–50 (Tables 9.1–9.3, 9.5), 311nn30–2; tenants generally in, 18, 50, 52 (map 3.3), 53 (map 3.4), 217, 239 (Table 8.1); and transiency (leavers), 195, 203–7, 212, 213, 248–53 (Tables 9.1–9.14). See also Donald Campbell, clergy reserves, Crown reserves, Joseph A. Keeler, leaseholders Cramahe Agricultural Society, 174 Crandell, Eliza, 168 Crandell, Joseph A., 97 Crandell, Reuben, 168, 189 Crimean War (1854–56), 107, 289n17 Crofton, W.C., 171, 322n3 Crown and clergy reserve inspection documents (Crown reserve: 1840; clergy reserve: 1844), 198–9, 229, 302n21, 316n23 Crown reserve leaseholders: sources for, 82–4; number of, 48–9. See also Cramahe Township, Crown reserve leases Crown reserve leases: aim of, 80–1, 215; application for, 82–3; arrears, 127, 199, 215, 296nn39, 41; conversion to freehold, 158, 199, 305n55; improvements on, 111–12, 149, 151, 199, 288n4; length of, 67, 80; no new leases made after 1833, 269n3; number of, 48, 50, 231–2 (Table 3.2); pre-emption right, 156, 305n49; renewal of, 42, 111, 155, 291n41, 304n47; rents, 80–1, 106–7, 111–12, 215, 237 (Table 5.3), 288n4, 290n39; selling improvements for arrears, 137; selling the lease, 156, 204; their value historically, 166–7, 216. See also Crown reserves, leaseholders Crown reserves: administration of, 8, 24; and Canada Company, 49; cre-
360
Index
ation of, 7–8, 24, 48. See also Cramahe Township, Crown reserve leases Cryderman, Michael, 209 Cubitt, Woolmer, 163, 308n85 cultivated land, defined, 227. See also tenant agriculture: field crops Cummings, Jacob, 306n64 Curtis, Bruce, 17, 33 custom: alternate form of ownership, 144–5, 154–6, 218; challenged in courts, 147–8, 311n23; claims arising from continuous possession, 155–6, 159, 165, 218; and claims arising from past productive usage of land, 145, 165, 218, 219, 301n6; cooperation between landlord and tenant, 144, 155, 156, 159–62; and cutting timber, 311n23; decline of, 147–8, 165–6; defined broadly, 143–4; and economic development, 166–7; emblements, 146–8; general acceptance of, 165–7, 311n23; hidden land market, 144–5, 166–7, 218; and historicity 145, 165; ideological implications of, 144–5, 218; legal definition of, 143; and legal rights to sell the lease, 154–65; and liberalism, 145–6, 154, 302n14; and share renting, 64; of selling improvements, 144–6, 148–54, 149 (illus.), 150 (illus.). See also emblements, improvements, selling the lease “custom of the country,” 147–8 customary law: defining, 143, 301n12, 303n28. See also custom customary rights: in other countries and parts of Canada, 165, 301nn5, 7, 305n50, 307nn73, 75 Dalhousie District, 232 (Table 3.3) Darlington Township, 163, 308n85 Darroch, Gordon, 195, 261n50, 288n5, 290n27
Delaware Township, 94 Denison, George Taylor, 89 (illus.), 90 Denison, George Taylor ii, 90 Denison, John, 89 Dickinson, Erastus, 165 Dickinson, Jeremiah, 164–5 Dickinson, Theron, 164–5 Dickson, William, 266n66, 279n6 Diller, Robert, 272n32, 279n4 Dinsmore, Mr, 271n24 Distraint: abolished in Ireland and US, 131, 132; attempt to abolish in Upper Canada, 132–3; court cases regarding, 133–5, 297n50; defined, 129; and mortgaged owners, 286n92; and re-entry, 299n73; rules modified regarding, 124, 131–3, 218, 297n50; rules regarding, 129–31; seizable goods for, 130–1, 297n54; wrongful, irregular or excessive, 120, 132–5, 298n69, 299n70. See also replevin, tenants: and personal property, trespass, trover distress. See distraint District Land Boards of Upper Canada, 269n2 Division Courts Act of 1859, 132 Donnelly, Jim, 157, 160 Dorris, William, 158 Dougall, David, 96 Dowling, Martin W., 304n45 Doyle, Martin, 28, 264n25 Draper, Justice William Henry, 294n14 Drew, Captain Andrew, 74, 280n13 Dudley, Alvin, 159, 306n64 Dundas County, 90, 112, 192 Dundonald, 92, 262n56 Dunlop, John, 88 Durham County, 88 Durham, Lord (John George Lambton), 23, 36, 42–3, 71, 79
Index
361
East Gwillimbury, 63, 112, 120, 152. See also Sir John B. Robinson Eastern District, 231–2 (Tables 3.2, 3.3) Easton, George, 32 Egremont Settlement, 279n6 Ejection. See eviction Elizabeth Township, 50, 283n60 Elmsley Scheme (1798), 304n47 emblements: defined, 145, 301nn10, 11; and liberalism, 145, 218 enemy aliens, 59, 206, 273n46 English radicalism, 38 Essex County, 44, 50, 107, 271n19, 272n36, 283n60 escheat movement, 6, 8, 258n13 Etobicoke, 97 Evans, Francis A., 97 Evans, Joseph, 180 eviction: and annual leases, 66–7, attitudes toward, 135 (illus.), 137; by a baby, 95; and clearing leases, 63; compared with distraint, 135–6, 140; court cases regarding, 137–8, 139; defined, 136; as legal mechanism in strained marriage, 95; and long leases, 68; and mortgaged owners, 31, 286n92; and need for deeded lease, 101; in Old World, 137; settling out of court, 137; specific cases of, 117, 137–8, 139; rarity, 137; and rent, 118; rules modified, 124, 138–40, 218, 297n50; and tenant’s legal rights, 120, 176 executed contract, 119
185, 188–9, 193–4, 212. See also agriculture, Cramahe: household type, tenancy, tenant family history: 13, 261n40 family strategies, 13, 261n40; of landlords, 15, 73–4, 87–8, 94–101; and local history, 16; and tenancy, 13–15, 152–3, 219–20. See also tenancy Farrell, Edward, 117, 137–8 fencing. See clearing land, improvements Fergusson, Adam, 279n6 feudal land: attitudes toward, 5–6, 7; imagined feudal past, 24–5; and law, 11; and leasing, 25 Fiddick, Charles, 168, 174, 183, 184, 189, 309n1 Finnegan, Robert, 159, 161–2, 238 (Table 7.2) Forbes, George, 28 Forcible Entry Acts, 136, 299n74 Fowler, Daniel, 156–7, 238 (Table 7.2) Fowler, O.J., 97 Fowlie, Margaret, 95 franchise: and election of 1858, 36, 266n65; and ownership 26, 28, 265nn55, 59; and property, 8, 12, 322n7; and tenancy, 34–6, 124, 265nn53, 59, 61, 64, 65; tenants get the parliamentary (1853) and municipal (1858) vote, 36, 266n65 freehold. See ownership frontier: and customary law, 145, 151, 153, 155, 167; and tenancy, 30, 39, 63, 206, 219, 290n40; and transiency, 203
family cycle: impact on tenancy, 13, 174, 181, 187, 195–6, 214–15, 311n28 family economy: debate over, 13–14, 261n43; and local history, 16; and tenancy, 13–15, 169–70, 180, 183,
Gagan, David, 269n102, 318n41 Garbutt, John, 168, 209 Garbutt, Mrs John, 168 Gates, Paul W., 259n25 genealogical research: 16–18, 194, 195, 221. See also Cramahe: specific
362
Index
tenant examples, tenancy: father-son succession, inheritance, sources for Gibson, Edward, 163, 308n85 Gilmour, John, 100, 193 glebe land, 41, 268n87, 269n2, 304n46 Gleeson, Joseph, 100 Gleeson, Michael, 100 Glengarry County, 67–8, 192 Glengarry Settlement, 279n6 Glenn, Captain Hugh, 116, 238 (Table 7.2) Goderich, 128 Godley, John Robert, 32, 78, 107, 108, 113, 265n46 Gore District, 28, 54, 65, 97, 107, 112, 232 (Table 3.3), 291n48 Gore Township, 134 Goslee, James D., 93, 203 Gould, Abigail, 98–9 Gould, Burr, 98–9 Gould, Nathan, 98–9 Gould, Seth Burr, 201 Gourlay, Robert: 24, 36–40, 43, 266n66; his questionnaire, 37, 39–40, 266–7n69, 276n71, 291n48 Grand River Reserve, 67–8 Guelph, 55 Gwynne, Justice, 100 Haldimand County, 36, 87 Haliburton, 110 Halton Block, 49 Hamilton, 55 Hamilton, Alexander, 294n15 Hamilton Township, 134–5 Hands, W. (sheriff of Western District), 126–7 “hanging gale,” 127 Harnden family, 316n24 Harrold, Samuel, 100 Haw, William, 109 Hawke, A.B., 86
Haynes, Richard, 158, 209 head tenant, 132, 274n56 Hicks, Joseph, 209 Hilton, Simeon, 158, 209, 320n63 Historical County Atlases, 80 Hodges, Mr, 158 holding over, 277n79. See also tenant: overholding Home District, 50, 54, 55, 64, 65, 231–2 (Tables 3.2, 3.3) Hopper, Mr, 156 Horton Point, 137–8 household types: defining, 235 (Table 3.9), 261n45 Hubbell, Abel, 209, 320n63 Humber River, 63 Hume, G.H., 89 Huron County, 35, 36, 95 Huron District, 96, 232 (Table 3.3) Huron Tract, 49 husbandlike: defined, 175 Hutton, William, 26, 32, 263n15 Huycke, Cornelius, 176 Ianson, James, 95–6 Ianson, John, 94 Ianson, Margaret, 94 Ianson, William, 95–6 ideology of improvement: and liberalism, 145; generally, 7, 118 immigrants: from England, 194, 200, 207; from Ireland, 29; and land, 4, 7, 70; and ownership, 26, 27–9, 233–4 (Tables 3.5, 3.7); from Scotland, 28–9, 97, 192–3; and tenancy, 15, 173, 233–4 (Tables 3.5, 3.7). See also immigration, land immigration. See immigrants, land, ownership, and tenancy improved land: defined, 227. See also clearing land, improvements improved vs cultivated land, 227, 323n11
Index improvements: arrangements between landlords and tenants, 152, 218, 219, 316n21; as a bargaining tool, 153, 277n76, 304n40; compared to value of unimproved land, 149, 151, 302–3n22; compensation for, 63, 76, 139, 144, 148–9, 151–2, 165, 218; cost of, 56–7, 197; court cases concerning, 122; in Cramahe Township, 250–1 (Tables 8.4–8.7), 302n22; customary right to sell, 144–6, 219; and family strategies, 152–3, 197, 210–11, 215–16; government’s attitude toward settling of, 151; ideology of, 148–54, 219; and incentive land tenure provides to make, 26, 29–31 (illus.), 80–1, 185; legal ownership of, 148,151; and liberalism, 219; monetary value of, 149, 151, 198–9, 200, 302n22; mutually beneficial, 68, 80, 153–4, 219; and “natural rights,” 12, 144–5, 153, 219; nature of, 148–51, 149 (illus.); 150 (illus.); 166; ownership of, 63, 65, 144–5; on reserve land, 40, 302n22, 316nn21, 22; and social mobility, 151, 153, 196, 197–9, 210–11, 212, 215–16, 316n21; sold to pay arrears, 132, 137. See also clearing land, housing, tenancy individual level tracing, 221–30. See also genealogical research inheritance: 14, 15, 201; and land market, 198; of lease, 162, 165, 216; and ownership, 26, 212, 216; of rental income, 74, 88, 89, 92, 97 interest rates, 57, 107–8, 272n36, 289n21; and rents, 108 Iowa, 173, 184, 274n51, 314n4 Ireland: customary law, 165; distraint, 131; eviction, 137; and ideas of oppressed tenants, 8, 141; land movement, 5–6, 258n116; lease-
363
holders and the vote, 35; and selling the lease, 160, 161 Irish National Land League, 6 Irish, Asa, 203 Irish, Peter, 142, 208 Ives, Almira, 202 Ives, Edward, 202 Ives, Hulbert, 203 Ives, Ira, 202–3 Ives, Julius, 202–3 Ives, William, 203 Jacksonian democracy, 38 Jameson, Anna, 75, 77 Jeffersonian republicanism, 38 Johnston, J.F.W., 107 Johnston, William, 199 Johnstown District, 50, 231–2 (Tables 3.2, 3.3) Karr, Clarence, 50 Keeler, Joseph (“Old Joe”), 91, 285n83 Keeler, Joseph Abbott (“Little Joe,” or “Young Joe”), 91–2, 210, 284n82, 285n85 Keeler, Martin, 174 Kelly, William, 163, 308n86 Kent, Dr, 158 Ketchum, Elijah, 95, 97 Ketchum, Mrs, 95 Ketchum, Platt, 206, 319n50 Killman, Jacob, 155 Kim, Sung Bok, 114 King’s College, 48, 50, 208, 270n11, 296n41 Kingston, 55 labour: and household economy, 14; and “natural rights,” 144–5; and social hierarchy, 26, 28, 30; and tenancy, 58, 90–1, 112, 310n7, 320n63; wage labour, 14, 273n40. See also improvements, property rights
364
Index
Lambton, John George. See Durham, Lord land: availability, 4–5, 55–6, 109, 195, 257n6, 261n50, 290n27; and capitalism, 5, 7, 8, 10, 258n10, 260n30; comparing Upper Canada and Lower Canada, 7–8; and franchise, 34–6; free grant era, 48–9, 56, 270n6; general importance of, 4–9, 15, 23; hierarchy of, 61–9, 189, 215, 274n56; and immigration, 4, 7, 157; lures immigrants, 27–9; and native population, 7; poetry of, 24, 28; prices, 56, 61, 70; protest and violence, 5–6, 11; reserves in general, 8; state formation in Upper Canada, 5, 7–8, 27, 33, 71, 117–19, 122–3. See also agricultural ladder, clergy reserves, Crown reserves, landlord-tenant law, native population, ownership, tenancy, Upper Canada land agents: 75–7, 82–4, 88, 104 (illus.), 115, 116 (illus.), 156, 161–2, 48, 283n54 land law. See courts, landlord-tenant law Land League (US), 6, 258n16 land market, 55–6, 61, 70; for buying and selling leases, 155–9; and family arrangements, 97–9; and liberalism, 118–19, 122–5, 141, 218, 219; for renting property, 104–5, 108–10; and risk, 101; in Upper Canada, 7–8, 70, 105, 108–9, 122–4, 198, 214, 217–20. See also rental market land reform, 5–6. See also landlord-tenant law land registry records. See Abstract Index to Deeds landlordism, 5–6, 70, 101–2; anti-, 5–6, 79–80, 131, 140, 211; and economic development, 30, 70, 71, 79–80; in Ireland, 6, 131; and liberalism,
79–80, 215, 118–19; in Upper Canada, 70–1, 79–80, 101–2, 140–2, 214–16, 218–19; Upper Canada and the Old World compared, 70, 140–1, 214–15, 218–19 landlords: absentee, 30, 75, 79, 125, 161; aristocratic, 71–80, 99, 101–2, 123, 215; baby, 95; and class consciousness, 44, 74, 77, 90, 92–4, 102, 141, 215; and community infrastructure and public duty, 74–5, 91–2, 102; corporate, 30, 80–4, 99, 101–2, 205, 215; and family strategies, 15, 73–4, 87–8, 94–101, 215–16; financing retirement, 97–9, 222, 286–7n109; housing of, 76 (illus.), 77, 89 (illus.), 90, 92, 96 (illus.); and improvements, 70–1, 86–7, 114; and investment and returns; 70–1, 73, 84–9, 106–8, 114–15; labourers as, 97; and liberalism, 70, 102, 215; limits on their power, 126–8, 135, 144, 159, 160–2, 165–6, 176, 215, 297n50; maintaining their reputations, 70, 114, 126, 137, 155; ordinary farmers as, 93–102, 129, 205, 215, 216, 219, 235–6 (Tables 4.1, 4.2), 285nn89, 90, 287n111; and paternalism, 70, 74–5, 91–2; and risk, 70, 101, 88, 130; and sources, 15–16, 82–4, 93; as speculators, 30, 72, 75, 79, 84–93, 97, 102; term a misnomer, 215; toleration of customary rights, 145, 153, 156, 159–62, 165–6, 215; their views on tenancy, 70, 80–1; women as, 95, 286n95. See also Canada Company leases, clergy reserve leases, Crown reserve leases, speculators landlord-tenant law, 11, 117–19, 133, 142, 295n21; and the common law, 120–1, 142, 147, 154, 274n58, 292n2, 297n50; compared to con-
Index tract law, 119–20, 129, 133, 293nn6, 8; covenants, 175–6, 293n8, 312n35; critique of sources for, 121–2, 293–4nn12, 14, 15; 294n17; and economic development, 122–3, 218; and the land market, 118, 122–4, 141, 142, 218; landlord’s lien on tenant’s property, 306n67; and leases, 8, 10, 12, 62, 66, 68, 154, 275n60; and liberalism, 118–19, 122–5, 141, 142, 218; reform of, 118–19, 122–5, 141, 218; and rent payment, 119–20; and statutes, 118–19, 121–5, 131–3, 136, 138–40, 154, 218, 292n2, 294n16, 295nn21, 22; and in Upper Canada generally, 7, 11, 117–19, 122–3, 142; and verbal agreements, 66, 100–1. See also arrears, courts, custom, customary law, distraint, emblements, eviction, improvements, replevin, trespass, and trover landlord-tenant relations, 16, 103, 118, 217–18; in California, 5; and conflict, 5–6, 10–11, 66–7, 95, 100–1, 114–15, 117, 120, 141, 211; and customary law, 143–4, 219; as a family affair, 14, 15, 94, 97–100, 115, 205, 216, 285n90, 286–7nn109, 111, 319n49; insecure, 62, 66, 100–1; in Ireland, 5–6; in law, 11–12, 117–19; as mercantile, 119, 218–19; mutually beneficial, 10–11, 68, 80–1, 106, 141–2, 152, 153–4; in New York, 5–6, 79; in pei, 5–6, 79; on the reserves, 82–4; and setting rent, 103, 114–15, 217–18; in share contracts, 64–5, 99, 112–13; in Upper Canada, 79, 117–18, 123–4, 214–16, 217–19; vernacular language used to describe, 218–19, 321n3. See also landlord-tenant law, lease, rent
365
Langtons, 78 Lawnsbury, William, 206, 319n50 lease: assignment of, 128, 156, 157–8, 160–1, 162, 163–5, 164 (illus.), 228–9, 305n56, 307n75; clearing lease, 62–3, 86, 94, 112, 152, 193, 275n65; and covenants, 136, 175–6, 299n81, 312n33; decline of long leases, 166; definition for chapter 8, 310n8; developmental or improvement leases, 62–3, 68, 134, 275n67; as distinct from lease-to-buy contract, 272n3; and distraint, 130–1; history of, 8; inheritance of, 162, 165, 209, 216, 308n89; leasehold interest as collateral, 159, 162, 163; leases for lives, 62, 67, 146, 278n86; leases with option to buy freehold, 214, 265n59, 266n61, 305n51; legal meaning of, 8, 10, 62, 66, 68, 119–20, 139; long leases compared to short leases, 65–7, 110, 115; long leases criticized, 68; long leases generally, 66–7, 110–12; and maintenance agreements, 162, 165, 209; modifications to standard form of, 148, 152, 160–1, 166, 218, 303n33; mortgaging of, 278n88; need for formal, deeded lease, 101–1, 139, 218, 275n60, 299n81, 302n14; lease for 999 years, 36, 62; in perpetuity, 62; pre-death transfer of, 162, 163–5, 209, 308n87; and rent prices, 110–12; short leases, 67; standard form of, 121, 124, 321n3; where found, 34, 228–9. See also Canada Company leases, clergy reserve leases, Crown reserve leases, landlord-tenant, pre-emption, selling the lease lease, selling of. See selling the lease leaseholder: definition for this study, 221. See also Cramahe Township
366
Index
leaseholders: and agriculture, 185–8, 189, 239–47 (Tables 8.2–8.6, 8.9–8.22); compared to mortgaged owners, 185, 186–8, 189, 233–5 (Tables 3.5–3.9), 239–47 (Tables 8.2–8.6, 8.9–8.22); conversion to freehold, 41, 197–9, 216; and family strategies, 15, 60–1, 197–202, 216–17; and franchise, 35–6; household characteristics of, 60–1, 233–5 (Tables 3.5–3.9); and improvements, 185, 219; in New York State, 5–6; on pei, 6; property rights of, 8, 11–12, 15, 61–2; and social mobility, 185, 197–202, 215–16; 251–2 (Tables 9.9, 9.10, 9.12, 9.13); and tenancy as a way of life, 209; and transiency, 203–7, 205. See also Canada Company leases, clergy reserve leases, Cramahe Township, Crown reserve leases, custom, selling the lease, tenant agriculture, lease lease-to-buy contracts, 272n38, 278n86 Leask, Alexander, 95 Leask, James, 95 Leask, Mrs, 95 Ledwith, Enoch, 212 Lee, Reuben, 107 Leslie, William, 163 liberalism: and agrarian idealism, 267n70; and agricultural ladder, 190–3; in Cramahe Township, 20–1; and custom, 145–6, 147–8, 154, 162, 218, 219; and the farm family, 13–15, 162, 169–70; and land law, 11–12, 118–20, 120, 122–5, 138–42, 218; and the land market, 118–19, 122–5, 141, 218–19; and ownership, 24–9, 193, 260n35; and primary sources, 16; and property, 4–9, 11–12; and tenancy, 4–9, 11–12, 67, 145–6, 162, 193, 203, 217–19; and Upper Canadian politics, 34–44. See
also emblements, improvements, leases life leases: (are not leases of lives), 278n86. See also maintenance agreements livestock. See tenant agriculture Locke, John, 12 London District, 54, 55, 154, 231–2 (Tables 3.2, 3.3), 291n48 Lonsberry, David, 319n50 Lord Durham’s Report, 36, 43 Lower Canada, 7, 35, 259n20. See also Quebec Lower Indian Reserve (Moore Township), 163 Lucan Township, 157 Lucas, C.P., 43 Lynde, Mr, 100, 101 Magrath, William, 29 Maine, 258n12 maintenance agreements, 162, 165, 209, 278n86 Malden Township, 34, 50, 173, 205 Malthus, Thomas, 27 manure, 146, 148, 152, 175, 184 March Township, 100 Mariposa Township, 142 market economy: and farm families, 13–14; and liberalism, 13–15; and ownership 25–6; and tenancy 10–11, 14, 217–19 McCalla, Douglas, 261n50, 289n19 Macaulay, Justice J.B., 294n14 McCracken, Samuel, 157, 185 McCracken, Sarah, 185 McDonald, Duncan, 318n36 McFall, John, 151, 168, 187–9 McFall, Mrs John, 168 McInnis, Marvin, 217n19, 289n19 Mackenzie, William Lyon, 36–43 McKinnon, Mr, 142 McMahon, Michael, 209
Index McMurray, Thomas, 96 (illus.) McNab, Allen, 74 McNab, Archiblad, 70, 78, 278n1 McNab Township, 278n1 McPherson, Mr, 142 Markland, George H., 158 Marr, William, 260n29, 310n15 Marx, Karl, 25–6 Maxwell, Major Robert Perceval: and arrears, 127; extends mortgage financing, 284n73; rent receipt of, 116 (illus.); and rents, 289n25; and sale of leases, 160–2 Merrill, Samuel, 209 Merriman, James Munroe, 158, 224, 227 Metcalfe Township, 139 Michigan, 205 microhistory: 12–13, 16, 193–4 Miars, Elijah, 206 Michael, Sarah, 212 Midland District, 54, 231–2 (Tables 3.2, 3.3), 291n48 military reserves, 269n2 Mill, John Stuart, 25, 27 Miller, George, 90 money values, 225, 290, 322n5 Montreal, 89 Moodie, Susanna, 27 Moore, Thomas de, 72 Moore Township, 163 Morganston, 262n56 mortgages, 56–7, 284n73; and bankruptcy, 57–8, 203, 286n92; desperate mortgaged landlords, 129, 286n92, 297n50; mortgaged owners compared to leaseholders, 185, 186–8, 189, 233–5 (Tables 3.5–3.9), 239–47 (Tables 8.2–8.6, 8.9–8.22); mortgagee’s right to evict and distrain, 286n92, 297n50; mortgaging a lease, 278n88, 308n84. See also chattel mortgages
367
Mount Cashell, third earl of (Stephen Moore): 44, 71–80, 73 (illus.), 102; and Amherst Island, 75–6, 78–80, 127; family matters, 73–4, 78–9; investment in Upper Canadian estates, 71, 73–9; Irish lands, 72, 76 (illus.); lease on Amherst Island, 67, 75, 76 (illus.); Lobo House, 76 (illus.), 77 Moutray, William Henry, 116, 161–2 Murphy, William, 205 Murray Township, 206 Muskoka, 110 native population: and Cramahe Township, 19, 262nn52, 53; and leaseholders on native reserves, 67–8, 163, 278n87; and native reserves, 7–8, 269n2; and rehabilitative power of ownership, 27, 263n20 Nellest, John, 209 Nelson Township, 64 New York State: customary rights, 145; economic development, 37; land movement in, 5–6, 8, 35, 141, 214, 218, 258n12; landlord-tenant relations in, 5–6, 79; leaseholders and the vote, 35; rents in, 114; selling the lease, 160 New Zealand, 165 Newcastle District, 35, 42, 54, 93, 231–2 (Tables 3.2, 3.3); 290n31 Niagara District, 36, 54, 55, 126, 194, 231–2 (Tables 3.2, 3.3); 291n48 Niagara region, 110 Niblock, Thomas Spencer, 94 Northumberland County, 88 Northumberland County Agricultural Society, 92, 172, 174, 310n16 Norwood, 92 Nottawasaga, 86
368
Index
O’Connor, Hamilton Parke, 132–3 O’Connor, Honourable John, 23, 262n2 Ontario. See Upper Canada Opeongo Road, 90 Osborne, Daniel, 191, 192 Otonobee Township, 105 (illus.) Ottawa District, 64, 91, 232 (Table 3.3) overholding, 136, 138, 139 owners (deeded and bonded): compared to tenants, 162, 169, 173–4, 185–9, 203–4; defining, 222, 257n3; household characteristics in Cramahe, 233–5 (Tables 3.5–3.9); who faced failure, 57–8, 94–5, 195, 203; who were tenants too, 61, 222, 257n3, 274n57, 314n1. See also Cramahe Township, leaseholders, mortgages, ownership, tenant agriculture ownership: alternative views of, 144–5, 213, 216, 263n17; critique of, 31–2, 57–8, 61–2, 144–5, 154, 213, 263n17; and democracy, 5–6, 36–8, 123; different kinds of, 31–2, 264n42, 278n86; and economic development 5, 7–9, 25–6; and family well-being and security, 26–9; and immigration, 27–9, 57, 264n29; and independence, 28–9, 34, 57; legal meaning of, 11–12, 61–2, 274n58; and liberalism, 4–9, 24–9, 36–8, 193, 219; and morality, 24–7, 38, 192, 263n17; mortgages, 31–2, 203; and nineteenth-century theorists, 24–6; and political rights, 28, 34; and popular perception of, 3–5, 12, 23–9, 57, 133, 214, 219, 264n29; rehabilitative potential of, 27, 263n20; and social status, 27–9, 214; and tenancy compared, 29–33, 144–5; transiency and permanence, 27, 203–4. See also Cramahe
Township, land, liberalism, mortgages, owners, property, tenancy Oxford County, 74, 79 Parry Sound, 110 paternalism, 70 Peel County, 50, 173 Percy Township, 173 Perth County, 199 Peterborough, 279n6 Peterborough County, 88 Pickering Township, 90 Picton, 129 physiocrats, 70 Port Hope, 88 Porter, Elisha, 158–9, 306n64 Porter, Joseph, 158, 209, 306n64 Portland, 100 Powers, Dr, 158 pre-emption, 155–6 (defined), 161, 165–6, 197–8, 216, 218, 277n76, 305nn49, 50. See also Canada Company leases, clergy reserve leases, Crown reserve leases Prince Edward District, 36, 232 (Table 3.3) Prince Edward Island (pei): distraint, 131; land movement, 5–6, 8, 141, 214, 258n13; leaseholders and the vote, 35; tenancy figures, 231 (Table 3.1). See also escheat movement, Tenant League property: as commodity, 25, 102, 118–19, 162, 166, 219, 267n70; as a concept, 11–12, 25, 33, 61–2, 260nn31, 35; and the franchise, 8; as propriety, 25, 71, 102, 118, 162, 267n70. See also custom, land, ownership property rights, 5–6, 11–12, 119–20; of leaseholders, 8, 11–12, 15, 119–20, 139, 144–5, 154; and
Index “natural rights,” 12, 124, 144–5, 155–6, 291, 295n26, 301n6. See also custom Purdy, Caleb, 209 Quebec, 145, 231 (Table 3.1). See also Lower Canada Ray, George, 158 Reach Township, 94, 95–6 rebellion of 1837, 37, 41–2 Rebridge, Mr, 75 Reciprocity Treaty (1854), 110, 289n17 Reddick family, 309n990 re-entry: and distraint, 299n73; of landlords, 136, 140; of tenants to claim emblements: 146–8, 301n11 Reform Bill (England 1832), 35 reformers in Upper Canada: and tenancy, 80, 123–4, 140–1. See also Lord Durham, Gourlay, Mackenzie Reid, James, 28, 97 Reid, Joseph D., 275–6n70, 313n50 Renfrew County, 44, 90, 117, 137–8 rent: advertisements to, 104 (illus.), 105 (illus.), 288n5; advice about, 106; boycotts of, 5–6; burden of, 115, 292n61; compared to freehold prices, 104–5, 107–9, 237 (Table 5.2), 289n25; cash, 104–12, 113, 218, 292n55; collection of, 115; and disrepair, 29, 119; evaluating and setting, 103–15, 138, 282n54, 289n25, 292n62; impact of international events on, 107, 110, 123–4, 126–7, 289n17, 292n55; and improvements, 108, 110, 111–12; for long leases, 110–12; meaning of, 104, 114; must compete with freehold, 80, 108; nonpayment of, 117, 122; in the Old World, 103; paid in labour, 112; perception of fairness,
369
113–15; prices, 105, 108–13, 225, 236–7 (Tables 5.1–5.3); progressive, 63, 81, 110–11, 237 (Table 5.3), 290n40; receipt, 116 (illus.), 229; as a return on investment, 78, 88- 90, 106–8; and selling the lease, 159; as a share of produce, 110, 112–13; for a short-term cash contract, 110, 112–13; as a social and political process, 114–15; stationary, 68, 110; and wheat income, 106–7, 236 (Table 5.1), 288nn10, 14. See also arrears, cash renting, clergy reserve leases, Crown reserve leases, distraint, evictions, landlord-tenant law, share renting rental contracts: annual tenancies, 66, 278n84; at will, 62, 66, 146, 161, 175, 275n60, 277n78; changes in, 218; diverse types of, 61–9, 214, 219; and familialism, 100; informal, 66, 100–1, 139, 218, 275n60, 277n80, 295n27; and subtenants, 132, 136; yearly, 62, 115; year to year, 66, 101, 139, 277nn78, 79. See also cash renting, leases, share renting rental market, 104–5, 108–9, 166–7, 155–9, 214, 216, 217–20, 236–7 (Tables 5.1–5.3), 288n5; geography of, 106, 109–10 renters: definition for this study, 221–2 replevin, 130, 133–4; defined, 298n69 Ricardo, David, 25 risk: and agricultural settlement, 29, 113; and capitalism, 8; and household economy, 14; and the landlord-tenant relationship, 16, 114; minimized, 211; and share tenancy, 63–5, 112–13, 275n70, 313n50; and tenancy, 60, 204, 211, 217, 259n29 Robinson, Chief Justice Sir John Beverly, 26; his benchbooks,
370
Index
294n14; cases involving tenants, 130, 134, 147, 297n50, 310n33; his East Gwillimbury estate 63, 112, 120–1, 152 Robinson, Honourable Peter, 279n6, 284n82 Rolph, Dr Thomas, 78 Rose, A.W.H., 3, 74, 78, 88, 99 rural history, 214, 321n1 Ruttan, Henry, 42, 290n31 Saint Regis Reserve, 67–8 Salem Creek, 316n24 Saltfleet Township, 112 Saltspring Island, 305n50 Sammis, Ebenezer Jr, 308n86 Sammis, Ebenezer Sr, 163, 164 (illus.), 308n86 Sammis, Silvester, 308n86 Sandwell, Ruth, 13, 261n41 school reserves, 269n2 Scott, James P., 230 seigneurial system, 7, 259n20 selling the lease: capital gains from, 154–5, 159, 162–3, 204; and claims arising from continuous possession, 155–6, 159, 165, 218, 304n45; documents that record the sales, 157, 159–60, 164; as a family strategy, 14, 162–7, 218; ideologically suggestive, 144–5, 154–6, 218; as incentive for improvements, 185; market for, 105, 155–9, 162, 166–7, 204, 218, 219, 238 (Tables 7.1, 7.2), 288n7; and landlord-tenant relationship, 144–5, 155, 156, 159–62, 219, 307n77; legal right to, 154; and liberalism, 145–6, 162, 219; monetary value of, 154–61, 163–4, 238 (Tables 7.1, 7.2), 306n66; to pay off arrears, 137, 212, 218; process of, 156–9, 162, 219; sale of lease price compared to freehold price, 144, 154, 157, 164,
238 (Tables 7.1, 7.2); and social mobility, 162–3, 166, 185, 197–202, 207, 212, 216, 218; variable component in, 154–5, 219; and violence, 160 settlement: compensation for improvements, 148–9; hardship of early, 28–9, 81; and reserves, 39–41; and tenancy 166–7. See also frontier, immigration, Upper Canada: economic development settlement duties, 81, 86, 270n6, 283n65 Settlers Provident or Savings Bank Account, 82 Shannon, Thomas, 319n55 Shannon, William, 208, 209, 308n87, 319n55, 320n63 share renting: and agriculture, 112–13, 175–6, 176–81, 189, 239–47 (Tables 8.2–8.6, 8.9–8.22), 276n74; and American immigrants, 59; compared to cash renting, 65, 112, 183–4, 189, 275n70; as distinct from sharecropping, 275n68; as a partnership, 219; terms of contract, 64–5, 175–6, 177, 291nn48, 49; in Upper Canada, 37, 275n68, 276n71; views against, 113; within a family relationship, 99. See also Cramahe Township, rents, share tenants, tenant agriculture share tenants: age, 59–60, 64, 176, 233 (Table 3.6); and agriculture, 239–47 (Tables 8.2–8.6, 8.9–8.22), 312–13nn38–41, 44, 50; definition for this study, 222; ethnicity of, 59, 64, 233 (Table 3.5); household characteristics of, 60, 64, 176, 233–5 (Tables 3.5–3.9); as immigrants, 60, 176, 275n70; location of, 63, 65, 234 (Table 3.7); with relatives as landlords, 99; and risk, 64–5, 112–13, 176–7, 275–6n70, 313n50;
Index and social mobility, 251–2 (Tables 9.9, 9.12, 9.13); and transiency, 205. See also Cramahe Township, share renting, tenant agriculture sharecroppers: 8, 275n68 Simcoe District, 232 (Table 3.3) Simcoe, Governor John Graves, 23–4, 80 Simpson, A.W.B., 11 Six Nations, 67–8 Skinner, Elizabeth, 207 Skinner, James, 207 Smith, Adam, 10, 25–6, 106, 118 Smith, W.H., 57, 109, 110 Soltow, Lee, 195, 261n50 Sophiasburgh Township, 153 South Dumfries Township, 191 Southampton, Bruce County, 90 speculators: definition of, 84–5, 283nn57, 62; and economic development, 30–1, 283n60; as landlords,10, 55, 84–93, 219, 283n61; who are tenants, 157–8, 162–3 Spencer, William, 64 Sprintall, Samuel, 209 squatters, 65–6, 85, 153, 164, 232, 257n3, 258n12, 271n17, 276n76, 283n54, 303n25 Stamford Township, 155 state formation: defined 258n18. See also Upper Canada statute labour, 86, 284n66 Steele, John, Esquire, 93 Stewart, William, 137 Stone, Enos, 130 Stuart, Charles, 30 subdivision, 48, 55, 158 subletting, 132, 136, 274n56 subsistence: and liberalism, 14; and household economies, 14. See also tenant agriculture subtenant. See subletting success: measures of, 190, 193–4, 204
371
Sullivan, R.B., 30, 48, 149, 159, 162–3, 294n14 Talbot, Colonel Thomas, 279n6 Talbot District, 232 (Table 3.3) Talbot, E.A., 28, 263n17 Talbot, Richard, 279n6 taxes: and the assessment, 225–7, 283n63; and clergy reserves, 40, 226; and courts, 122; and franchise, 34; and rental income, 227; and share tenants, 239; and tenancy, 33, 81, 86, 88, 270n12 tenancy: and agricultural efficiency, 10, 13, 56, 58, 65, 160, 183–4, 188; and agriculture generally, 62–9, 169, 188–9, 209n3; and agricultural ladder, 190–203, 191 (illus.), 214, 216, 248–53 (Tables 9.1–9.10, 9.12, 9.14); as an alternative to ownership, 216; as an apprenticeship, 58, 98, 216; arguments against, 28–31 (illus.), 270n8, 309n3; arguments for, 47, 56–9; and assessed value of property, 181, 185, 194, 197; in Canada, 231 (Table 3.1); and capitalism, 4–9, 217–19; and changing vernacular language of, 218–19; and class consciousness, 44, 69, 141, 189, 216, 220; and commerce, 29; and community life, 30–1 (illus.), 188–9, 190, 197, 205–6, 208, 213, 319n56; competes with freehold, 80, 127, 141, 145, 214, 289n25; and democracy, 30, 36–8; disciplinary perspectives on , 9–15, 259nn25, 27; and economic backwardness, 29–30; and economic crisis of 1857–58, 123–4, 126–7; and economic development, 9–11, 56, 166–7, 188–9, 217–19; and economists, 9–11, 123; and ethnicity, 274nn49, 51; and failure, 195, 204, 208, 211–13, 252–3
372
Index
(Tables 9.12, 9.14), 269n102, 315n13, 320n63; and family strategies, 13–14, 56–61, 94–101, 152–3, 162–5, 166–7, 192–3, 197–203, 207–11, 216–17, 219–20, 273n45; and father-son succession, 96–101, 162–5, 166, 193, 197–8, 200–3, 209, 216; as feudal, 5–7, 24–5, 29–30; and the franchise, 34–6, 124, 265–6nn53, 59, 61, 64–5; and the frontier, 30, 39, 63, 166–7, 206, 219, 290n40; “functional tenancy,” 56, 272n32, 279n4; and geographers, 9–10, 54–5; geography of, 51–6, 62–5, 88, 106, 109–10, 231–2 (Tables 3.2, 3.3), 239 (Table 8.1); and historians, 43–4, 269n102; and immigration, 15, 32, 47, 56–61, 105, 157, 166–7, 173, 219, 233–4 (Tables 3.5, 3.7), 273n48; and improvements, 29–31 (illus.); and independence, 14–15, 30, 34, 65, 68, 166–7, 209, 217; and inheritance or intergenerational relations, 14–15, 58–9, 60–1, 94–101, 162–5, 166–7, 197–8, 200–3, 205, 209, 216, 220, 315n19; international perspective on, 5–6, 8–9; and the land market, 104–5, 108–9, 166–7, 155–9, 214, 216, 217–20; and legal historians, 9, 11–12; and liberalism, 4–9, 29–30, 36–8, 117, 120, 217–19; as a malfunction, 9, 259n25; and the market economy, 10–11, 13–14, 166–7; and the Marxist framework, 10–11, 260n30; and measurements of success or failure, 190, 193–5, 197; and morality or immorality, 30, 192; and national well-being, 29–31, 32, 41–2, 309n3; overlooked, 8–9, 15, 23, 32–44, 124–5, 140–1, 147, 214; and ownership compared, 29–33, 144–5, 190, 216, 217; and owner-
ship compete, 68, 80, 108; and paid labour, 58, 63, 90–1, 191, 200, 206, 212, 217, 222; and political philosophers, 9, 12; and political protest, 36, 44, 117, 140–1, 220; and politics, 34–6, 220, 266n65; popular perceptions of, 3, 8, 29–35, 108, 147; and poverty, 30, 31 (illus.), 208, 209, 211–12, 217; rise of, generally, 7–8, 10, 47–56; rise of, in Upper Canada, 24, 272n30; and security and insecurity, 10–11, 14, 30, 62, 65–8, 188, 190, 209, 213, 216; and social mobility, 14, 29–31, 32, 166–7, 190, 195–203, 210–11, 212–13, 216–17, 248–53 (Tables 9.1–9.10, 9.12, 9.14); and social status, 30; sources for, 15–18, 23, 32–4, 82–4, 121–2, 157, 159–60, 164, 170, 190–2, 194, 198–9, 221–30, 282nn49, 50, 293–4nn12, 14–15; 294n17, 297n47; and speculation, 10, 55, 212; as a temporary stage, 58–9, 190–2, 204, 214, 219–20; and transiency, 10, 30, 31 (illus.), 34, 192, 195, 197, 203–7, 213, 216, 248–53 (Tables 9.1–9.14), 315n11; in the United States, 31, 272n31, 275n67, 295nn24, 26, 304n40; in urban areas, 35, 232, 291n44; as a way of life, 15, 207–11, 212–13, 216, 248–53 (Tables 9.1–9.10, 9.12, 9.14); 319n56. See also agricultural ladder, distraint, eviction, improvements, land market, landlords, landlord-tenant law, landlord-tenant relationship, lease, rental contracts, selling the lease, speculators, transiency tenant, definition of : in 1842 census, 221; in 1848 census, 232; in this study, 221–2; technical and legal, 139
Index tenant agriculture, generally: assessed value of farm, 181, 185, 209, 248–9 (Table 9.3), 253 (Table 9.14); cloth and wool production, 246–7 (Tables 8.18–8.20), 250 (Table 9.5); compared to owners generally, 169, 173–4, 185–9; compared to owners in Cramahe Township, 174–6, 239–47 (Tables 8.1–8.20); covenants in the lease, 175–7; cutting timber, 311n33; degree of diversification, 175, 180, 183–4, 188, 205, 208, 244 (Table 8.13); farm size, 170, 174, 181, 187, 204, 208, 239–40 (Tables 8.1–8.3), 248 (Tables 9.2–9.3), 311n29; hired labour/servants, 174, 180–1, 193, 196, 202, 205, 209, 234 (Table 3.8), 247 (Table 8.21), 249 (Table 9.4); and the household economy, 169–70. 180–1, 183, 187–9, 212, 249 (Table 9.4); improved acres, 170, 173–5, 177, 179, 181, 184, 187, 196, 204–5, 208–9, 239 (Tables 8.1, 8.2, 8.4–8.7), 248–9 (Tables 9.3); as intensive farming, 173, 177, 185, 202, 244 (Table 8.15); and lumber market, 171–2, 179, 183, 201–2; orchards, 310n14; and social mobility, 196–7, 248–50 (Tables 9.1–9.3, 9.5), 253 (Table 9.14); subsistence, 180–1, 185, 241 (Table 8.6), 244 (Table 8.13), 245–6 (Tables 8.16–8.17). See also agriculture, clearing land, Cramahe Township, improvements, emblements, manure, share renting, tenancy tenant agriculture, and field crops: 173, 175–7, 183; in census and assessment, 225–6, 227–8, 230, 250 (Table 9.5), 313nn42, 53; in Cramahe Township, 175, 179–80, 183–4, 187–8, 196–7, 205, 241–4
373
(Tables 8.7–8.13); legal right to, 146–8. See also emblements tenant agriculture, and livestock: 173, 176, 245; in census and assessment, 226–8, 244; in Cramahe Township, 175, 180, 183, 187, 196–7, 205, 244–6 (Tables 8.14–8.17), 250 (Table 9.5); legal right to, 148 tenant agriculture, and rental contract: 175–6, 183–4, 188–9; of leaseholders with long leases, 175, 185–8, 189, 239–47 (Tables 8.2–8.6, 8.9–8.22); of share tenants, 175–81, 189, 239–47 (Tables 8.2–8.6, 8.9–8.22), 312nn38–41, 44, 50; of short-term cash renters, 175, 181–5, 189, 233- 5 (Tables 3.5–3.9), 239–47 (Tables 8.2–8.6, 8.9–8.22) Tenant League (Ireland), 6, 8, 258n15 Tenant League (pei), 6, 131, 258n15 tenant right, 165, 166, 204; defined, 304nn41, 42; in Old World, 304n41, 307n73. See also custom tenants: absconding, 130, 137; age of, 59–61, 206, 208, 233–4 (Tables 3.6, 3.7); capital gains of, 109, 154–5, 159; compared to freeholders, 52–3 (maps 3.3, 3.4), 162, 169, 173–6, 185–9, 203–4, 233–5 (Table 3.5–3.9), 239–47 (Tables 8.1–8.22), 252 (Table 9.11); and credit and collateral, 108–9, 159, 162, 196–8, 278n88, 308n84, 310n10; distrainable and other goods, 130–1, 133, 143; ethnicity and place of birth of, 59, 61, 196, 206, 233 (Table 3.5), 250 (Table 9.7); family strategies of, 13–15, 56–61, 97–100, 152–3, 162–5, 166–7, 192–3, 197–203, 205, 207–11, 216, 217; female, 60; households, 234–5 (Tables 3.8, 3.9), 249 (Table 9.4); housing and other buildings of, 3,
374
Index
19–20, 146, 149, 151, 157, 164–6, 173, 180–1, 185, 196, 247 (Table 8.22), 248–9 (Table 9.3); and lack of political action, 140–2, 165, 167; legal rights of, 118–20, 130–3, 136, 138–40, 148, 151, 154; number of, 3, 48–50, 54–6; and opportunity to purchase freehold, 198–9; overholding, 136, 277n79; and personal property, 130–1, 146–8, 196–7, 227, 278n88, 297n54, 301nn10, 11; and politics, 34–6, 220; and Rebellion of 1837, 41–2; and religion, 196, 206, 208, 224–5, 251 (Table 9.8); and retirement, 195, 209–20; speculating in land, 157–8, 162–3, 204; and statute labour, 86, 284n66; and taxes, 33, 39–40, 81, 86, 88, 226–7; who were also tradesmen, 170, 310n7, 315n12. See also case renters, chattel mortgages, clergy reserve leaseholders, Cramahe Township, Crown reserve leaseholders, custom, emblements, eviction, household economy, labour, leaseholders, share tenants Thompson, Deborah, 153 Thompson, E.P., 143 Thompson, William, 3, 63 Thunen, J.H. Von, 54–5 Tories in Upper Canada, 23–4, 71, 80 Toronto, 55, 109, 110, 129. See also York Township Papers, 48, 157, 223, 229, 305n55 transiency, 10; does not necessarily equate with failure, 203–7, 210–11, 213, 216, 317n33, 319n52; and liberalism, 203; measuring, 195, 203–4. See also Cramahe Township, ownership, tenancy
trespass, 130–1, 133, 134–5; defined, 298n69 trover, 133; defined, 298n69 Turney, Andrew, 205 underlet. See subletting undertenant. See subletting United States: customary rights, 145, 165; distraint, 131; tenancy in 259n26. See also anti-renters, California, Iowa, Maine, Mid-West, New York State, sharecroppers, tenancy, Wisconsin Upper Canada: in comparative international terms, 5, 8, 28–9, 34–5, 117, 118, 123, 124, 131, 137, 141, 146, 148, 160, 165, 214, 218; in comparison to Lower Canada and other parts of Canada, 7–8, 35, 47, 231 (Table 3.1); definition of, 257n3; districts of, 49 (map 3.1), 54 (map 3.5); and economic development, 29, 166–7, 217–20, 289n19; economy at mid-century, 18–19, 123–4, 166–7, 289n19; and free land grants, 48–9, 56, 84 270n6; land law generally 7, 117–19, 122–3, 142; land market in, 7–8, 48–9, 70–1, 105, 122–4, 166–7, 279n6; land policy, 7–8, 23–4, 37, 48, 71; landlords in, 70, 79–80, 141; landlord-tenant law, 117–22, 142; and liberalism, 7–9, 22, 24, 34–44, 118–19, 122–5, 141, 154, 217–19; ownership in, 4–5, 23–4, 25–9; politics at mid-century, 19, 35–44, 220; and its self-perception, 7–8, 32; and state formation, 5, 7–8, 23–4, 27, 34–6, 117–19, 122–3; tenancy in, 3, 32–4, 48–56, 140–1, 165–7, 214–20, 231–3 (Tables 3.2, 3.4), 271n27. See also custom, landlord-tenant law,
Index landlordism, landlords, ownership, rents, tenancy, tenants Upper Canada College, 270n11 Usborne Township, 95, 96 Valleau, Peter, 153 Vansittart, Admiral Henry, 72 (illus.), 80, 279n11; Balsam Lake, Bexley Township, 74–5, 77–8; Blandford Township, 74; Eastwood, 75, 79; Eldon Township, 280n12; family matters, 73–4, 79; Fenelon Township, 280n12; Mariposa, 280n12; his Upper Canadian estates in general, 71–80, 88, 102, 280nn13, 18; Victoria County, 280n12; Woodstock, 74, 78–9 Vansittart, George, 72 Vansittart, Henry, 74, 79 VanWicklan, Garrett, 128, 297n47 Vaughan Township, 107, 126, 127 Ventress, Millicent, 200–1 Ventress, Thomas, 200–1 Victoria County, 74, 79, 88 Victoria District, 232 (Table 3.3) Wait, Almore, 319n49 Wakefield, Edward Gibbon: 265n46, and the Wakefield system, 43 Walker, George, 174, 200 Walker, Jane, 200 War of 1812, 59, 126, 282n50, 292n55 waste: idea of, 39–40, 43, 216, 219, 268n96, 311n33. See also wildland wealth. See assessments, tenant agriculture: assessed value Weaver, John, 39 Welland County, 155, 173–4 Weller, Gilbert, 201–2
375
Wellington District, 232 (Table 3.3) Welton, Isaac, 157 Welton, Levi, 158 Western Canada, 145, 285n89, 231 (Table 3.1) Western District, 50, 64, 126–7, 163, 173, 231–2 (Tables 3.2, 3.3), 291n48 wheat: as a determining factor, 54, 289n19; and rent prices, 106–8, 236 (Table 5.1), 288n10, 288n13, 289n17; in tenant agriculture, 179, 183, 188, 241–3 (Tables 8.7–8.11), 3134n53. See also tenant agriculture Widdis, Randy, 204 wild land, 288n4. See also clearing land, improvements, waste Wilk, Richard, 16 Williams, Arthur, 88 Williams, John Tucker, 87, 88 Wilson, Alan, 128 Winters, Donald L., 9, 184, 275n70, 291n47, 309n2, 314n4 Wisconsin, 55, 271n29 women: and the farm economy, 169, 180; and land rights, 60, 274n53; as landlords, 95, 286n95; and liberalism, 13; in the primary sources, 16, 18, 224–5, 235, 319n54; as servants in tenant households, 234 (Table 3.8), 247 (Table 8.21); as tenant farmers, 60, 153, 225 Woodstock, 55, 74, 88, 110, 113, 279n6 Yerrington, Albert, 174, 185 York, 36, 55, 82, 89–90 York County, 173