Commemoration
Provincial
Built by Loyalist settler Peter Ferguson in 1784, the original log cabin on this site is one of the oldest surviving buildings in Ontario. The cabin walls were constructed using a French Canadian technique called poteaux sur sole where vertically placed, square logs were held together by horizontal plates located along the top and bottom. The larger home adjoining it was built in 1804 by the Reverend John Bethune (1751-1815), the first Presbyterian minister in Upper Canada. This home also incorporated a French Canadian construction technique, colombage pierroté, which used a timber frame filled with masonry rubble. The fireplace overmantel installed by Bethune is one of the few remaining in the province. In 1815 David Thompson (1770-1857) acquired the house and lived here until about 1836. Thompson was an explorer and cartographer who surveyed much of what is now western Canada and mapped out the Canada-United States border. The house presents a unique architectural and historical record of early Ontario.
National
Historic construction techniques and classic design are combined in this early Ontario home. The vertical log south wing may date from the 1780s when Loyalist Peter Ferguson settled on the site. The central part was built ca. 1805 as a manse for Rev. John Bethune, the first Presbyterian Minister of Upper Canada and was later the residence of explorer David Thompson. Beneath the stucco of the main block, the timber frame has three walls infilled with rubble stone and a fourth with “stick and mud”. The five-bay facade, formerly flanked by similar wings, expresses the British classical tradition.
Background
From first settlement of Loyalists in Ontario and into the 19th century, most of the people of Upper Canada occupied log houses. Those with the means built houses more like those they had in the thirteen colonies. For John Bethune, that was a frame and timber house as seen here.
John Bethune was born on the isle of Skye in Scotland in 1751. His grandfather had helped Bonnie Prince Charlie escape Scotland in 1746. He emigrated to North Carolina and fought on behalf of the king in the American Revolution where he was taken prisoner. After the war he moved to Montreal and became chaplain to the 84th Regiment (Royal Highland Emigrants). After the regiment disbanded he established the Presbyterian church in Old Montreal which became the mother church of Presbyterianism in Canada. In 1784 he moved to Glengarry with others of his regiment and settled in Williamstown.
He was the great-great-grandfather of Norman Bethune, a famed doctor and advocate of socialized medicine who worked with Mao-Tse-Tung’s army to create Communist China, and the actor Christopher Plummer.
David Thompson was born in Westminster, Middlesex, England in 1770. At 14 he became an indentured servant to the Hudson’s Bay Company. On May 28, 1784, he sailed to North America, arriving on September 2 in Churchill, Manitoba. Over his seven years of indenture, he served as a clerk in a number of HBC posts. After that, he gained employment with the company as a fur trader during which time he did much surveying. In 1794, he was promoted to surveyor. However, the HBC was more interested in furs than maps. So Thompson left them and joined their competitor, the North West Company where he did both jobs, eventually becoming a full partner. He traveled over 90,000 kilometres in North America mapping the land including a path west to compete with the work being done in the United States by Lewis and Clark. He was the first European to navigate the full length of the Columbia River.
In 1799 he married Charlotte Small, a Cree girl, then just thirteen years old. They had thirteen children and their marriage ended 57 years later with his death. In 1815, they moved to Williamstown and this house.