Here’s more information on the fascinating multi-generation family saga attached to the historic North York home at 111 Harrison Road that we introduced you in our last newsletter..
The saga begins with Christopher Harrison, born in Yorkshire, England in 1755, who emigrated to New Jersey in at eighteen, becoming a horse groom. During the American Revolutionary War, which began two years after he arrived, he refused to take an oath of allegiance to the revolutionary government for which he was imprisoned. He escaped after sixteen days and became a wagon Master of Supplies to the British Army. He married in 1877.
When the war ended the British rewarded Loyalists like Christopher and his wife Priscilla with land grants in British colonial Canada. The couple went to Nova Scotia, then to North York, settling on Yonge Street near Sheppard Avenue. The couple’s tombstone at St. John’s Anglican North York Church says, “Loyalists From New Jersey.”
Their son William (1784-1838) in 1815, the year after his father’s death, bought three hundred acres near present-day York Mills Road and Bayview Avenue. According to pages 241-42 in Pioneering In North York by Patricia Hart published in 1968, “William eventually built a brick house facing Bayview, still standing at the north end of Harrison Road.”
William fought on the rebel side in the 1837 Upper Canada Rebellion. When the rebels lost, he escaped to the United States where he died in New York State in early 1838 of wounds received in the fighting. His son Joshua was ordered three times by American authorities to open William’s coffin while travelling to the U.S.-Canada border..
William’s widow lived in the house for many years followed by eldest son Christopher (1814-1909). His wife Catherine was the daughter of Thomas Sheppard, a rebel, like Christopher’s father William, in the 1837 Upper Canada Rebellion. The last Harrisons who lived in the house were Christopher and Catherine’s sons Thomas (1866-1933) and Joshua (1868-1943). They’re interred with their parents at St. John’s North York Anglican Church.
Daughter Mary wed Walter Scott Gooderham of the Gooderham-Worts whisky firm..
The house still exists..
