19 King Street West, Colborne
(c.1890s)
Roll No. 1411-012-020-34200 – Cramahe Township Ontario
Italianate Vernacular
No. 19 King Street West is one of three “Sister properties” on a street of large, impressive century homes in the village of Colborne. Although many of the Italianate houses in the area are brick, No. 17 and No. 19 probably built at the same time by the same builder, are clad in siding.
Both are principally Italianate in design but they differ in the details. Italianate buildings are tall and narrow with an offset front door – as distinct from the centre hall Georgian plans – the windows are also tall and narrow and almost invariably the sash is round headed. There is often a bay or bow window, one or two story and there is a porch of some sort. Italianates have a hip roof and modest to elaborate Victorian trim on its spare frame. Many of the original footprints of these Italianates have been augmented with a rear “tail” usually added to provide a bigger kitchen and more bedrooms.
No. 19 does not have round head windows, it does have a three pane, two story bay window, and it has some Italianate trim in the form of eaves brackets. There is no decorative cornice board or gingerbread. It has a hip roof. There is a one story extension on the east side and a two story addition (which may have been part of the original building) on the West side. The property has an attached garage and the compromised ground floor fenestration indicates it to be a later addition. The cladding appears to be wood and it is narrow gauge and painted. This feature together with the rubble basement of No. 19 might indicate a build date in the late 19th century. The Land Registry records seem to support this hypothesis.
No. 19 King Street West is another of the stately century homes in the village of Colborne.
History or Associative Value
10/12/1855 Norman Bennett sold property on the South side of King St. W. that today encompasses six houses (#11 to #23), to his sisters Emily, Mary and Ann Bennett. Emily, having acquired most of her sisters’ properties, sold to Frank L. Webb (see 63 KingSt.E) 3/31/1898, who sold to Abram A. Gould 2 months later. Gould was a schoolteacher, born and raised in Cramahe, who most likely built the house for his family of five children at the close of the 19th century.
Additional Historical and Genealogical Information
19 King Street West, Colborne, Ontario
Cramahe Township, Concession 1, Lot 32
John Ogden (1762-?) (LINK) was the first owner of the 200 acres that make up Concession 1, Lot 32, the Lot lying south of what is now King Street West. These 200 acres are now bounded by Ontario Street on the west, Division Street on the east, King Street on the north, and the western part of the Ogden Point Quarry on south.
The next Land Office record for the south side of King Street West was the sale on 17 January 1821 of the northern 90 acres of Concession 1, Lot 32 by Jane Hodges, George G. Kent, and Hannah Kent (LINK) to Festus Bennett (?-ca. 1851) (LINK). Unfortunately, the transfer of the land from Ogden to Hodges et al. was not recorded.
Festus Bennett sold off only a little of his land during his lifetime. When he died sometime around 1851, most of it was inherited by his son Norman (ca. 1819-1872). This included all of the land in Concession 1, Lot 32 from King Street West south to about where the Grand Trunk railway tracks were soon to be laid, except for two properties in the northeastern corner previously sold by his father.
On 12 October 1855, Norman Bennett provided each of his sisters, Emily (ca. 1826-1898), Mary (ca. 1828-?), and Ann (ca. 1831-1857), with an acre of land in three contiguous blocks along the south side of King Street. Mary Bennett’s property was the middle of these three blocks. At some point that unfortunately remains obscure, this block made its way into the hands of her sister Emily, and Emily sold the part of the lot where 19 King Street West now stands to Frank Leslie Webb (1863-1937) on 31 March 1898.
Webb was a Colborne barrister who never lived on the property. He sold it in quick order (11 May 1898) to Abram A. Gould (1842-1932). Gould was a schoolteacher, born and raised in Cramahe. He married Emma Nichols (1848-1921) in Colborne in 1867. In 1871 the Goulds were living in Haldimand Twp., in 1881 they were in Sidney, Hastings Co., and by 1891 they were back in Colborne, where they stayed for the rest of their lives. They had five children: George Wilbur (1868-1895), Albert Isaac (1870-1948), William Ewart (1873-1958), Orloff Egerton (1876-?), and Ada Luella (1885-?). All of these childen except Luella were living with their parents in 1891. Only Luella was with them in 1901 (where was Luella in 1891?). So it is impossible to say who was living with them when their father bought the property at 19 King Street West.
Gould owned the property through the 1921 cut-off.
Who was the builder? It seems fairly certain that the Goulds lived on the property: the 1911 census lists their address as “King Street”. But was the house there before they bought the lot in 1898, or did Abram Gould have it built? Webb bought the property for $162.50 and sold it for only $225. This makes it look like Gould probably was responsible for the house, likely shortly after 1898.
