PREFACE

A permanent record of the life of Jesse Ketchum has long been needed.

There are few names in the records of the early history of Toronto more enduring or more endearing than that of this gentle yet forceful personality who, during the first half of the last century, gave such conspicuous service to the development of Toronto and its institutions.

Jesse Ketchum has been for many years a sort of legendary figure in the history of Toronto. He came to the City in 1799, five years after it was founded by Governor Simcoe, and lived there until 1845. These were the formative years in the life of the Province of Upper Canada and of the City, the period when sane judgment and unselfish service were most urgently needed, but of which, unfortunately, altogether too little were received.

Though essentially a man of peace he enlisted actively in the fight against arrogance and autocracy in public affairs. He was elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1828 and served as colleague and associate with William Lyon Mackenzie during the most colorful years of the battle with the Family Compact. He was associated with the founding of the first Public School in Toronto and also with the first Sunday school. He was the first Church unionist, anticipating by a full hundred years the great movement which during the present century has swept throughout the country; and during the past three-quarters of a century and more his name has been known to every generation of boys and girls because of the prize books bearing his name which are given from time to time in the Public and Sunday schools in Toronto. In Buffalo, where he lived for the last twenty-two years of his life, his name is held in quite as high esteem because of his benefactions in the interest of education.

This volume, however, aims to be something more than the story of one man’s life. It is an attempt to portray the period during which he lived, to recount the struggle to found a province and establish a system of government; and then, when it is found that the system thus set up is unsound, to tell of that still more important struggle, even to the length of resort to arms, for reconstruction on lines more in harmony with the principles of the British system.

The author is greatly indebted in the writing of this book to Mrs. George Burland Bull, of Orangeville, Ontario, a grand-daughter of Jesse Ketchum, for access to much interesting and valuable information relating to the Ketchum family which she has accumulated with industry and painstaking care. He wishes also to express grateful appreciation to M. O. Hammond, author of Canadian Footprints and Confederation and its Leaders, to E. S. Caswell, historian of the York Pioneers Society, and to A. F. Hunter, Secretary to the Ontario Historical Society, for advice and assistance.

In order to avoid the necessity for attaching an undue number of foot-notes, a bibliography is given of works consulted. These, with the volumes of the Journals of the House of Assembly and the fragmentary fyles of early newspapers of the Province preserved in the Toronto Public Library and Ontario Legislative Library, have furnished much of the material for this study.

Jesse Ketchum and his Times
By Ernest Jackson Hathaway (1929) (pdf)