KAWARTHA LAKES-In 1844, Mossom Boyd married Caroline Dunsford in a borrowed suit and these newly-weds moved into a cottage overlooking Big Bob Channel that had been built for his employer, Thomas Need, who by then had returned to England. “The walls in it were stone, about two feet thick and it was just one room, one storey.” As his family and his business grew, so did the Big House, one wing at a time. With its final additions in the 1890s, ‘the Big House’ comprised 35 rooms, with 17 fireplaces. Being built by a lumber family, much of this three storey structure was stacked lumber. “They were rough milled 1x4s, and they were about 1 1/8 thick and 4 ¼ wide. A spike was driven through them, and then they were plastered. At one time I have been told there were 60 people living at a time in the house. The Anglican minister used to live there for years, before the manse was built by the Anglican Church. Business people used to come down here, with horse and carriage to stay with them. They had a staff that lived upstairs, I think there were three rooms there for the staff—some were Chinese.”
“The kitchen was not fancy. It had copper sinks. The water was stored in a great big tank (it is in my backyard) and the water was pumped in to another big, square slate tank on the third floor that made the pressure in the water.” Built before there was electricity, this system allowed for running water. “The house was heated with hot water through radiators. The panelling is all pine. The only thing in the house that was not pine was a fireplace in a small anteroom. One day there was a farm near here that had a cherry fireplace mantle. Mrs. Boyd knew that it was going to be torn down so she bought the fireplace and had it put in the small anteroom. Everything else in the house was pine from their own mill. In the big anteroom, there is a carpet on the floor that went right over a couch at the end of the room. The story I was told was that Misses Boyd went to England, saw the carpet and bought it, and when she came back with it, it was too big for the room. So instead of cutting it, she put it right over top of the couch. You had to sit on the carpet to sit on the couch. The walls had electrical fittings that were twelve volt—there must have been a battery charger. The wiring had lead casing. The copper wire was the plus and the lead casing was the minus. There were no closets in the house, there were just cases built later to hang the clothes in. The beds all had canopies over them. It had a library, “I think at one time it was called the smoking room, and it was not allowed for ladies.”
This story is part of our partnership with Maryboro Lodge, The Fenelon Falls Museum and was written by Glenn Walker.
If you want to make a donation to the museum, you can e-transfer to: [email protected] or mail a cheque to :
Maryboro Lodge Museum
Box 179
50 Oak Street
Fenelon Falls, ON
K0M 1N0
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