The Henry Farm community in Toronto has a direct link to the pioneering Mulholland family that was featured in two posts last week on Snippets of History.
The Henry Farm neighbourhood is located on land at Sheppard and Leslie, originally bought by Irish immigrant Henry Mulholland and his wife Jane in 1806. Henry sold the land in the 1814 and moved further west, to land between Bathurst and Dufferin. Henry was lost at sea in 1832 after a return trip to Ireland and one of his sons, Thomas Mulholland, took over that farm.
George Stewart Henry, a dairy farmer and great-grandson of the settler couple, acquired the original land in 1898 and lived there until his death in 1958, at which time the property was sold and subdivided.
The home he lived in is known as Oriole Lodge, located on today at 17 Manorpark Court. It was built around 1840 and expanded in 1912. It is a private residence, but there is a Heritage Toronto plaque out front.
The Henry Mulholland cairn, just down the street on Manorpark Court, was built by the family in 1937. I was expecting a small cairn, but it’s actually quite substantial! It is on a beautiful piece of parkland, overlooking a ridge that leads down to a tributary of the Don River. The cairn says that Henry died in 1833 but the family headstone at Mount Pleasant, though he isn’t actually buried there, says 1832.
George S. Henry was the 10th Premier of Ontario, from 1930 to 1934, and a nearby high school in the Graydon Hall area is named after him.
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