Survey of Warner Nelles Tract

Title searcher, Penny Plunket Dmyterko, describing the 1844 Warner Nelles Tract to the York Grand River Historical Society. Conveyed from the Crown in 1836, the Warner Nelles Tract was then surveyed and sold off in parcels.

Tomorrow: The strange story of the historic map that was missing for generations.

Photo: Courtesy Neil Dring, The Grand River Sachem, Caledonia, Ontario.

(The Village of York is located between Caledonia and Cayuga ~ on the Grand River)

Clearing the Land ~ Pioneer Haldimand

Dense bush or forest was all the pioneers in Haldimand had to work with when they arrived. John A. Turnbull describes a stump fence that defined his Grandfather's farm property-line.
"I remember one fence made of the biggest pines I ever saw. Some of the roots stood in the air all of twelve feet and were fully as wide. The underside was cut off close to the stump so it rested flat on the ground. It stayed there without much repair for all of seventy or eighty years.

"I know little about stumping but a green stump of some of the large trees must have presented a problem to those old country men who for the most part were factory employees before coming to the new country. Bees ~ gatherings of neighbours working together ~ were common.

"The stumping machines were of a three-legged variety. The legs made of pine trees. The lower end rested on a large slide made from half a log fitted to the foot of the pole or leg. The top end of the three legs was capped with a large cast iron header through which a large screw -- probably three inches in diameter -- and a large hardwood pole which reached the ground outside the legs was mounted. Men dug the hard earth away from the roots. A horse hitched to the end of the pole circled the stumper thus raising and pulling the stump."
John A. Turnbull (1890 - 1975) third generation Seneca Twp., Haldimand