THE HISTORY
The history of the Devereaux House and farm
The land
The Town of Halton Hills is located on the Treaty Lands and Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, as well as the traditional territory of the Huron-Wendat and the Haudenosaunee peoples.
The land on which Devereaux House sits is a small part of a vast territory that provided food and clothing and home building materials for thousands of Indigenous people. People that had, for thousands of years, inhabited this rich fertile land which we now call Halton Hills. They lived in villages and towns of longhouses made of elm and birch bark. They practised intensive agriculture, grew corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers. They would have been able to provide the bulk of their food requirements through agriculture. It is quite possible that they worked the very land that Elijah Devereaux later farmed. They fished the Credit River and Silver Creek for their rich bounties of salmon and trout, and they hunted game in the forests. They trapped fur bearing animals to provide them with warm clothing.
Treaty and settlement
The Ajetance Treaty was signed in October 1818 by representatives of the Crown and the resident Anishinaabe People. The treaty ceded the land we now call Halton Hills to the Crown. The treaty was named for the Chief of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.
Esquesing Township was surveyed in 1819 into plots of land for settlement and European settlers started to migrate up from the Lake Ontario shore to settle and clear the land for agriculture.
Elijah William Devereaux purchased his first 100 acres on the corner of the 7th Line (now called Trafalgar Road) and 17th Sideroad, from William Facer on July 16, 1832. The land would have been covered in a dense forest of pine and hardwoods like elm, ash, and walnut trees. The land was part of Concession VII, Lot 18, North Esquesing township in Halton County. Elijah and his wife Elizabeth Cross would have spent untold hours felling trees with axes and slowly converting the primeval forest into arable land. Over the next 20 years Elijah and Elizabeth acquired another 100 acres to the west, giving them all the land along the 17th Sideroad from the 7th Line west to the 6th Line.
Home building
Much like the Indigenous people before them, they built a home from the trees they felled on the property. Their log house served as the family home for the growing Devereaux family for about 30 years. It is likely that the log house remained on site as an outbuilding for the farm for some time.The growing population of Georgetown provided a ready market for the crops and products that Elijah and his family harvested from the land. Elijah and Elizabeth’s family prospered, and they invested their profits into the building of a new home, made from bricks, probably from local kilns at Terra Cotta and Milton.
The large family moved out of their log home and into their new 1000 square foot farmhouse in the mid 1860s. The home included a single common upper bedroom, large living space with cook stove, two side rooms and cellar with a rubble foundation. A new front addition was completed about 1880. This addition, a grand red and yellow brick, story and a half, Ontario Gothic building, faced the 7th Line. It contained four new bedrooms, a grand entrance, two front parlours and a reading/sewing room that made the house more comfortable for the family and live-in farm hands.
Over the next 100 years very few changes were made to the house. Many of the original features such as the trim, flooring and exterior brickwork have been restored and are visible today. When Elijah passed on in 1883, the house and the east 100 acres were bequeathed to his son Walter George Devereaux, while the western 100 acres were bequeathed to another son, James Allan Devereaux. Today, part of James Devereaux’s land, is the Devereaux Cemetery.
Walter lived in this house with his wife Mary Brown and their four children: Elsie, Laura, William and John “Jack”. Elsie and Laura Devereaux, married and moved into Georgetown.
Jack Devereaux was the last family member to live in the home. A lifelong bachelor, Jack operated the farm until his death in 1972. Over the next 25 years the home passed through several owners and the house became very run down.The Town of Halton Hills purchased the farm in 1999, and began transforming the land into a sports field complex. An engineering assessment indicated that the house was unsafe for habitation and a demolition permit was issued.
Rescue and restoration
In 2005, a new grass roots volunteer organization, the Friends of Devereaux House, petitioned Halton Hills Town Council to preserve the building. Heritage assessments indicated that Devereaux House was "an exceptional and unique example of a simple High Victorian Farmhouse". A four year restoration effort concluded with a grand reopening in 2009.
In 2013, Devereaux House was designated as an historic site under the Ontario Heritage Act. The future of Devereaux House and Farm, a future of use and enjoyment for the people of Halton Hills, was secured.
