Besides filling the conspicuous post indicated by his title, Mr. Secretary Jarvis was also the first Grand Master of the Masons in Upper Canada. The archives of the first Masonic Lodges of York possess much interest. Through the permission of Mr. Alfio de Grassi who has now the custody of them, we are enabled to give the following extracts from a letter of Mr. Secretary Jarvis, bearing the early date of March 28th, 1792:—"I am in possession of my sign manual from his Majesty," Mr. Jarvis writes on the day just named, from Pimlico, to his relative Munson Jarvis, at St. John, New Brunswick, "constituting me Secretary and Registrar of the Province of Upper Canada, with power of appointing my Deputies, and in every other respect a very full warrant. I am also" he continues, "very much flattered to be enabled to inform you that the Grand Lodge of England have within these very few days appointed Prince Edward, who is now in Canada, Grand Master of Ancient Masons in Lower Canada; and William Jarvis, Secretary and Registrar of Upper Canada, Grand Master of Ancient Masons in that Province. However trivial it may appear to you who are not a Mason, yet I assure you that it is one of the most honourable appointments that they could have conferred. The Duke of Athol is the Grand Master of Ancient Masons in England. Lord Dorchester with his private Secretary, and the Secretary of the Province, called on us yesterday," Mr. Jarvis proceeds to say, "and found us in the utmost confusion, with half a dozen porters in the house packing up. However his Lordship would come in, and sat down in a small room which was reserved from the general bustle. He then took Mr. Peters home with him to dine: hence we conclude a favourable omen in regard to his consecration, which we hope is not far distant. Mrs. Jarvis," the Secretary informs his relative, "leaves England in great spirits. I am ordered my passage on board the transport with the Regiment, and to do duty without pay for the passage only. This letter," he adds, "gets to Halifax by favour of an intimate friend of Mr. Peters, Governor Wentworth, who goes out to take possession of his Government. The ship that I am allotted to is the Henneker, Captain Winter, a transport with the Queen's Rangers on board."
The Prince Edward spoken of was afterwards Duke of Kent and father of the present Queen. Lord Dorchester was the Governor-General of the Province of Quebec before its division into Upper and Lower Canada. Mr. Peters was in posse the Bishop of the new Province about to be organized. It was a part of the original scheme, as shewn by the papers of the first Governor of Upper Canada, that there should be an episcopal see in Upper Canada, as there already was at Quebec in the lower province. But this was not carried into effect until 1839, nearly half a century later.
When Jarvis Street was opened up through the Secretary's park-lot, the family residence of his son Mr. Samuel Peters Jarvis, a handsome structure of the early brick era of York, in the line of the proposed thoroughfare, was taken down. Its interior fittings of solid black walnut were bought by Captain Carthew and transferred by him without much alteration to a house which he put up on part of the Deer-park property on Yonge Street.
A large fragment of the offices attached to Mr. Jarvis's house was utilized and absorbed in a private residence on the west side of Jarvis Street, and the gravel drive to the door is yet to be traced in the less luxuriant vegetation of certain portions of the adjoining flower gardens. Mr. Secretary Jarvis died in 1818. He is described by those who remember him, as possessing a handsome, portly presence. Col. Jarvis, the first military commandant in Manitoba, is a grandson of the Secretary.
Of Mr. McGill, first owner of the next park-lot, and of his personal aspect, we have had occasion to speak in connection with the interior of St. James' Church. Situated in fields at the southern extremity of a stretch of forest, the comfortable and pleasantly-situated residence erected by him for many years seemed a place of abode quite remote from the town. It was still to be seen in 1870 in the heart of McGill Square, and was long occupied by Mr. McCutcheon, a brother of the inheritor of the bulk of Mr. McGill's property, who in accordance with his uncle's will, and by authority of an Act of Parliament, assumed the name of McGill, and became subsequently well known throughout Canada as the Hon. Peter McGill.
(The founder of McGill College in Montreal was of a different family. The late Capt. James McGill Strachan derived his name from the marriage-connection of his father with the latter.)
In the Gazette and Oracle of Nov. 13th, 1803, we observe Mr. McGill, of York, advertising as "agent for purchases" for pork and beef to be supplied to the troops stationed "at Kingston, York, Fort George, Fort Chippewa, Fort Erie, and Amherstburg." In 1818 he is Receiver-General, and Auditor-General of land patents. He had formerly been an officer in the Queen's Rangers, and his name repeatedly occurs in "Simcoe's History" of the operations of that corps during the war of the American Revolution.
From that work we learn that in 1779 he, with the commander himself of the corps, then Lieut.-Col. Simcoe, fell into the hands of the revolutionary authorities, and was treated with great harshness in the common jail of Burlington, New Jersey; and when a plan was devised for the Colonel's escape, Mr. McGill volunteered, in order to further its success, to personate his commanding officer in bed, and to take the consequences, while the latter was to make his way out.
The whole project was frustrated by the breaking of a false key in the lock of a door which would have admitted the confined soldiers to a room where "carbines and ammunition" were stored away. Lieut.-Col. Simcoe, it is added in the history just named, afterwards offered Mr. McGill an annuity, or to make him Quartermaster of Cavalry; the latter, we are told, he accepted of, as his grandfather had been an officer in King William's army; and "no man," Col. Simcoe himself notes, "ever executed the office with greater integrity, courage and conduct."
The southern portion of Mr. McGill's park-lot has, in the course of modern events, come to be assigned to religious uses. McGill Square, which contained the old homestead and its surroundings, and which was at one period intended, as its name indicates, to be an open public square, was secured in 1870 by the Wesleyan Methodist body and made the site of its principal place of worship and of various establishments connected therewith.