These were a local off-shoot of the Society of Friends, the followers of Mr. David Willson, who had his headquarters at Sharon, in Whitchurch, where he had built a "Temple," a large wooden structure, painted white, and resembling a high-piled house of cards. Periodically he deemed it proper to make a demonstration in town. His disciples and friends, dressed in their best, mounted their waggons and solemnly passed down Yonge Street, and then on through some frequented thoroughfare of York to a place previously announced, where the prophet would preach. His topic was usually "Public Affairs: their Total Depravity."
The text of all of Willson's homilies might, in effect, be the following mystic sentence, extracted from the popular periodical, already quoted—Patrick Swift's Almanac: "The backwoodsman, while he lays the axe to the root of the oak in the forests of Canada, should never forget that a base basswood is growing in this his native land, which, if not speedily girdled, will throw its dark shadows over the country, and blast his best exertions. Look up, reader, and you will see the branches—the Robinson branch, the Powell branch, the Jones branch, the Strachan branch, the Boulton twig, &c. The farmer toils, the merchant toils, the labourer toils, and the Family Compact reap the fruit of their exertions." (Almanac for 1834.)
Into all the points here suggested Mr. Willson would enter with great zest. When waxing warm in his discourse, he would sometimes, without interrupting the flow of his words, suddenly throw off his coat and suspend it on a nail or pin in the wall, waving about with freedom, during the residue of his oration, a pair of sturdy arms, arrayed, not indeed in the dainty lawn of a bishop, but in stout, well-bleached American Factory. His address was divided into sections, between which "hymns of his own composing" were sung by a company of females dressed in white, sitting on one side, accompanied by a band of musical instruments on the other.
Considerable crowds assembled on these occasions: and once a panic arose as preaching was going on in the public room of Lawrence's hotel: the joists of the floor were heard to crack; a rush was made to the door, and several leaped out of the windows.—A small brick school-house on Berkeley Street was also a place where Willson sometimes sought to get the ear of the general public.—Captain Bonnycastle, in "Canada as it Was, Is, and May Be," i. 285, thus discourses of David Willson, in a strain somewhat too severe and satirical; but his words serve to show opinions which widely prevailed at the time he wrote: "At a short distance from Newmarket," the Captain says, "which is about three miles to the right of Yonge Street, near its termination at the Holland Landing, on a river of that name running into Lake Simcoe, is a settlement of religious enthusiasts, who have chosen the most fertile part of Upper Canada, the country near and for miles round Newmarket, for the seat of their earthly tabernacle. Here numbers of deluded people have placed themselves under the temporal and spiritual charge of a high priest, who calls himself David. His real name is David Willson. The Temple (as the building appropriated to the celebration of their rites is called,) is served by this man, who affects a primitive dress, and has a train of virgin-ministrants clothed in white. He travels about occasionally to preach at towns and villages, in a waggon, followed by others, covered with white tilt-cloths; but what his peculiar tenets are beyond that of dancing and singing, and imitating David the King, I really cannot tell, for it is altogether too farcical to last long: but Mr. David seems to understand clearly, as far as the temporal concerns of his infatuated followers go, that the old-fashioned signification of meum and tuum are religiously centered in his own sanctum. It was natural that such a field should produce tares in abundance."
The following notice of the "Children of Peace" occurs in Patrick Swift's Almanac for 1834, penned, probably, with an eye to votes in the neighbourhood of Sharon, or Hope, as the place is here called. "This society," the Almanac reports, "numbers about 280 members in Hope, east of Newmarket. They have also stated places of preaching, at the Old Court House, York, on Yonge Street, and at Markham. Their principal speaker is David Willson, assisted by Murdoch McLeod, Samuel Hughes, and others. Their music, vocal and instrumental, is excellent, and their preachers seek no pay from the Governor out of the taxes."
On week-days, Willson was often to be seen, like any other industrious yeoman, driving into town his own waggon, loaded with the produce of his farm; dressed in home-spun, as the "borel folk" of Yonge Street generally were: in the axis of one eye there was a slight divergency.—The expression "Family Compact" occurring above, borrowed from French and Spanish History, appears also in the General Report of Grievances, in 1835, where this sentence is to be read: "The whole system [of conducting Government without a responsible Executive] has so long continued virtually in the same hands, that it is little better than a family compact." p. 43. (In our proposed perambulation of Yonge Street we shall have occasion to speak again of David Willson.)
After the Court House Square came the large area attached to St. James' Church, to the memories connected with which we shall presently devote some space; as also to those connected with the region to the north, formerly the play-ground of the District Grammar School, and afterwards transformed into March Street and its purlieus.
At the corner on the south side of King Street, just opposite the Court House, was the clock-and-watch-repairing establishment of Mr. Charles Clinkenbroomer. To our youthful fancy, the general click and tick usually to be heard in an old-fashioned watchmaker's place of business, was in some sort expressed by the name Clinkunbroomer. But in old local lists we observe the orthography of this name to have been Klinkenbrunner, which conveys another idea. Mr. Clinkenbroomer's father, we believe, was attached to the army of General Wolfe, at the taking of Quebec.
In the early annals of York numerous Teutonic names are observable. Among jurymen and others, at an early period, we meet with Nicholas Klinkenbrunner, Gerhard Kuch, John Vanzantee, Barnabas Vanderburgh, Lodowick Weidemann, Francis Freder, Peter Hultz, Jacob Wintersteen, John Shunk, Leonard Klink, and so on.