A History of Simcoe County, 2 Vols. 1909 (First complete edition by Andrew. F. Hunter) (on CD)

Cat No.:   CA0234: (See also product CA0234-DL for this "book" as a downloadable file and save the mailing cost.)

Quite aside from being a well researched and fascinating history of this important county of (now) Ontario the work itself has an interesting history.  The author Andrew. F. Hunter published its first incarnation as a series of weekly articles, in the Barrie Examiner, between October, 1889 and February 1891. This first public airing brought forth a number of criticisms and corrections but the author had no immediate plans to republish so the history remained uncorrected.  Some 17 years later The County Council resolved to sponsor the production of a history of the county and agreed to take the Author's original work as its core.  What is contained in this 2 volume book is the direct result of that project, with the earlier corrections made, some parts of the original expunged and the remainder expanded by some five times. It occupies a total of 658 pages including 97 pages of engraved illustrations which were first added in this edition.

Published as two volumes the history divides naturally into main topics, these being Public Affairs and A Record of Pioneers. We are only offering this digital republication as a single CD in the combined 2 volume format on the principal that the story of the County results from the combination of both histories.

Volume 1 starts the history before the presence of European interlopers was seen and rapidly progresses through the era of the fur trappers and missionaries. It gets into more detailed, during the 1812 war, when military based expeditions were made into the territory in a effort to forestall US forces from sneaking up on the settlement at York from the rear by landing their forces from Georgian Bay.  The combination of the military traffic and the observation of the agricultural potential of the territory initiated a rapid settlement and soon townships are being planned and farming and town lots are being settled.

Along with the increase in population came all the trappings of civilization and Hunter takes careful note of the formation of such institutions as Local Government, Postal Service, Railways, Schools, Churches, Industry, etc.

Thus Volume 1 tells the history of the County in terms of the development of its structure and infrastructure.  In this volume little attention has been paid to the individual settlers except in as much as they are an integral part of this structural development. 

Volume 2 retells the history concentrating on the individuals, recounting their stories in an order based on their place of first settlement and giving extra attention to those who made contributions to public service, such as serving on the local council, etc. In addition to these countless individual histories the author has undertaken to provide an appendix in which he constructs a list - effectively a directory - of the names of all the Patent Grantees, the actual pioneers who took part in the county's settlement, before 1837. This list alone accounts for some 1,800 settler's names and identifies their settlement property by area, lot and concession.

This is a comprehensive and detailed account of the history of the County and is a must have for anyone researching their heritage in Simcoe.  The entire text has been carefully processed to make it fully computer searchable and the search speed has been enhanced by our FastFind technology.

NOTE:  Since both volumes were published in the original hardcopy with page numbers starting at page 1, in this digital edition we have included the volume number with the electronic page number for every page as in: 1 - 1 to 2 - 323.

You can also reach the Sampler by clicking on the following link Sampler

You can return to this page by closing the Sampler Page when you are ready to purchase.

No. of CDs is:  1 ;   Format is:  PDF ;   Searchable?:  YES;

FastFind:  Yes;  ISBN No.:   978-1-897405-46-8 ;