The History of the County of Brant, Ontario -1883

$21.00

Cat No.:   CA0378:

Full title: The history of the county of Brant, Ontario, containing a history of the county : its townships, cities, schools, churches, etc; general and local statistics; portraits of early settlers and prominent men; history of the Six nation Indians and Captain Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea); history of the Dominion of Canada, miscellaneous matters

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Warner, Beers & Co. are well know for compiling and publishing books which collected historical and contemporary information about an area and offered it for sale to the inhabitants of that area on a subscription basis, probably with assurances that the subscribers name would be forever immortalized in print within its covers. In this case the publishing house hired authors and researchers (too numerous to identify here) to collect information from all the sources they could find including; books and pamphlets, periodicals and newspapers (archives), church, civic and privately created records, obituary notices and memorial inscriptions, even from verbal “traditions”. In short, any source they could gain access to which promised to provide information about the events in Brant’s history. From even a cursory review of the contents it seems obvious that the “copy” collectors were instructed to concentrate on finding documents which, not only included the names of the people who instrumental in creating Brant’s history, but also those who just lived, and went about their business, here.

In addition they sought personal biographies from the inhabitants. Frequently these were provided in note form and were subsequently translated to more readable prose by the publisher. These were assembled into a Biographical section which comprises almost a third of the book’s page count and is estimated to contain almost 400 biographies.

The publisher claims that all material used was subject to authentication, but where such authentication could not be found they believed it better to publish than to exclude a potential “fact” for want of authentication. We believe this should be regarded as a literary form of “caveat emptor.”

The book opens with a relatively brief synopsis of the history of the Dominion of Canada and this is followed by a 60 page “history” of Chief Thayendanegea, the iconic native chief probably better know to us by his adopted “western” name - Joseph Brant. The connection with, and importance of, this man to this county is illustrated by his name being used to identify it.

In the third and fourth parts of the book - which, together comprise almost 50% of the text - lies the main body of the social and civic history of the county since the initial phases of settlement by non native immigrants in 1793. Even from the first few pages in this section the book is careful to include the full names of the individuals involved in each and every step along the way of the growth and development marking the history of the county. The third part is concerned with the development of the county as a whole and then moves along to concentrate on the city of Brantford. The fourth part takes the individual townships of Brantford, Burford, Onondaga, South Dumfries, the town of Paris and the township of Tuscarora as its subjects. The discussion of each being subdivided into a number of appropriate subjects.

The fifth, and final, part collects all of the biographical sketches gathered as described above.

Throughout, the book is illustrated with twenty nicely reproduced (i.e., non-photographic) portraits of local individuals whose positions and accomplishments are described in its text.  

All of the text in our digital version of this great book is computer searchable and the search speed is enhanced by the use of our FastFind technology.

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

FastFind:  Yes;  ISBN No.:   978-1-897405-99-4 ;