(Map of Brantford)

After General Haldimand, Governor of the Province of Quebec, awarded the Grand River grant to the Six Nations Confederacy, Iroquois people built a village at a site at the Grand River near where the Royal Chapel of the Mohawks is now located. The government, in fact, built the chapel for the Six Nations in 1785 to replace the Royal Chapel at Fort Hunter in the Mohawk Valley, which had been lost as a result of the Revolutionary War. To build the chapel, Joseph Brant called upon two old friends from the Mohawk Valley, John Smith and John Thomas. For their help, he gave them land nearby. Smith's grant was in today's North Ward of Brantford and Thomas' grant was in Cainsville.

It was Brant's goal that Smith and Thomas would also give the Iroquois the benefit of their farming knowledge. Before the Revolutionary War, Iroquois men had led a life of hunting and fighting. Brant realized that this lifestyle would have to be replaced with one of farming. But he knew that this would be difficult for Iroquois men to do because it had been done previously by the women. Someone would be needed to show the men how to farm. Brant encouraged other friends to settle on the Grand River by giving them grants. People like the Nelles and Young families from the Mohawk Valley moved to the Grand River. But settlement near the Six Nations' village did not occur until later.

The person considered the first white settler in Brantford was John Stalts, who in 1805 built a log cabin where the War memorial is now located, at the west end of Dalhousie (pronounced daLOOZie) Street. This was on the farm of Mohawk chief John Hill. However, Stalts was not overrun with neighbours because by 1818 the population had swelled to twelve people. There was a thriving village nearby at Mount Pleasant but not here. It wasn't until the Hamilton and London Road was completed in 1823 that things began to pick up. Early settlers included William Sutton, the Wilkes family consisting of John and his two sons, John and James, Nathen Gage, Reuben Leonard, and Arunah Huntington. Dutton bought the western half of Chief Hill's farm and John Wilkes Sr. bought the eastern half.

John Aston Wilkes was a merchant from Birmingham in England. He started his business in York (Toronto) in 1820 and in 1822 sent his sons John and James to Brantford to open up a branch store to trade with the Iroquois. The branch was so successful that it became the tree; John Sr. sold up in York and moved to Brantford. At that time the population of Brantford was less than 100 white people.

One of the sideshoots of Wilkes' business was a distillery, which he built in 1830 on his land, which extended from the Market Place to Waterworks Creek, near Clarence Street, and included Colborne, Dalhousie, and Darling Streets. The next year, William Kerby built a competing distillery on the bank of the river near Church Street. The booze business must have been good because, in 1832, William Spencer built a brewery on the west side of the river near St Mary's Lane.

Marshal Lewis, from New York State, built the first bridge over the Grand River near his mill, which was near the present Mill Street. Lewis was one of two men who tried to name the town after themselves. By 1826 or 1827, the town had grown big enough for a formal name. At a gathering of about two hundred people, Lewis suggested that the town be named Lewisville. Robert Biggar, who lived at Mount Pleasant but owned a tract of land just west of West Street, put forward the name Biggar's Town. John Wilkes Sr. wanted it named Birmingham after his home town in England. Thankfully, someone mentioned that, as it was near where Brant had established a ford over the river, perhaps the town should be named Brant's Ford. This was unanimously accepted. The exact location of Brant's Ford is in dispute but it is close to the Lorne Bridge, which replaced an earlier bridge built by Robert Biggar in 1827.

The downtown area looks very different from 150 years ago. Then a small stream called the Cove made an island of the land where the casino and Earl Haig Park are now. The Cove has been filled in and is now under Icomm Drive. Two streets north of the Cove are still called Water Street and Wharfe Street, recognizing their role when Brantford was a port.

The Grand River Navigation Company cut a canal from the Grand River near Cainsville to Brantford, where it followed the line of Greenwich Street. From the completion of the canal in 1849 to the company's bankruptcy in 1861, Brantford could be reached by river and canal from Lake Erie and, through the Welland Canal, Lake Ontario. The western end of the canal has been filled in to form Shallow Creek Park but the rest of the canal can still be seen. The remains of one of the locks can be seen where Locks Road crosses the canal at Beach Road.

Places to see in Brantford are:

• St Paul's, Her Majesty's Chapel of the Mohawks

  Chapel of the Mohawks

  When Joseph Brant's grandfather and the three other Mohawk "Kings" travelled to England to meet Queen Anne, they asked for two things: that she send missionaries to their people, and that she forbid the sale of liquor to their people. She complied with the first request and gave money for a chapel to be built in the Mohawk Valley. She also gave a Bible and some communion plate.

  After the Revolutionary War, the Mohawks lost their land in the Mohawk Valley and settled on land given to them by order of Sir Frederick Haldimand. Haldimand also arranged for a replacement to be built for the Mohawk Chapel abandoned in the Mohawk Valley. This is the chapel named St Paul's, Her Majesty's Chapel of the Mohawks. It is the oldest Protestant church in Ontario and the only Royal chapel outside the United Kingdom. The communion plate given by Queen Anne was divided between the Mohawks of the Grand River and those of the Bay of Quinte. Until 1970, the Bible and plate were used during regular services but now are kept in safekeeping.

• Echo Villa, 743 Colborne Street

  Echo Villa

  Peter Jones, the son of the famous surveyor Augustus Jones and his "unofficial" Mississauga wife, Tuhbenahneequay, was raised by his mother alone, because his father already had an "official" Mohawk wife. In 1816, when Peter was 14, the Mississauga band with whom Peter was living was on the point of starvation so Augustus took Peter and brother John into his home. Peter and John were educated and learned Mohawk and English. In 1823, Peter had an emotional conversion to Christianity and this changed his whole life. He dedicated himself to helping his Mississauga people, eventually becoming chief.

  On a trip to England, during which he met Queen Victoria, he also met Eliza Field, the daughter of a wealthy soap and candle manufacturer. Despite great opposition, they married in 1843 and lived at the Credit River mission where Peter worked. In 1851, the Mohawks offered land to the Mississaugas, and the Jones family moved to Brantford. They built this fine brick home, Echo Villa, and were finally able to use the furniture and other goods that Eliza had brought to Canada. Their happiness was only to last another five years because Peter died in 1856, worn out from his years of effort on behalf of his people.

  The house is a classical revival, 1½-storey brick building, with a Palladian window in the small gable above the front door.

• Wynarden or Yates' Castle, Wynarden Crt

Wynarden or Yates Castle

Henry Yates was one of the founders of the Great West Railway and when it became a success, he became very wealthy. He decided that he was going to build his dream home, a Tudor villa. This he built in 1864 and named it Wynarden. It was as fine inside as out, with ornate ceilings, speaking trumpets, dumb waiters, a ventilation system, and bathrooms with hot and cold water. The locals called it Yates' Castle.

• Brant County Courthouse, 80 Wellington Street

  Brant County Courthouse

  The architect who designed Yates' Castle was John Turner. One of Turner's earlier works was the Brant County Courthouse, built in 1852. That classical revival building comprised the central section of the present building on Wellington Street, the wings having been added in 1861.

• Myrtleville, 191 Balmoral Drive

  Myrtleville

  This beautiful frame house, now a Heritage Canada property, was built by Allen Good in 1838. Good was an Irish banker who immigrated to Canada in 1836. After an argument with Peter McGill, head of the Bank of Montreal, Good's banking career came to an end just before the 1837 Rebellion and the family moved to Brantford where they built this house. When the house was built, the outside was stuccoed, but thirty years later the stucco was covered by clapboard. It is a large house with a kitchen, parlour, and bedroom on the ground floor, and four more bedrooms upstairs. When the family gave the house to Heritage Canada, they included many of the family treasures.

• Bell Homestead, 94 Tupelo Heights Drive

  Bell Homestead

  Originally built for Robert Morton in 1858, this house will be forever associated with the great Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone and much more. His father, Melville, brought his family to Canada to rescue young Graham from tuberculosis, which had already taken two of his brothers. They bought this house and Graham lived here for a year before moving to Boston, returning here every summer. Here in 1874, he showed his father what he had discovered while he had been performing experiments with electricity. During that summer, he developed the concept of the telephone.

  The house has changed somewhat since Bell lived here. Erosion of the cliff on which the house was built forced the house to be moved about eighty feet from its original location. At the time of the move, it was placed over a basement, and the fancy latticework was added to the porch. Two main features of the house, the French doors from the porch and the central gable over the porch, are original.

  Henderson House

  Next door to the Bell Homestead is the Henderson House. It was originally in downtown Brantford and was the home of the Rev. Thomas Henderson, who had encouraged the Bell family to move to Brantford. In 1877, he became the first telephone general agent in Canada, working from this building as his office. He left this building in 1880 to join the new Bell Canada in Montreal.

• Oak Bank, 71 Gilkison Street

  Oak Bank

  When he returned to Canada in 1832, Captain William Gilkison bought a farm on the west bank of the Grand River. Here he built this simple, 1½-storey frame house, from which he had a spectacular view both up and down the river. The original roughcast finish over the frame has been covered by siding.

• William Kerby Residence, 10 Scarfe Street

  Kerby House

  Kerby House as it used to be

  William Kerby was a leading businessman in the early years in Brantford. He ran a distillery and a mill on the east bank of the Grand River near his house. Originally the house stood on Dumfries Street (now Brant Avenue) until Scarfe Avenue was cut through the property. As a result, the front of the house became the north side and lost its verandah and the circular drive that led from Brant Avenue to the house. The house is believed to date from 1855. The aluminum siding covers a roughcast finish on a frame structure.

• Albion Street

  55 Albion Street

  The area around Albion Street in what was the tract given to John Smith by Joseph Brant contains many houses dating from before 1852. These are not big houses like Myrtleville; they are mostly small, 1½-storey homes built by artisans and tradesmen. Typical are: the R. Salsbury house at 18; the T. Charlton house at 34; the Robert Peel house at 54; the pretty house across the street at 55; the house of Thomas Callis, a carpenter, at 82; the 1837 John Maxwell house across the street at 81; and the R. Gripton house at 154 Albion. All of these houses appear in the map of 1852 and you can see information about them and others in the Brantford Heritage Building database, accessible from Heritage Inventory on the Brantford City site at www.city.brantford.on.ca. Select Heritage Inventory from the Residents menu.