How The Vickerage Got its Name

The spelling of the name of the house reflects its builder as you will see from the following history.

Lot 146, the land where the houses known as 86 and 90 Moir Street now stand, was first recorded in 1859, owned by Charles Allan of Elmira. It appears to be one of about 25 lots he owned. The Lot seems to have been vacant, at least with no dwelling, until after his death in 1868. At that point, Charles Scott made an agreement with Grace Walmsley, Charles Allan’s daughter, and her husband David Lewis Walmsley, to purchase Lot 146 for $180 to be paid over a period of four years. It would appear that Charles Scott did not meet his obligation because, in 1872, Thomas Vickers purchased Lot 146 from the Walmsleys for $175. Through the 1870s, Vickers acquired other lots around the original lot. Was there already a building on that lot in 1872? We don’t know that yet and we may never know. The assessment records for the years between 1868 and 1890 were lost and the deeds are very hard to read.

Bits of 90 Moir Street folklore abound! Indian arrowheads were found in the 1940s when the current rock gardens were built. Apparently the lot was a gravel pit for a while. This is substantiated by the fact that the properties on either side of 90 Moir both are at higher elevation. Furthermore, it would explain why the property stood vacant for several years, then produced “a stone building”. It was supposed to have been a print shop at some time. Whose? It was definitely a barn at one point: barn doors were found in the front when renovations were made in the 1980s.

We do know that in 1872, the year he bought Lot 146, Mr. Vickers, a house carpenter and stair builder who had been an apprentice to a clockmaker in Yorkshire, England, was living at 62 Melville Street across from the former Elora Public School. He had built his all-wood house there in 1853, three years after his marriage. In 1860, he had a new building constructed downtown, in 1861 a porch added to it, and in 1865, after further extensions, it became the Royal Hotel. Tom and his “Scotch” wife, Jessie Forbes, were the first owners of the Royal Hotel but by 1863 there were advertisements in the local paper for the sale of the hotel and the house on Melville Street. In the same year, according to the paper, Vickers built a “country residence” for himself, one storey high, made of concrete with a stone foundation, 46 by 54 feet, a balsam grove in the rear. We don’t know where this “country residence” was located. He sold the Royal Hotel to his brother Francis somewhere between 1869 and 1871. The Royal Hotel was not particularly successful and had numerous owners through the 1870s. Today, it houses two stores and the Legion Hall.

When were the two stone houses on Lot 146 built? There may or may not have been a building on either lot in 1868. Logically, it would seem that the east-side building was first and the west-side building was built later by Thomas Vickers. It would not make much sense for Mr.Vickers to buy the whole lot if it had a bigger house on the west, leave that house empty or rent it out, and live on the east side. Maybe he did!

Another consideration for dating the east-side building as pre-1875 is the fact that it is so close to the road; it actually encroaches on village land. Moir Street is not the kind of downtown street to warrant having the front door so close to the street even though property lines were quite casual in those days. No other house on the street is sited so close. Therefore, either it was built as a house before the sidewalks were built or, if built after the 1875 census, it would more likely have been a utility building, perhaps a farm building or a building associated with the gravel pit. Since earliest references are to a dwelling, it is probable that Thomas Vickers built the house between 1872 and 1875. The fact that the west-side house is not a particularly large house seems to confirm our theory that Thomas Vickers started on Moir Street in the “smaller” house and built the “larger” house for himself and his wife and a third person in a nicer house next door. Curiosity lingers about the third person, but from the voting records over the years, Tom and Jessie Vickers had tenants and opened their doors to at least one orphan girl, later listed as a domestic. (A Vickers child might have died in infancy, in 1851, according to an old gravestone, difficult to read, but there does not seem to be any other record of their children.)

In the 1875 directory of Elora, Thomas Vickers’ address was given as Chalmers Street, so we can assume he lived in some sort of house there on one part of Lot 146, at the corner of Chalmers and Moir Streets. Looking through the voting records, some of which are missing, we know that in 1885, Adam McDonald was an occupant on this lot; in 1889, John Beck rented; in 1893, Martha Short was an occupant on the east side and Thomas Vickers lived on the west side; in 1894, William Murphy rented; in 1897, William Short owned the west part and George Short, clerk, was an occupant; in 1899, Louis Fallis, a teacher, was an occupant.

In 1890, we know that Thomas Vickers and his wife and a third person, probably a tenant, judging from the assessment records, lived on the east part of Lot 144,146, 1/10 acre, with a horse. The value of the property was $250. The next year Mr. Vickers added a cow, a dog and two hogs. In 1893, he moved to the west part of 144/146 on 3/10 acre, the value of the property was $1000, and he had only a cow and a horse. This move tends to prove the theory that he moved from a smaller house to a larger house, that is from 90 to 86 Moir Street, all the time owning the entire property. However, he may have started out on the west side and with his decreasing circumstances moved to the smaller east side and rented out the first. The voting records help us a bit and seem to show that even by 1885 Mr. and Mrs. Vickers were living at 90 Moir Street, with a tenant. At the same time, Mr. Vickers still owned several lots.

Jessie Vickers died in 1893. In 1894 Tom sold 86 Moir Street, which at that time held the “larger” house, to William Short. In 1901,Thomas Vickers sold off 90 Moir Street, the “smaller” house, to George Deans, who owned the property till 1902. Then, according to the land records in Guelph, the lengthy list of owners of 90 Moir Street begins: 1902-1906, Cassie, labourer; 1906, Gerrie; 1906-1911, Shaw; 1911-1917, Clegg; 1917-1943, Henderson; 1943-1979, Howard; 1979-1988, Carruthers; 1988-1997, McPherson; 1997-present, Brown.

Both houses have had extensive changes over the years. 90 Moir Street has had numerous configurations: the “front door” in different places, a side porch, a barn door in the front, a garage on the west side, three bedrooms upstairs rather than two, the staircase in at least two other places before the current position from the library to the second storey. Locally, it is thought to have been an outbuilding for the larger house on the west side as if 90 Moir were built to be part of 86 Moir instead of being built before 86 Moir. In 1979, the entire house was essentially gutted, and complete renovations were made. The original cistern is under the patio. The design for this extensive renovation was one of the first commissions of John David Edison, the brother of Noel Edison, the artistic director of the Elora Festival. The original floors were maintained and the thick stone walls are evidenced in the windows in the current library, dining room, passages to the living room and upstairs bedroom. The library was designed so that the view from the front hall into the library was the way the designer remembered, as a child, looking into his own father’s library in Toronto. In the late 1980s the new addition was built, complementing the original stone building and its renovations, and the sunken garden was professionally designed. In 1999, a small nook was cut into the west wall of the dining room to reveal the original stone building after peeling off old wallpaper, plaster and parget.

In researching the history of our home, we have learned more about a man than we have about a house! Thomas Vickers’ obituary was on the front page of the Elora newspaper on August 12, 1903. He died August 10, 1903, age 76, after spending two weeks at a nephew’s house in Garafraxa, two years after selling 90 Moir Street. He seemed to have lost interest in living and the newspaper reported that he had no one to care for him. He had been admitted to the House of Industry and Refuge in June 1903, a destitute old carpenter. The seventh child of the eight children of Francis Vickers and Mary Brook, Thomas Vickers had lived 59 years in Elora, a well-known and well-liked man, “a Liberal in politics and Presbyterian in religion”. However, in the utter honesty of reporting of the day, one sentence read, in part, “…nor was he ambitious to make more than a living. His relatives have little to divide amongst them.” Certainly, he had no land left.

Who knows what dreams Tom Vickers had when he arrived in Elora so long ago? He played in a brass band, was an avid curler, had been a partner in a general store, and owned and operated a hotel. He and his wife were known for their entertaining and opening their doors to everyone. The newspaper article in 1863 which praised the construction of another house Vickers built for $300 as his “country residence”, invited people to “picnic parties next summer”. Jessie Vickers was a seamstress and an excellent hostess but, unfortunately, Tom was not a good businessman. They left no house, no land, no photos, no artifacts, nothing. And they appear to have left no descendants.

As Tom and Jessie Vickers opened their doors to tenants, boarders, and friends, were known for their hospitality, and even operated the Royal Hotel in Elora, we have opened our home as a Bed and Breakfast. To remember the forgotten Thomas Vickers and the last house he owned, we have named our house “The Vickerage”.