Family History

Two Very Special Homes

As we read earlier, Martin Snider’s homestead in New Brunswick was large and comfortable, with several fireplaces, scrolled interior trim and handmade exterior clapboard.

When Martin's son, William, built a home for Nancy Cummer Snider and himself, it was designed in the popular Regency style; rather elegant for a farmhouse. Later, when the property was sold out of the family, additions created an even more elaborate Victorian-era dwelling. William’s house at 744 Duplex Avenue was listed on the City of Toronto Inventory of Heritage properties (1976) and designated under the Ontario Heritage Act (1979) for architectural reasons.

Meanwhile, around the same time that William was constructing his house, his brother Thomas also needed a new home. His farm house on Lot 4, Concession 2 West, facing what is now Bathurst Street, was also designed in the Regency style, often called an "Ontario Cottage".

An architect’s report of 1978 describes Thomas’s house as follows:

"This storey-and-a-half red brick house of rectangular plan, with its generously proportioned ground floor windows symmetrically placed in the front facade under a low-pitched hip roof with projecting eaves, sits on a rubble fieldstone foundation and has a full basement which is partitioned into three rooms by brick walls ...."

"The interior of the house remains little changed since it was built. All the baseboard mouldings, doors, mantels and hardware are intact and demonstrate a high degree of workmanship. Of special interest are the raised panels under the Venetian windows in the parlour and dining room. Each of these rooms contains a Regency fireplace and mantel with reeded and fluted pilasters, moulded cornice, brick hearth and a tall, narrow built-in chimney cupboard to one side.

"These principal main floor rooms, with their twelve-foot ceilings, impressive windows and finely executed mantle pieces present a very formal appearance and again, make this house more sophisticated than most common farm houses of the period."

The Thomas Snider House was endorsed by the Toronto Preservation Board on June 13 2000, and was designated to the Toronto Heritage Properties Inventory on October 5, 2000.

Thomas Snider was a Lieutenant in the Fort York Militia until his untimely death in September of 1856, leaving his widow, Catherine Grafton, with several young boys to raise. Fortunately, the eldest sons, Joshua and George, were twenty-three and twenty at the time of their father’s death, and were able to help their mother with the farm and family.

Only the Beginning (Family History continued)