Main Street Brussels
Introduction
Brussels officially became a village in 1872, however, it started out in 1855 as the village of Ainleyville. A post office named Dingle opened in 1856. Because of its waterpower and its location on the northern stage road between Seaforth and Wroxeter, the village was soon flourishing.
Thirty years earlier, in 1825, the Crown had purchased a 1-million acre parcel of land adjacent to Lake Huron, known as the Huron Tract, from the Chippewa First Nation. The Canada Company, a land company, was granted a royal charter on August 19, 1826 and proceeded with the sale of the land within the Huron Tract. The wedge of land between the northern limit of Canada Company land (along what is today Huron County Road 25) and the Indian territory to the north in Bruce County, remained Crown land, more familiarly known as the Queen’s Bush.
No one was encouraging settlement in this area that included Grey and Morris Townships and what is today Brussels. There was little effort made to survey the land. The government demanded settlers pay cash for land, while the Canada Company allowed settlers a 10-year period in which to pay. It wasn’t until after 1848 that settlers on Crown lands were allowed the 10-year pay period. The first settlers began to move into Morris Township in 1849 and 1850 and into Grey Township in 1852. It was not until 1854 that the Grey Township lots were officially put up for sale and settlers could obtain free title to the land.
William Ainlay, who was born in Yorkshire, England, was a surveyor for the Canada Company, a job that took him throughout the Huron and Perth area. He first came to the area that would become Brussels in 1852 and found it an excellent location for his proposed community. The waterpower provided by the Maitland River and the rich, deep, and untouched soil beneath the canopy of trees made the site a good one. Ainlay convinced neighbours in his home in Logan Township, Perth County, to join him in settling in his yet-to-be village. A number of families did move to Grey Township in 1852 and 1853. Thomas Halliday and 30 other families moved to the Morris Township location in 1853.
The village of Ainleyville, so named after William Ainlay but misspelled by the recording clerk, was begun in the southeast part of the present village of Brussels. The main street, Turnberry Street, forms the border between the townships of Morris and Grey. Ainlay owned 300 acres on the Grey Township side while the Hallidays owned 100 acres on the Morris side. Ainlay and Halliday were for some time the only settlers actually on the site of the present village. In 1855, Ainlay laid out a village plot and in 1856 sold his property, including the village site, to John Nicholas Knechtel, a local merchant and land speculator. Knechtel and Halliday sold most of the main street lots on either side of township divide of Turnberry Street between 1859 and 1861.
With the construction of the first bridge over the Maitland River in 1857, a stage route was started between Wroxeter and Seaforth, passing through Ainleyville. William Vanstone built the first flour mill, grist mill and sawmill in 1859. A man named McLeod started the first hotel. Two tanning mills were opened, one by Ireland and Dodds and the other by John Knechtel, in 1861. John McKay followed with a woollen mill in 1863 and Thomas Smale opened a tinsmith business in 1865. Dr. Isaac Hawks arrived in 1862. There were several stores and businesses lining the main street. And, of course, there were farms all around in the surrounding townships.
While the farmers of the southern townships were prospering from the shipment of wheat at the high prices of the American Civil War period, 1860-65, the northern townships were still hampered by the lack of any railway north of the line of the Huron Road. When the Great Western Railroad came to Huron County in 1864, the station was located about 6 km (4 miles) from Ainleyville. Railroad workers were given the privilege of selecting station names, and since many were of European descent, the name Brussels was selected.
In 1871, plans were made to have a railway pass through the Townships of Grey and Morris. An early inhabitant of the area, grain dealer John Leckie, is credited with convincing the Wellington, Grey and Bruce division of Great Western to build a line through Ainleyville. On December 20, 1872 the village of Brussels was incorporated. Early in the next year the village officially petitioned for a change to the Post Office name from Dingle to Brussels. And, on July 4, 1873, a big celebration was held in Brussels when local and railway officials opened the Southern Extension of the WG&B Railway. “The village was handsomely decorated with flags, banners, arches and evergreens. The main arch extended across Main Street from Mr. Leckie’s store, to Hall’s Hotel. On the top of the arch, in handsome letters, was the word “Progress.” (“Brussels welcomed railway in big way in 1873,” Huron Expositor, July 4, 1873)
The impact of the railway on the communities it served was great. The population of the village grew. Churches, businesses, newspapers, and industrial plants were added. The village also became an outlet for the growing farm production of its area. As the village prospered its architecture changed from frame buildings to the more imposing (and more fireproof!) brick buildings that line the main street to this day. The majority of the extant store buildings were built between 1877 (after the “Great Conflagration” of 1876) and 1891.
In its “Historical Sketch of the Township of Morris,” the Huron Expositor of March 6, 1885 described the topography: “Its surface is comparatively even, except near the river. The south branch of the Maitland enters at Brussels, and pursuing an extremely irregular course, leaves the township near the northern angle at Wingham, having been joined by the middle branch, which enters the township at Bluevale. Along the banks of these streams the land is extremely broken, which is the chief exception to the general description of a comparative evenness of surface. In fact, both in this respect as well as in regard to quality of soil, Morris very strongly resembles Grey and Wawanosh.”
A similar sketch of Grey Township describes its physical topography as “for the most part an inviting territory, the regular irregularity of its evenly uneven surface being such as to add a beauty to the landscape, and afford practical and cheap natural drainage to almost every acre in its bounds, excepting a portion of the eastern and south-eastern section, which is swampy; while in the character of soil it compares favourably with those townships considered the richest.” (“Historical Sketch of the Township of Grey,” Huron Expositor April 31, 1885)
Large glacial lakes once covered most of the area of the three Great Lakes of Huron, Superior and Michigan during the Pleistocene Epoch or the Ice Age (1.8 million to ~10,000 years ago). Lake Huron was once part of the proglacial Lakes Algonquin and Warren, formed during the retreat of the melting glacier. The Huron Lobe of the Wisconsin Icesheet built the moraines of the Maitland River watershed about 13,000 years ago. Limestone bedrock underlies the deposits of sand and gravel left by the retreating glacier.
The Maitland River flows over 150 km from the Township of Wellington North to Lake Huron. The three most northerly branches, the Maitland, the Lower Maitland, and Middle Maitland, converge near Wingham in the Township of North Huron. From Wingham, the river flows in a south-westward direction, winding around the knobby till and gravel ridges of the moraines, to Lake Huron. The steep gradient of the Maitland River westward from Harriston provided waterpower sites, in the early days of Fordwich, Gorrie and Wroxeter.
A large salt deposit, known as the Michigan Basin, is a 350-million-year-old saucer-shaped deposit over parts of Ontario, Michigan, and Ohio. The salt was discovered in Goderich in 1866 and soon after, in other Huron County towns like Seaforth, Clinton, Blyth and Brussels, salt wells were drilled. Water was pumped down to dissolve the rock salt, the brine was pumped to the surface and evaporators using cheap wood fuel were used to produce dry salt. The salt industry was an important part of the local economy until 1880.
The soils of Grey Township were formed from loamy limestone till. The melting ice left deposits of considerable depth and they have not been modified by water to any appreciable degree. Sand, silt and clay are present in various proportions. In Grey Township, the predominant soil type is Harriston Loam, a very productive, naturally well-drained soil.
The Attawandarons, or the Neutrals, as the French called them, once inhabited this part of Ontario. Because they controlled the flint beds needed to make arrowheads, they were able to keep their neutrality with the warring Huron Nation to the north and the Five Nations Iroquois to the south (all speakers of the Iroquois language). By the end of the 18th century, after the fur wars ended, the victorious Iroquois tribes moved into this territory. It was the Chippewa (also known as Ojibway or Anishinaabe) branch of this tribe with whom the land treaties were signed. After the British defeated the French in Quebec in 1759, they gradually acquired the lands of southern Ontario from the Natives.
Brussels grew from its early days as the fledgling village of Ainleyville into a prosperous village with its own railway station, many local industries, several churches and community groups, and a main street of fine brick blocks. Many of the business blocks that line Turnberry Street to this day were constructed after one of many devastating fires the village came back from. The Graham Block, Little Bros. Block, Fletcher Block, Ament Block, and Leckie Block, all built soon after the fire of 1876, are still familiar landmarks. The section of store blocks on the east side of the street from the second Leckie Block south to the Garfield Block were all built in 1884 to 1889. The two blocks south of Graham Block, the JR Smith and the Vanstone Blocks, were also built in 1883-84. Representing a later building boom in 1890-91 are the Smith, Skene, Holmes, Richards & Laird, Stretton, Grant, and Blashill Blocks.
For more information on the history of Brussels and area see Our Story: From Ainleyville to Brussels 1872-1997, Bonnie Gropp et al; Keith Raulston, editor; Marion Engel’s Grey Township and Its People; Jeanne Kirkby’s Morris Township Past to Present; James Scott’s The Settlement of Huron County; and,various articles in Huron County Historical Society’s Huron Historical Notes.
 |
|
Click here to download a printer friendly version of the Main Street Brussels - Introduction web page in Adobe PDF format. The PDF file size is: (237 kb)
Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0 (or higher) is required to open and view any Adobe PDF files. Please visit the link to obtain your free copy of this software.
