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"Wheat Was King" ~ The 1850s close family connections to rely on. Isabella and her mother-in­law Hannah, and her mother Isabella, represent the continuities of motherhood and family through the successive generations in Mount Pleasant. As we have seen, the spectacular homes built in the 1840s and 1850s along with its growing reputation for academic excellence lent an air of elegance and sophistication to the village. At the same time though, the emerging generations and the other newcomers to the village also needed places to reside. Wallace Ellis' older brother John Randall played an important role in helping to create "a home for all" in the same way that Fowler's philosophy inspired the construction of the octagonal buildings. In 1853 Ellis built a house for George Bryce, who had come to the New World a decade earlier just when the prosperity of Mount Pleasant was beginning to show in its architecture. In the intervening years, as a result of his skills as a blacksmith, George accumulated the $310 needed to build his house. According to a bill of work dated March 5, 1853, John Randall Ellis set out the specifications for the 28 foot x 40 foot home: "the hall and parler [sic] to be finished like or similar to H. Biggar's...[with] a veranda in front 6 feet by 40 feet finished like Mr. Jones's." He concluded the bill by explaining, "I expect to bord [sic] myself and do the work mentioned above if all be well and materials at hand by say the 1st of October 1853 for sum of...three hundred and ten dollars and that will do." This fine home, like others of the era, was built close to road at a time when winter access to the roads was important. Though modified by a raised roof in a different style than the original and with J. R. Ellis' verandah missing, the Bryce home still stands at 670 Mount Pleasant Road. John Randall Ellis was a cabinetmaker, settled in his career at this point in his life in his early 40s. He lived on the family farm until he came of age, and then learned the trade of carpenter and worked at it for some years, building homes for locals such as George Bryce and Herbert Biggar. He had a carpenter shop next to his home which he shared with his wife Janet Carlyle and their children. Janet had come to Brantford Township with her parents John and Margaret from Scotland via New York State as a young woman in 1843. She