County of Brant Public Library Digital Collections

At the Forks of the Grand: Volume I, 1956, p. 18

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AT THE FORKS OF THE GRAND Dundas and Lake Ontario, which, if we get opened, will bring the greater part of travel west by my place. This undertaking will take much of my time next summer, when I shall the more want you to see to the farm. If I obtain, as we expect to, about $4000 to be laid out on the Governor's Road, I should like the job in case you come, as money may be saved. That Capron was successful in getting funds for improving the road and building a bridge across the Grand, and that he played an important part in the work (Horace came), is made clear in the back pages of his Furnace Account-Book, where he made the following entries: December 29, 1829: To 4 days to Dundas examining said road and getting up a petition ......$8.00 Cash expended ............................................ $2.25 January 14, 1830: Two days getting petition to the Governor's Council ............................$4.48 Two days examining said road with the commission councillors ............ $4.00 Expense of keeping councillors ..............$2.00 Three days to Dundas to see Commissioners ............................................ $6.00 Given to the Publick gratis ...... $27.09 Apparently, as he had hoped, Capron was made a sort of path- master for a considerable section of the road. In the same account l book are entries such as the following: David Bell, by 44 days work on the road .................................. $20.35 Duncan Anderson, by 432 days work on the road .................... $17.50 Governor's Road, Dr. 6 straw beds - 6 blankets - 1 bbl. pork 4 plates - 3 knives and forks 2 basins 14/4 sugar - 31/2 gallons whiskey l 1½2 lbs. tea - 2½2 B. potatoes 15 loaves of bread 1 bushel peas 5 steel axes 2 oxen and 2 chains 5 bags shorts for oxen. November 27: This day ended all the road work: 8471/2 days work by m en .. ........................................ .............$847.50 289 days work by oxen . ............................................. $216.75 5 days work by horse-team and driver ................................ 10.00 Capron did not depend wholly upon the government to keep the road in repair. Between 1831 and 1844, according to another of his account books, he improved it at his own expense on both sides of the bridge over the Grand. Undoubtedly this re-opening of Simcoe's l highway encouraged the growth of Paris. In i829, after buying from Christopher Curtis the lease on the strip of land between the mouth of the Nith and the Governor's Road, Capron began to have part of his estate surveyed into streets 18

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