John is born in England

The second son was my Grandfather John, born in 1839 and brought to Canada in the immigration of 1842 at the age of three. In 1860 John bought a farm on the west half of Lot #15, Concession #2, close to his father's property. On this he carried on a successful market gardening business on upwards of forty acres. According to his son, my Uncle George of Milton, in an interview on his ninety-seventh birthday in 1967, John used to make the clay pots used in this business on a hand-operated potter's wheel on the property, It is from this that the present Pottery Road in East York received its name. I confirmed this in a recent phone call to Mrs. Eleanor Dart of the East York Historical Society,

Noteable Business

Apparently this was a relatively important business, making pots for sale as well as for use on the Cudmore farm. It receives mention in a chapter entitled "The Workshops of York County" in the previously mentioned history or Toronto and York. It had evidently been carried on by William Lea, and "in 1860 he sold the parcel to George Cudmore, whose sons John and George were later involved in pottery making." It continues: By 1849 John and George Cudmore were making pottery on the property they had purchased from William Lea. Only John Cudmore was potting under the name of Cudmore & Co. in 1870 in a partnership consisting of John Cudmore and William Browne. Four men were employed making; earthenware and flower pots, Fifty tons of clay for pots and 2500 pounds of lead for glazing were used, The annual value of' the pottery produced at the workshop was $3,400. John Cudmore was reported as a potter as late as 1884, but the pottery does not seem to have continued very long after this date." In 1860, the same year as he bought his farm and began the pottery business with his father and brother, Grandfather John married Elizabeth Brown of York County. According; to my sister Evelyn Beasley, Elizabeth was born in Halifax, daughter of a British army tailor with the rank of Captain, then stationed in Halifax. On his retirement he moved to 'the Toronto area, where he see up his own tailoring business, and this is where John and Elizabeth met. The couple lived in East York until 1903, when they moved to Westview, Saskatchewan, and then returned to Toronto in 1907. The family home in East York was at the top of the Don Valley. It was an imposing structure of limestone blocks, just north of where highway 401 now crosses the Don Valley, For many years it was a landmark clearly visible on the horizon to one looking north while crossing the Prince Edward Viaduct, which joins Bloor Street and Danforth Avenue. It is not known whether the house still stands, but this is very unlikely. In later life, probably on their return from the West, my grandparents retired to 840 Broadview Avenue, just a few blocks south of where Pottery Road ascends the steep hill from the Don Valley to meet Broadview Avenue. They were living there when Evelyn and Frank Beasley were married in 1915 and lived with them for a short time, and that is the house I remember visiting. Grandfather was a Mason, and his portrait as first Grand Master hung in the Broadview lodge near his home for many years until that lodge was swallowed up by a larger one nearby, My memories of Grandfather are of a sweet-faced gentle man with a silky white Santa Claus beard, with wham I spent many hours fishing from the pier in front of the lakeshore house at Bronte. I remember once he caught an eel, and Mother was nauseated when she had to cook it. Grandmother was a rather short, broad-beamed not very pretty lady who seems remembered most for the asthma which has afflicted so many of our family members since. Grandfather died in 1916 at the age of 77.

Noteable Death

I thought my sister Evelyn told me that he was struck down by a Toronto streetcar when he wandered in front of it, but Frank Beasley says he suffered a heart attack while riding in a streetcar. I don't know which version, if either, is the correct one. I think Grandmother died at the Broadview Avenue home in 1920. That house is still standing, but has a small shop built onto the front of it, I pass it frequently on my way to get my orthopaedic shoes in a small shop a few doors south. John and Elizabeth Cudmore had seven children. Everard John, William Henry, George James, Amelia Louise, John Albert, Charles Thomas, and Ernest Albert. The second of these, my father, William Henry, was born in 1867 and raised on his father's farm.