Mary Allen Stories...

Part of a c.1895 birds-eye view  of the town of Waterloo, looking NE. Image courtesy of the Waterloo Municipal Heritage Committee.   Who were Mary and Allen? We’re not sure, but we have a reasonably good idea who Herbert and John were. Street names in the Mary-Allen neighbourhood seem to read like the branches of a family tree: George, Mary, Herbert, Allen, William, John, Moore…  But for whom are these streets named? Some of the information in this post comes from research-in-progress left by the late Waterloo historian Ellis Little , who had started a file on Waterloo street origins and land surveys.  Click on the link to read about Ellis, a thoroughly knowledgeable scholar of Waterloo history.  After his death in 2004 the Waterloo Public Library local history room was named in his honour, and it acquired his research papers for public use.  Ellis Little’s early research on street names included few source references; more digging will be ...

The Grand Trunk Railway came to Berlin (Kitchener) in 1856, drawing the region within reach of the far-flung world, and broadening its cultural, commercial and industrial potential. In Waterloo, the land made available by the 1855 Hoffman survey (see the blog post  Mary Allen Beginnings, Part 1 ) meant that commercial and industrial enterprise could now gain a better foothold. The population increased to more than 1,200 by 1861, and would continue to grow steadily into the thousands during the late nineteenth century. Click to enlarge, then open image in new tab for full size. Part of Tremaine's Map of the County of Waterloo, Canada West, 1861. By the mid-1800s, Berlin and Waterloo were surrounded by subdivided farm lots. One undivided lot, “Saml. S Snider” (circled), shows the size of the original, nearly 450-acre lots as created in 1805. Streets shown include Erb (1), Albert (2) and King (3), as well as Mary and John in the future Mary-Allen neighbourhood (4). ...

In Waterloo Region, the story has often been told of how a group of Pennsylvania Mennonites bought a 60,000-acre tract on the Grand River that today contains much of the Kitchener-Waterloo urban footprint. In 1806 two of these Mennonites, Abraham and Magdalena Erb , came north to take up their land purchase: hundreds of acres that would eventually become the Waterloo city core.   Click to enlarge. Erb-Kumpf House , 2012. The oldest section is the back of the house, built c.1812 by Abraham and Magdalena Erb. Within ten years Abraham built a sawmill and gristmill on Beaver (Laurel) Creek, and the Erbs had established Waterloo's first settler homestead. Today, the former mill site lies along King Street , between the railway tracks and Erb Street, while the c.1812 Erb home still stands as the rear section of the landmark Erb-Kumpf House at King and George streets in the Mary-Allen neighbourhood. The original front of the house faced north, towards ...