When a 19th century community was gestating, its residents never truly knew what the future held. They hoped that the settlement would thrive, grow and endure. The reality is that for every town that is prosperous and growing today, there are a dozen that found fortunes fleeting.
For an example, we need look no further than Holt, in East Gwillimbury, which at one time was just as confident of today's local towns of what the future held.
Holt was founded in the early 1830s, literally rising out of the woods and fields of wildflowers and fattening itself on the fertility of the land. Among the pioneers who sank roots in the soil were Samuel Douglas, Thomas Fields, James Hopkins, John Leopard, Richard Rowen, and Charles Traviss. At the time, the settlement was known as Eastville.
Around 1835, these men and others joined together to build a school, SS#6, on the northwest corner of the Mount Albert Road and Concession 7 (McCowan Road) intersection. Soon the school was joined by a general store owned and operated by John Quibell, an inn owned by Joshua Armitage (also on the northwest corner), a blacksmith shop on the southeast corner, and two carpenter shops, run by Leonard Leopard and Evan Morris. The population stood at around 50.
The store added a post office in 1863. It was at that time the community’s name was changed from Eastville to Holt. The same year that the post office opened, the Weslayan Methodists built a church.
By this time, nearby towns like Aurora and Newmarket on linked by Yonge Street and rail were leaving Holt in their wake, developing strong commercial and industrial cores. Holt, for its part, remained a farming community, nothing more. While other towns grew in leaps and bounds, Holt settled into a placid routine.
The community church closed in 1905, re-opened by Free Methodists a few years later, then closed again. The school underwent changes as well. In the 1860s, a new frame school was built a short distance away from the first, facing McCowan. Then, in 1908, a third and final school, this one brick, was built on yet another lot in 1908. It, too, closed when schools were centralized around mid-century.
Commuters highballing along the modern Mount Albert and McCowan roads, or nearby Highway 404, have little idea that tiny Holt, or Eastville, was once a thriving village in its own right.
