Though forgotten today, his name lost to the mists of time, Nathaniel Gamble was a significant figure in his day. He and the roadside hotel he operated were important to the early development of Newmarket and the region.
Gamble deserves better.
Established lore has it that Nathaniel Gamble Jr. was born in 1756 in America, but family genealogists claim he was born in Scotland, perhaps as late as 1764. In either event, we know his Scottish-born father, Nathaniel Sr., brought the family to America, where they found themselves on the losing side of the American Revolution.
Backing the Crown, in the war’s wake, the Gamble family no longer felt at home in the newly independent United States. They were therefore quick to take up an offer to re-settle in Upper Canada (Ontario).
In 1802, Timothy Rogers had applied for and received land grants for 40 200-acre farms to be issued to settlers who followed him up from the States. The winter of 1802 saw these land-hungry individuals, Nathaniel Gamble and his parents among them, heading north from Toronto by foot, trudging through “the foulest weather imaginable” to reach their new homes.
Nathaniel Sr. settled in Richmond Hill, while his son settled farther north, on the west side of Yonge Street (Lot 89) and on the south side of what would later be called Mulock Drive. This was the core of the village of Armitage, the first community in King Township, today fully engulfed by the Town of Newmarket.
Here, Gamble started life anew. He established a farm, built a hotel called Gamble’s Inn, married Susannah Mercer in April 1803, and raised eight children. Life was good.
Gamble’s Inn was a two-storey, plank-siding building with perhaps half a dozen rooms and a large barroom. It was the only licensed hotel in King Township between 1800 and 1811. Lacking competition of any kind, it became an extremely popular watering hole. Weary travellers heading north to the Lake Simcoe port of Holland Landing would often stop there, and it was a frequent stop for stagecoaches once they began to appear in the late 1820s.
It’s also rumoured Sir John Franklin, the great but ill-fated Arctic explorer, may have sought respite there on the initial stages of his 1825 expedition to explore the mouth of the Mackenzie River in Canada’s Arctic and perhaps find the Northwest Passage that linked the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Gamble’s Inn was also the social heart of the village of Armitage, and indeed of King Township as a whole. The first public meeting of the Township of King was held at the hotel on March 6, 1809, and they continued to be held there exclusively until 1839. In addition, the Western Light Lodge, the first Masonic Lodge organized north of Toronto, held its inaugural meeting at the inn in 1817. Gamble’s inn remained home to the lodge for a number of years, suggesting Gamble himself was a prominent member.
In fact, Gamble’s Inn was such a prominent landmark, and Nathaniel Gamble was such a towering figure in local circles, that what would later become Mulock Drive was, for many years, known as Gamble’s Road.
Perhaps embittered by the events of his younger years that saw him and his family expelled from the United States, Gamble was a proud loyalist and demonstrated his commitment to king and country during the War of 1812. A lieutenant in the 1st York Militia, he participated in the campaign that saw Gen. Isaac Brock capture Detroit on Aug. 16, 1812, fought at the desperate Battle of Queenston Heights on Oct. 13 of the same year, and then fought once again at the Battle of York (Toronto) on April 27, 1813, that saw the town captured.
Gamble served as a lieutenant in the 1st York Militia. For his dedication to duty and bravery in battle, Gamble was promoted to captain.
Gamble died Nov. 18, 1836. His inn’s greatest brush with fame came the following year, when it was under the ownership of his son, Nathaniel Allen.
Nathaniel Allen was just as loyal to the Crown as his father had been. He demonstrated his loyalty in the turbulent months leading up to the 1837 Rebellion, despite the Newmarket region being a hotbed of dissent against the ruling clique, by refusing to allow people advocating rebellion to assemble at his inn.
Nonetheless, as we learned in an earlier column, the rebellion came to the hotel. In the wake of the rebel defeat at the Battle of Montgomery’s Tavern, the scattered rebel leadership was relentlessly hunted down. Local lore has it that William Lyon Mackenzie, nearly cornered, escaped capture by spurring his horse into Gamble’s Inn, through the barroom, scattering patrons, and riding out through the back door and into the night.
Gamble’s Inn disappeared just as quickly as Mackenzie riding into the darkness. One minute, it was a prominent landmark; the next, it has faded from history books. All we know for certain is that it was gone by 1850, because there is no mention of it in the registry of area hotels and inns published that year.
