In the 19th century, general stores stood at the heart of rural communities. They were a place of commerce where one could purchase whatever goods they might reasonably require — from foodstuffs and alcohol, to clothing, farming equipment, candy and seed.
They were a place of communication as they typically hosted post offices and sometimes telegraph offices. And they were a place of social connectivity, where friends and neighbours would gather on the porch or huddle around a pot-bellied stove to share news and gossip, and forge the tight bonds for which small communities are known.
As stores occupied a special place at the heart of their communities, so did their owners. In the case of mid-19th-century Sharon, that man was David Willson Hughes, enterprising and ambitious.
Hughes was born in 1849 in the village of Sharon, northeast of Newmarket, to Job Hughes and Elizabeth Thorpe. Like most residents of Sharon at the time, his family belonged to the religious sect known as the Children of Peace, an offshoot of the Quakers who had built the Sharon Temple two decades before Hughes entered the world.
Young Hughes was named in honour of David Willson (1778-1886), the primary minister and leading figure of the Children of Peace. It’s a reflection of the devotion of Hughes’s parents to the movement’s ideals. Certainly, Hughes was raised believing in the virtue of hard work. Besides working alongside his father on the family farm, he made and sold maple syrup and delivered tombstones for the village monument maker.
With an eye toward a career as a storekeeper, Hughes went to Poughkeepsie, Mass., to study bookkeeping and telegraphy. When he returned to Sharon in 1870, he opened a general store.
In 1872, Hughes married 21-year-old Jerusha Doan, whose father, Jesse, was a prominent member of the Children of Peace and a towering figure in East Gwillimbury. Jesse Doan had participated in the ill-fated 1837 Rebellion and, after being jailed for a few months, returned to Sharon to begin a political career that saw him serve for decades as a councillor, deputy reeve, and reeve until his death in 1868. Marrying the daughter of such an important man was a feather in the cap for Hughes.
Three years after their marriage, David and Jerusha had their only child, a daughter they named Eva.
As befitting a man of some local stature, David was active in the community. He was a voice in the church, he served as postmaster, and he played cornet in the Children of Peace band, the first non-military musical band in Canada. He was firmly ensconced in the community, and one would imagine he would make it his lifetime home.
Hughes was ambitious, though, and would go wherever the money was, even if it took him away from Sharon. In 1882, he became aware that a merchant in Bolton in the Caledon Hills was looking to sell his business. Hughes saw a golden opportunity. Bolton was a flourishing and rapidly growing village, thanks largely to being newly serviced by the Toronto, Grey and Bruce Railway, and was easily outpacing the stagnating Sharon. Not one to remain idle, Hughes decided to sell some Toronto property he had acquired and purchase the outgoing merchant’s business.
In November 1882, the family headed south in a small convoy of four wagons loaded with their worldly possessions led by David and Jerusha and young Eva in a buggy. They waved goodbye to Sharon and the only home they had ever known.
Hughes ran his Bolton store, which he named The Leading House, for little more than a decade before the family uprooted one more time and moved to Toronto. It was there where Jerusha died in 1940, and David five years later, aged 96.
David had done well for himself, even if chasing his fortune had taken him away from his hometown. And his original store? It’s still there in Sharon, currently housing The Hedge Witch.
