Nairn and Hart Families
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Looking south toward Sunset Farm house, 1940s (W. Blair Mansell)
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After Sinclair Township was surveyed in 1876 these two lots, with over a mile of shoreline on Rebecca Lake, were originally registered by Elizabeth Hart, wife of Andrew Hart. Andrew was not eligible to register more than two one-hundred-acre parcels, as he had already made claims for two lots on Bella Lake that eventually became the Billie Bear property, so these two lots were put in his wife’s name.
The first pioneers to settle here were David and Elizabeth Nairn in the late 1870s. Over ten years they managed to build a small log cabin adjacent to the south shore and clear about nine acres of land.
Once the Nairns moved to Huntsville in 1888, Andrew Hart and his family moved to Sunset Farm from Bella Lake to be closer to the district school. A more substantial farm was built by the Harts further uphill from Rebecca Lake, and eventually included a two-storey house, barn, pig pen, chicken coop, workshop, maple sugaring shed, cold storage dairy, and a boathouse and dock at the lake.
After Andrew died in 1895, Elizabeth Hart struggled to maintain the farm until she moved to Huntsville in 1897. In 1903 Elizabeth swore the oath that the land grant requirements had been met and received the patent. She sold the properties to William Mansell in 1912 (for a dollar an acre), who hired a number of tenant farmers to manage the farm until the late 1940s.
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Sunset Farm barn, 1940s (W. Blair Mansell) | |
Tenant Farmers
Eric Thompson, one of three sons of Wellington Thompson and Mary Jane McDonald, was first tenant farmer at Sunset Farm. With his team of horses, he put in his labour on road maintenance for the Syndicate Road, as well as building Sunset Cabin, out-buildings, and the log retaining wall above Sunset Beach along about 1,000 feet of shoreline. The family took out a number of land grants in Sinclair Township, including the family farm on Lot 9, Concession 3, and their names can be seen on the early maps and records. Eric, with his wife Florence and son Clifford, bought a farm in the Aspdin area in March 1919, and Eric died in 1940 as the result of an accident with his team of horses.
Another manager at Sunset Farm was Eli Birtch between 1919 and 1936. Born in Huntsville, Eli married Ella Mitchell and together they had 11 children, all girls except for one son. In addition to managing the farm, clearing forests for pastures, and performing his civic duties, Eli welcomed hunters in the off-season to the Sunset Farm property. As money was tight, the Birtch family was very industrious, making additional cash from Granny Birtch’s market garden on the farm, capturing and selling frogs’ legs in Huntsville for gas money, skinning and tanning the fur of deer, bear, and other mammals, and tapping the sugar maples for syrup. In 1930 Eli arranged to have the old church at Mizpah dismantled and the materials used to build a schoolhouse at the corner of the road to Limberlost Lodge.
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| A few of Eli and Ella Birtch’s daughters, 1930s, with farm buildings in background (W. Blair Mansell) |
Reclaiming the Clearings
For some years after the 1950s the farm house was used as a hunt camp clubhouse by Mansell family members. Edgar Brook was asked to tear down the barn in the late 1960s. Eventually the “haunted” farm house and other outbuildings were torn down by the 1990s.
Aerial photos from the 1960s show that a large extent of forest had been cleared by the various tenant farmers over the decades. Today all that remains of the back-breaking work to clear the land and build a home are some domesticated plants and shrubs where the farm house used to stand, a few foundation stones from the barn, rock fences, and the occasional barbed wire strung between trees in the forest to keep the cattle in. The forest has reclaimed the rest.
Sources:
Huntsville Forester, “This Week’s Doings About Town,” June 3, 1915, p. 4; “Hillside,” March 27, 1919, p. 4.
Mansell Family Records.
Mansell, W. Dan, Sunset Farm: The Origin and History of this Free Land Grant Farmstead in Muskoka (Peterborough: asiOtus Natural Heritage Consultants, Barbara Paterson Papers, 2012).
Mansell, W. Dan, and Carolyn Paterson, eds., Pioneer Glimpses from Sinclair Township, Muskoka (Peterborough: asiOtus Natural Heritage Consultants, Barbara Paterson Papers, 2015).
Paterson, Barbara, “Stories of the Past: Mizpah,” Muskoka Sun, October 11, 2007.