In its initial deliberations on the war, the Grand Council of Six Nations declared neutrality between England and America, but Brant became an impassioned spokesman for the British cause. In military actions, he led Brant’s Volunteers, a band of Mohawk, Cayuga, Seneca, and Onondaga warriors, in sometimes fierce and bloody raids against American settlements. His war record included notable acts of bravery and compassion, but his name and his raids struck fear into the heart of white settlers, who referred to him as “the Monster Brant.” When the Americans ultimately prevailed, they retaliated by invading Confederacy lands, burning villages, and confiscating Six Nations territory in the Mohawk Valley.6
Bitter about the end of the war, Brant faced a bleak future in New York. In return for the support he had provided to the British cause, he petitioned the English for territory in Canada. As the talks progressed, he wisely asked for land along the Grand River Valley, close to Seneca settlements in the Genesee Valley, situated between centres of commerce on the St. Lawrence River and the northwestern territories of British North America. On October 25, 1784, Sir Frederick Haldimand, the governor of Quebec, responded to the request by providing “the Mohawks and others of the Six Nations” with a land grant of 273,163 hectares — ten kilometres on each side of the Grand River, from its source to its mouth.7 In securing this “fertile and happy retreat,” the Crown paid the resident Mississauga £1,100 in return for their agreement to give up their claim to the land. At Buffalo Creek, New York, the Six Nations clan matrons decided to split the Confederacy. One contingent remained in New York State while Brant led the other to the new land he had acquired in Canada, laying the seeds for future Brantford.
In this 1807 portrait by William Berczy, Joseph Brant strikes a classical pose on the bank of the Grand River, pointing to the land he acquired for Six Nations. Berczy patterned the pose on statues of Roman emperors. Brant’s portrait was also painted by Charles Willson Peale, who is widely known for his portraits of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
Brantford is, quite literally, “Brant’s Ford”— the place where Brant and his Six Nations followers forded the Grand River on the way to their new territory. The ford was connected to a thoroughfare used by Six Nations and by travellers, and sprouted a tiny settlement originally known as Grand River Ferry. In 1818, there were twelve people in the settlement, which grew quickly afterward.8 One of Brantford’s best-known early residents, James Wilkes, has recounted how Brantford was christened with its official name:
It must have been in 1826 or 1827, when there were two or three hundred people, that the question of naming arose…. A meeting was called, when Mr. Biggar proposed that the name should be Biggar Town. Mr. Lewis, the mill owner, suggested Lewisville, and my father, who came from that city in the Old Land, stood out for Birmingham. It looked as if there might be a dead-lock when someone suggested that as the place was at Brant’s ford this title would prove the most suitable and the suggestion took unanimously. In the natural order of things the s speedily became dropped, and thus we have the “Brantford” of today.9
Economically, it was the possibility of trade with Six Nations and travellers crossing Brant’s ford that gave rise to the settlement of Brantford. The key deed was sold to settlers after Brant’s death (on April 19, 1830), but Brant himself had initiated and promoted the lease and sale of Six Nations land. The extent of the sales and the question whether he and others had a right to sell was a matter of difficult dispute then and ever since. Brant had hoped to attract farmers and establish an annuity for Six Nations, but the land that was sold “went for a mere song” and Six Nations of the Grand River Territory lost much of its original land grant. In Brantford, the extent to which it was legitimately acquired by others remains a source of great controversy and dispute.10
The first log cabin in Brantford was built by John Stalts in 1805. He erected it on a hill overlooking the Grand River, a few hundred yards from Brant’s ford. Today, the site is occupied by a war memorial dedicated to the Brantford men who died in the Boer War. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the location took advantage of the river, the hunting, and the trading opportunities, but the living conditions in the general area, known as Grand River Swamp, were not especially comfortable. In a reminiscence written in 1850, an observer recalled the frequently damp conditions on the low land around the river. The result was “decaying wood, stumps of trees and other vegetable matter,” which “caused from the action of the sun, an exhalation of malarious vapour, which proved exceedingly injurious to the health, particularly of those unaccustomed to it.”11
The noxious air did not prevent the growth of the fledgling settlement named Grand River Ferry. As it grew, it pushed its way down the thoroughfare on the north side of Brant’s ford. The route became Colborne (pronounced Co-bornne) Street, the settlement’s original main street. In the early 1820s, the village of Grand River Ferry consisted of a scattering of frame buildings, log houses, taverns, and trading posts on Colborne. In its early days, the settlement had a reputation as “a turbulent and at times lawless frontier village.”12 After an 1830 survey, settlers began to arrive in significant numbers. The result was a mix of English, Irish and Scottish immigrants, fugitive slaves from the United States, and Native Canadians and Americans that did not always mix well. The catalysts for conflict included rivalries across different ethnic groups, the easy availability of “whiskey and other spirits at trifling costs” and local gangs of ruffians. One of the latter, known as the “Swampers,” “met on public and market days, and had it out with clubs and axe handles, often joining forces to club quiet citizens right and left.”13
Despite its rough early years, Brantford began to prosper. Geographically, it grew north of the Grand River, down Colborne, spreading out on its east and west sides. Its proximity to the river was a key consideration in the nineteenth century, when the river served as a major thoroughfare for passengers and freight. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the Grand River Navigation Company built a canal to provide Brantford’s downtown businesses with easy access to the river. The canal, which lay adjacent to present-day Wharf Street, was not successful because railways soon replaced the river as the major means of transport. A farmer’s market, which was formally established in 1847, sold local produce and goods, and was a focus for mercantile trade and gossip. Hotels, industries, businesses, churches, law firms, local government, courts, and retail stores flourished, making downtown Brantford the true centre of the city.
One hundred years after its beginnings, Brantford was a town that was going places. Its success was rooted in the fertile agricultural land that surrounded it and in an entrepreneurial tradition that made Brantford an international centre for manufacturing. In 1877, Brantford officially became a city. In 1901, The Industrial Recorder of Canada ranked it “third of importance among the exporting cities of Canada.”14 By then, Brantford was a world leader in the production of farm machinery and well-known for the manufacture of many other products — sawmill equipment, paint and varnish, stoves, windmills, and bicycles. The companies that were the basis of the city’s industrial success made up a veritable who’s who of agricultural manufacturing in Canada: the Waterous Engine Works; the Cockshutt Plow Company; Goold, Shapley and Muir; J.O. Wisner, Son & Co.; Verity Plow; A. Harris & Son; and ultimately Massey-Harris.
During the twentieth century, Brantford continued to flourish as a centre of agricultural manufacturing. Cockshutt Plow was bought by White Farm Equipment, which became a central component of Brantford’s economy. Many of Brantford’s other