Creators of the Classic City: John Corry Wilson Daly

The first house erected in 1833 was the frame residence of John Daly and family. The house was demolished in 1885 for the new courthouse. The drawing (colourized) is by Tim Mosher of Tavistock.

Directors of the Canada Company concerned themselves a great deal with the community named Stratford. The second man they sent to the settlement was their agent John Corry Wilson Daly, age 37. He was a short, quick-tempered Ulsterman, born in Liverpool, England, in 1796. In Stratford he was something of a little dictator and ruled for a decade. He had reached Canada by way of Cooperstown, New York, and joined the Canada Company in Hamilton.

Educated in Ireland, he had worked as a surgeon’s assistant. For the Canada Company he was the doctor-clerk in Guelph. He came to Stratford in the summer of 1833. Choosing the most commanding location he could find, he built the hamlet’s second frame building, on the vacant side of the wooden bridge. From there he could look straight down the Huron Road, the main street.

In taking over the Canada Company’s mills, he added a machine for carding wool to attract farmers who were establishing themselves in the surrounding townships. Before long he provided sawn lumber for buildings, flour and oatmeal for food, and yarn for clothing. He became the first postmaster. He was the local medical authority, the local banker and an officer of the militia. As a justice of the peace, he performed marriage ceremonies. He took over just about all the responsibility and occupation of a newly formed community, except that of a hotelkeeper.

His wife saw to it that they lived in a suitable manner and the lifestyle of the Daly family was elegant for the time and place. They ate from good china, poured wine from glass decanters, used elegant white chamber pots and threw their broken glass and crockers into the ash pile, which later would be found under the water mains being dug in the lawn of the Perth County Courthouse building.

Daly’s prickly disposition did not appeal to early settlers, nor did his wife’s attitude endear her to all the women. Dinner guests were seated in strict protocol, and it was an insult to be seated below the salt at the Daly table or worse still banished for dinner into the barn.

An autocrat he might have been, but Daly always worked single-mindedly for the advancement of his village and for that he was sometimes called its founder. Stratford was a star to which he hitched his wagon as he assembled a choice acreage in the area. In his opinion, what was good for Daly was good for Stratford and vice versa. They were indivisible.

John Daly was Stratford’s first mayor in 1859. He married three times. A son, Thomas Mayne, born to his wife Leonora Mayne, and a grandson, also Thomas Mayne, were politicians.

Thomas Mayne Daly Sr. was the son of John Daly. He was mayor of Stratford twice and represented the riding of Perth North in the House of Commons. Thomas M. Daly Jr. was called to the Law Society of Upper Canada in 1876, and practiced law in Stratford until 1881. In the same time period, he became a town councillor, chaired the public school board and was mayor of Stratford from 1876-1878.

“Creators of the Classic City” is an ongoing Times series written by Paul Wilker, co-author of the e-book of the same name by him and Gord Conroy. Interested readers can find the free book online at https://online.fliphtml5.com/ypken/pqiv/.

Streets of Stratford can be found at http://www.streetsofstratford.ca./.