Beaumaris ( ) is a small settlement in Ontario, Canada, on Lake Muskoka which once served as an important transit point during the steamship era on the lake, and once hosted a summer hotel, called the Beaumaris Hotel. The settlement is located on Tondern Island which, though a true island, is attached to the mainland by a small bridge at Milford Bay. Currently the settlement sports a government pier, The Beaumaris Marina, a general store dubbed Willmotts Store after a prominent Beaumaris family, Saint John's Anglican Church, and a private summer club; the Beaumaris Yacht Club.
History
First Nations
Geography drove history in the Muskoka region. Studded with lakes and abundant with rocks the land offered an abundance of fishing, hunting, and trapping, but was poorly suited to farming. Largely the land of the Ojibwa people, European inhabitants ignored it while settling the more promising area south of the Severn River. The Ojibwa leader associated with the area was Mesqua Ukie for whom the land was probably named. The tribe lived south of the region, near present-day Orillia and used Muskoka as their hunting grounds. Another Ojibwa tribe lived in the area of Port Carling which was called Obajewanung. The tribe moved to Parry Sound around 1866.
European arrival
Largely unsettled until the late 1760s the European presence in the region was largely limited to seasonal fur trapping, but no significant trading settlements were established. Canadian government interest increased following the American Revolution when, fearing invasion from its new neighbor to the south the government began exploring the region in hopes of finding travel lanes between Lake Ontario and Georgian Bay In 1826 Lieutenant Henry Briscoe became the first white man known to have crossed the middle of Muskoka. David Thompson drew the first maps of the area in 1837 and possibly camped near present-day Beaumaris.
Canada experienced heavy European immigration in the mid-19th century, especially from Ireland which experienced famine in the 1840s. As the land south of the Severn was settled, the government planned to open the Muskoka region further north to settlement. Logging licenses were issued in 1866 which opened Monck Township to logging. The lumber industry expanded rapidly denuding huge tracts of the area, but also prompting the development of road and water transportation. The railroad pushed north to support the industry, reaching Gravenhurst in 1875 and Bracebridge in 1885. Road transportation took the form of the Muskoka Colonization Road, begun in 1858 and reaching Bracebridge in 1861. The road was roughly hewn from the woods and was of corduroy construction, meaning logs were placed perpendicular to the route of travel to keep carriages from sinking in the mud and swamps. Needless to say this made for extremely rugged travel. The lumbering industry spawned a number of ancillary developments, including as mentioned, transport, but also settlements began springing up to supply the workers and Bracebridge, (formerly North Falls) saw some leather tanning businesses develop. Tanners used the bark from lumber to tan hides thereby using what otherwise would be a waste product.
Purchase of Tondern Island
The passages of the Free Grants and Homestead Act of 1868 brought opened the era of widespread settlement to Muskoka. This was the year an Irish immigrant from Enniskillen named Paul Dane purchased Tondern Island for $101 from the crown. The island comprises and is the home of present-day Beaumaris. Dane named the island after the Battle of Tondern between the Prussians and Denmark. Ownership of the island passed to Dane's nephew Maurice John McCarthy when Dane died in 1871. The only structure on the island at that time was a log house known as the "big white house" on the site of the future Beaumaris Hotel (now the Beaumaris Golf Club).
Founding of Beaumaris
In 1873 McCarthy sold the island to Edward Prowse and John Harry Willmott for $1,560. The two divided the island in half with Willmott taking the northern and Prowse the southern half. The new owners named the settlement Beaumaris after the resort in Anglesey, Wales where they had vacationed. Prowse settled in the big white house while Willmott built a log house next to the site of the present day Willmott store. They cleared part of the land for pasture, built a dock for the newly arrived steamships and connected the island to the mainland by a small log bridge.