A Tour of homes
&
scenes
on Mill Street
in
The Village of Newcastle
...and an inset from
100 years ago.
The above photograph is looking north on Mill Street in the Village of Newcastle showing the United Church and the lovely old stately trees that are so charactaristic of the Village.
Even new sidewalks make room for the stately, over 200 year old trees
...that line the main street into the village from the 401 hwy., preserving the charm and character that makes this place so attractive to visitors.
Below are other scenes, a home, the side door of Newcastle United Church that so many have entered over the years.
Sometimes it is the simplest memories that are the most poignant. Also an entranceway to a home being renovated and an elegant stone wall.
100 Years Ago
Richard Cowan Warren emplyed with the Massey Ferguson Firm, "as their boss painter for nearly twenty years and also did considerable travelling for them."
The Warren House, pictured on the right, located on Mill Street South in the Village of Newcastle was the family home to three generations of the family. Separated into several smaller lots over the years, the old barn seen in the second picture was originally part of this home. And the little home just south was built by his daughter Theresa Jane Warren Cowan after her husband passed away. The family burial plot in Bond Head, (inset Pictures) Cemetary and an obituary tell about some of the lives lived in days past in this historic village.
THE INDEPENDENT,
Newcastle, July 25, 1907.
IN LOVING MEMORY
RICHARD COWAN WARREN, Born Dec. 7th, 1830; Died July 14th, 1907.
Richard Cowan Warren was the second child in a family of two sons and two daughters born to William Warren, a Supervisor of Excise in His Majesty's service, who with his wife was accustomed to make his home at Truro, Cornwall, Eng., during the short intervals he was not engaged in the duties of his position, for his jurisdiction, comprising as it did portions of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, necessitated considerable travelling and made it almost impossible for him and his wife to have any place to call their home, and it was owing to these circumstances that we have to record the rather peculiar occurrence of each one of their four children having been born in a different integral part of the realm of Great Britain and Ireland, the subject of this sketch being the only Irish representative of his Irish mother, Cowan, and of his English father, Warren, having first seen the light of day in Tipperary, where he was born 76 years ago the 7th day of last December.
His mother having died when Richard was eight years of age, his grandparents, who resided at Birr, Ireland, took the lad to live with them, and upon their death he was turned over to his uncle, Edward Cowan, and it was while here that he resolved to use his scanty savings in getting to America and taking his younger brother, William, with him; and consequently unknown to all relatives the brothers embarked at Liverpool in 1848 for the western land of plenty. Richard having reached the bottom of his purse in Lower Canada, was persuaded by his brother, who had made his way to Oswego and secured a job at his trade of painting, to join him in his work. At Oswego he fell in with Capt. Gibson, and when he got ready to sail for Toronto Richard got aboard and was landed on this side the lake on the same day as Sebastopol was taken. After finishing his apprenticeship in the decorating art at Toronto and having secured the job of painting Capt. Gibson's vessel he thus had the opportunity of revisiting his brother at Oswego, and thence together they were finally landed by the Capt. at Port Newcastle.
At Newcastle Richard soon found employment at his trade with the Massey Firm, and continued their boss painter for nearly twenty years and also did considerable travelling for them, and having in the meantime or about forty years ago, married Miss Mary Jane Tamblyn, daughter of Chas. Tamblyn of Clarke, when the Company left Newcastle about 1879, he bought their farm and at once with the help of his young wife set himself to enlarging and improving it for their permanent home, building their present very comfortable brick residence on Mill street some twenty five years ago, where they have since dwelt living honorable and such industrious lives as to be but little short of the strenuous for idleness seemed entirely contrary to his disposition; and the some may be said of the large family they have raised, comprising four sons and five daughters, viz: George, John, Lena or Mrs. Davidson and Marjorie or Mrs Brown in the West; Charles at Syracuse, N. Y.; Miss Eppie, professional nurse, Buffalo; Edward, Jennie and Odie at home.
Last April Mr. Warren accompanied his son, John, upon the latter's return to his farm in the West, about 14 miles form Swift Current, in which town he found ready openings for his trade, and had just completed a big contract on Friday night, July 12th, when he took ill from an old complaint.
A physician was called in, who recognizing the seriousness of the case, advised that his friends be summoned, and consequently John and his brother in law, Mr. Davidson were soon at his bedside, although Mr. and Mrs. Brown did not arrive until Sunday, on the afternoon of which day, although his condition had been very changeable and uncertain up to this time, he seemed so well that John returned to the farm to attend to matters. But that evening he took a turn for the worse, and although word was soon got to John, the sufferer had passed before he could cover the fourteen miles' distance.
Arrangements were hurriedly made for conveyance of the body to Newcastle, and by 2 o'clock Tuesday morning John had started his sorrowful errand hither where he arrived shortly after 7 o"clock Thursday evening and was met at the station by the undertaker, members of the Masonic Order and relatives.
The funeral the next afternoon from the family residence to Bond Head Cemetery was largely attended by relatives and acquaintances as but few men in the village are known more widely through the adjacent townships than Mr. Warren was. The services at the house and grave were conducted by Revs. Howard and Irwin and Durham Lodge, A. F. & A.M., No 66, of which deceased was a member, some two dozen brethren, led by Rev. Howard, joining in the last sad rites at their departed brother was borne form the funeral car by brothers Bellwood, Alf Bennett, Coulson, George Joll, Otton, and J. E. W. Philp.
In the service at the house, where lay upon the casket many beautiful flowers including a wreath, "Our Brother," from Durham Lodge, the portion of Scripture read was I Cor. 15: 12 , and the hymns sung were "Just as I am," "Forever with the Lord," "Now the labourer's task is o'er."
In addition the members of the bereaved family, all of whom were present except George and Marjorie, the mourners were Mrs. Wm. Warren and two sons from Syracuse; John Cowan and Win. Cherry and wife, Toronto; Albert Tamblyn, Mrs. Jos. Chapman, Mr. P Bigelow, James Tamblyn and wife and Alex. Rutherford and wife with their families, of Clarke; Dr. Dickinson of Port Hope; the Reeve and Messrs Job, Elias and William Dickinson and sister, Miss Sarah, of Hope; also Geo. Best and John Sleeman and two daughters of Hope, Robert and Augustus Best; C. G. Armstrong and wife and Walker and Hiram Millson of Clarke.
Re-printed from:
THE INDEPENDENT, Newcastle, July 25, 1907.
Theresa Jane (Jennie) Warren, daughter of Richard Cowan Warren who worked for Massey Fergusson on the left. They also lived in the Warren House above. She married Frederick Warren Cowan, the son of John Warren Cowan, founder of Cowan's Chocolate Factory.
Frederick Warren Cowan worked in the family Chocolate Factory and It was he that first invented 'Maple Buds', many variations of which are still made today. He used a blend of chocolate that at the time was considered not good enough to make regualr candy bars but by giving it a swirling shape the mini-chocolates became popular and according to his son, Frederick L. Cowan, saved the company during WW1.
Frederick Warren Cowan was fondly remembered by Newcastle children as he used to carry a pocketfull of chocolates to hand out as he strolled along Mill Street near their Newcastle home.
All that exits of the chocolate factory which was located in Toronto, is a book published by the factory with pictures of its founder and directors from about the early 1900's. entitled, “Cowan’s The great Chocolate Industry of Canada” and a small box of 'Maple Buds' which were sent to Canadian soldiers abroad during WW1.
The RICHARD COWAN WARREN House was also home to a third generation. Marjorie Cowan Dickinson and her husband Ross Dickinson lived there for many years.
~~~~
JOHN WARREN COWAN -
by: Robert J. Burns
JOHN WARREN COWAN, merchant and manufacturer; b. 1841 in Nenagh Republic of Ireland), son of Edmund Cowan and Tryphena Clark; m.
28 March 1867 in Montreal Isabella Dimmock, daughter of Charles Dimmock of Brantford, Ont., and they had eight children, of whom two sons and two daughters survived to maturity; d. 5 April 1908 in Toronto.
John Warren Cowan's parents emigrated to the Canadas about 1852 and settled in Princeton, east of Woodstock, Upper Canada. John attended school at Princeton and completed his education at a commercial college in London. He began his business career in
1856 as a clerk in a Princeton grocery store, a position he held for eight years before venturing back to London as a clerk for a wholesale grocery firm. Three years later he located in Montreal, where he became a traveller for wholesale tea dealer John Duncan and Company. In 1876, with the confidence of 20 years' experience, he moved to Toronto and established the wholesale tea and coffee firm of John W. Cowan and Company. By 1885 it had three travellers and was doing business throughout the province.
In 1885, determined to diversify into the cocoa and chocolate trade, Cowan bought the equipment of a failed firm. Thus was born Cowan, Musgrave and Company, which many contemporaries expected would meet the fate of its predecessor. In expanding
his business to include cocoa and chocolate, Cowan had entered a realm of products that required packaging for the retail trade (unlike tea and coffee, which were sold as bulk goods). Cocoa and chocolate were sold in handsome lithographed or paper- labelled tins with distinctive brand markings. Thus packaged,
the products were meant to create a tie that had not existed in bulk products: the producer warranted by his brand or trade mark the quality and sometimes the quantity of his product, and the consumer, it was hoped, would acknowledge consistency and quality
by loyally purchasing the brand. The advantages of packaging and brand-name advertising were, however, counterbalanced by the greater capital expenditures required.
Though the record is sketchy, it would seem that Cowan did not initially adjust to or perhaps even fully understand the nature of his new business. He employed 12 to 15 workers from the start in what must have been for the time a substantial endeavour, but he was unable to generate a profit in the face of established competition. He nevertheless persevered.
In 1890, With Guelph businessman John A. Wood, Cowan formed a joint-stock company, the Cowan Cocoa and Chocolate Company of Toronto, Limited, and began an aggressive campaign to expand. In the following year, the firm had a booth at the Industrial Exhibition in Toronto, where consumers could assess such products
as Iceland Moss Cocoa, Queen's Dessert Chocolate, and Parisian Coffee. In 1896, at the same fair, Cowan was giving out each day "thousands" of sample cups of cocoa and souvenir boxes of chocolate ginger. The company's name had been changed to the Cowan Company Limited in 1893, and five years later Cowan adopted the maple leaf as a brand for his products, to distinguish them
as Canadian goods in competition with imports.
By the turn of the century he was sending crews to show his goods in small-town grocery stores.
Coupled with Cowan's assertiveness in business was his support for tariff protection under the Conservative government's National Policy, on which his industry depended for survival [see Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley*]. In 1890 Cowan (himself a Conservative), his partner, John A. Wood, and another entrepreneur, J. Todhunter, travelled to Ottawa to object to a rumoured reduction in the duty on cocoa imports. Such a cut would have benefited foreign manufacturers, whose packaged
products had higher value and thus higher duties than the bulk cocoa that Cowan imported.
The trip was unnecessary, for customs minister Mackenzie Bowell* intended to increase the duty and only a typographical error had led to the impression of a reduction.
Cowan's marketing efforts resulted in a reported fourteenfold increase in production and the construction of a modern factory in Toronto in 1904-05. By the time of his death in 1908, his products were being advertised from Halifax to Vancouver, and he had set an example of energetic competition that many other
Canadian entrepreneurs were busy emulating. The company was continued under the direction of his son Herbert Norton until 1926, when it was sold to Rowntree and Company (Canada) Limited,
a British firm, which maintained the Cowan line of products.
John Warren Cowan had been a member of the Canadian Manufacturers' Association and the Toronto Board of Trade. An Anglican, he also belonged to the Irish Protestant Benevolent Society. As an entrepreneur, he proved capable of adapting. Despite a plodding start, he embraced new marketing and advertising techniques, and created a Canadian presence in the manufacturing field previously dominated by foreign imports.
compiled by: ROBERT J. BURNS
References:
ANQ-M, CE1-85, 28 mars 1867. AO, RG 22, ser. 305, no.20870; RG
55, partnership records, York County, declarations, nos.1300 CP,
2468 CP, 2481 CP, 3760 CP. Evening Telegram (Toronto), 6 April
1908. Halifax Herald, 19 Feb. 1910: 4, Monetary Times, 21 March
1890: 1158; 11 Sept. 1891:317; 11 Sept. 1896: 363; 1 April 1898: 1296. Sun (Aylmer, Ont.), 14 Feb. 1901: 1. Vancouver Daily Province, 13 Jan. 1910: 2. R. J. Burns, Paperboard and paper packaging in Canada, 1880-1930 (Environment Canada, National
Parks Service, Microfiche report, no.393, 2v., Ottawa, 1989),
Canadian Grocer (Toronto), 4 April 1890: 16; 10 April 1908: 15 Oct. 1926: 33. Directory, Toronto, 1884-91. Hist. of Toronto, 1: 425. Index to incorporated bodies and to private and local law under dominion, and Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec statutes, proclamations and letters patent .... comp. P.-[H.] Baudouin
(Montreal, [1897]). Standard dict. of Canadian biog. (Roberts and Tunnell), vol. 2.
Published in Dictionary of Canadian Biography (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1994), vol. 13, pp.224-25.