58 Dalhousie St
Brantford, Ontario
N3T 2J2

Pop. 80,436. City in Brant C. on the Grand R. and Hwy 403 and C. Rds. 2,24, and 53, 38 km. W of Hamilton.
In 1626 a First Nations Peoples village called Kandoucho existed at the site of what is now Brantford and was visited by Father Daillon.
The village was in the middle of an area called Beavers Happy Hunting Ground because game was always plentiful. In 1784 Joseph Brant (Thayendandgea) settled with his Six Nations Indians, and the place was known as Brants Ford.

One of Brantfords most important tourist attractions is Her Majestys Royal Chapel of the Mohawks. The beautifully wrought frame chapel of St. Pauls was built in 1785 with funds given to Joseph Brant by George III.
It was the first Protestant chapel in present-day Ontario and was designated a royal chapel by Edward VII in 1904.

The post office was established and named Brantford in 1825. Brantford calls itself The Telephone City because the device was invented in 1874 at nearby Tutela Heights by Alexander Graham Bell, whose family home is preserved here as a museum.

Also on the site is Canadas first telephone office building, which was set up in the home of Rev. Thomas Henderson in 1877. When Henderson realized the economic potential of the telephone, he resigned the Baptist ministry to administer the office.

Another nickname for Brantford is Combine Capital of the World, because on a farm just outside the city, Alanson Harris produced the first Canadian-designed farm machine, a business that grew into the giant Massey-Ferguson Company.

The first railway sleepercar was also produced at Brantford. Brantford was the home of Hon. Arthur Sturgis Hardy (1837 -1901).
Hardy was elected to the Ontario legislature in 1873 as the member for South Brant and assumed the portfolios of attorney general and premier after the death of Sir Oliver Mowat in 1896, becoming Ontario''''s fourth premier.

Brantford native Lawren Harris (1885-1970), was a member of the Group of Seven Canadian painters. Journalist and author Sara Jeannette Duncan (1861-1922) was also born in Brantford and earned international recognition for her writing.
Of her many novels, only The Imperialist is set in Canada.

William Charles Good (1876-1967) was a leading spokesman for agrarian and cooperative movements.
He helped found the United Farmers of Ontario in 1914 and from 1921 to 1945 served as president of the Co-operative Union of Canada.

Brantford can also claim having Canadas first female medical doctor, though she was unlicenced at the time.
Emily Howard Stowe, a teacher inspired by her husbands illness from tuberculosis, studied in the United States because no Canadian medical college would accept a female student.

She graduated in 1867, set up an office in Toronto and attracted many female patients. Then a law was passed in Ontario requiring all doctors to attend lectures at a medical school here.

Jennie Kidd Trout was Canadas first licenced woman physician in 1875; Stowe didn''''t get her licence until 1880. One of the oldest national organizations of musicians in Canada was established in Brantford in 1909.
The Royal Canadian College of Organists is primarily an examining body dedicated to maintaining ahigh standard of excellence in organ playing, choral directing, and musical composition.

In 1872 The Ontario School for the Blind opened in Brantford with 11 pupils. By 1881 more than 200 students were receiving academic instruction combined with manual and vocational training at what is now the W. Ross Macdonald School.

Mini-bio: Emily Pauline Johnson
Poet, author, entertainer

Emily Pauline Johnson (1861-1913) was born on the Six Nations
Reserve near Brantford to Mohawk Chief George Johnson and non-
native Emily Johnson who had fled a morally-rigid disciplinarian father
in Ohio at a young age.
She made poems even before she could write and had schooling for only seven years. Later she wrote poems for money and recited her poems to small audiences which grew in size and led to touring for professional recitals.
She retired from touring in 1909 and settled in Vancouver where she died four years later from breast cancer at the age of 52. Before her death she had asked to be buried in Stanley Park.
All flags in Vancouver flew at half mast on the day she
died and everybody who was anybody walked in her funeral procession.
She had requested her grave site have no monument, but a large stone
with her picture and Mohawk designs was later placed there by the
Womens Canadian Club.

From Ontario Place Names 2007/10 David E. Scott Ph. 866 471 4123 or 905 680 7884