Widely regarded as the founder of Fenelon Falls, James Wallis laid out the town plan, was a Major in the local militia, operated a store, tavern and two mills in partnership with Robert Jameson, and was instrumental in the establishment of St. James Anglican Church. He drew up the town plan and oversaw the construction of the main street.
Wallis’ family was wealthy Protestant gentry. His family traces their lineage to Richard Waleys, knighted during the reign of Edward I. James’ ancestor William Waleys, inheriting the same privileges, fought at Agincourt in 1415, where the heavily outnumbered English army defeated the French during the Hundred Years War.
Rebellion in Ireland resulted in the massacre of Protestant settlers at Ulster in 1641. The English Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, landed an army and brutally crushed the Catholic rebels. The McCarthy family who sided with the rebels thereby lost Drishane Castle, which passed to the Wallises. Built in a beautiful valley by Dermot McCarthy, the King of Cork, in 1436, Drishane Castle had a gorgeous interior featuring notable works by Italian artists. Drishane became the Wallis’ ancestral home and James’ father, Henry, was born at there, but it passed to Henry’s older brother John.
Although their social standing came primarily from the Wallis side, it was James’ maternal relatives who possessed much of the family’s wealth. James’ maternal grandfather was a Virginia tobacco lord. James was born at the Glasgow residence of his mother’s family, the McCalls, on January 26, 1807. He spent much of his childhood on his father’s estate, Maryborough, a Georgian home near the city of Cork, which he later inherited in 1842. He worked at his maternal family firm, McCall and Coy. There he met Sydney Bellingham, a businessman from Louth County, Ireland, recently returned from Canada, having emigrated in 1824 and worked for Thomas A. Stewart in the Peterborough area.
In 1832, Wallis and Bellingham operated a business in Montreal. The following year they paid £3000 to A. G. Freer and Co., who promised delivery of £5000 worth of produce, but Wallis and Bellingham only grossed £1300 for the goods, and failed in their legal action against Freer. Their plans to ship Canadian wheat to Liverpool failed, and they ceased business other than property speculation.
Bellingham introduced Wallis to the Kawartha Lakes region. There Robert Jameson had plunged into property speculation, and his extensive holdings included the future site of Fenelon Falls. Jameson had plans to build a mill at the Falls, although he did not have a particularly industrious reputation, and many of his plans did not come to completion. Nonetheless, he and Wallis formed a partnership and on January 22, 1834, Wallis arrived in the Fenelon area.
Jameson and Wallis brought many labourers and servants to the region and oversaw the completion of the saw and grist mill, which was in operation by February 1835. By 1839, they also operated a tavern and store. Simultaneously, they speculated on massive tracts of land. Wallis made his first land speculation in Fenelon Township in March 1833, prior to his arrival, but the pace greatly accelerated in partnership with Jameson. During this period, they generally kept an inventory of between 6,000 and 7,000 acres in Fenelon township, about 3,000 acres in Verulam, and about fifty town lots in Windsor (later renamed Whitby). In addition, Wallis held property in Harvey, Douro, Warwick and Smith townships, as well as the towns of Lindsay and Peterborough. In April 1835, Wallis purchased the 10th lot of the 13th concession of Monaghan, the future site of his home, Merino, and the following year he acquired the Brown Mill in Peterborough, which was built by Adam Scott.
Many gentry in the area ran informal stores, filling their neighbours’ orders on their frequent trips to market towns. Wallis and Jameson opened the first formal shop and tavern in Fenelon Falls. Its inventory consisted primarily of necessities such as oats, coffee, tea, eggs, stockings, boots and rope. Wallis travelled as far as Ohio to acquire pork at reduced rates. In August 1838, a post office opened in their shop. This was considerably more convenient than the post office that the gentry had used at Peterborough. Wallis lived at the tavern, but soon began construction of a grand home. In mid-October 1837, he hosted a party to officially open his new residence, which he named Maryboro, the present home of the Fenelon Falls Museum.
Wallis assimilated easily into the gentrified society formed from the residents of Sturgeon and Cameron Lakes, attending their frequent dinner parties, and travelling with his friends to balls as distant as Peterborough. His friends remarked upon his generosity. For instance, when John Langton was struggling to accommodate his family who had recently emigrated from England, Wallis kindly lent rugs and beds.
Roads in the backwoods in the 1830s were scarcely passable by ox cart and often consisted only of clearings, which allowed travel only on horseback or foot. It was not possible to travel to Fenelon by road. As a result, water transport assumed prominence.
In 1836, Wallis brought the Calypso, a swift two oared rowboat, from Glasgow. It was not very suitable for hauling supplies to Fenelon, but it was excellent for travelling to social functions. He acquired a six-oared boat in 1840. In 1837, three years after the construction of a lock at Bobcaygeon, James Wallis was Secretary and Treasurer on a committee, with John Langton, that planned to bring a steamboat to the lakes. Although this ship did not materialize and wasted all the funds invested, Wallis went on to commission the first steamer on the upper lakes. In 1852 he commissioned the Ogemah: 103 feet in length, 16.7 feet wide, with 2 decks and capacity of 79 tons. The Ogemah was built in Fenelon Falls, and carried lumber to Port Perry, where it was transferred to horse teams for transport to Whitby.
Wallis assumed a very prominent role in the nascent village. In addition to laying out the town plan, serving as a Justice of the Peace and commanding the 5th Battalion in the militia, he was critical in the formation of St. James Anglican Church. He donated the land on which the church and parsonage were erected and oversaw the church construction, completed May 6, 1838. The settlement was not large enough to qualify for a government grant to cover the cost of a clergyman, prompting Wallis to lead services from 1835 to 1837. A travelling missionary, Reverend Wade, made trips to the area as early as 1837, but they lacked the funds to retain him. Wallis, Langton, Dennistoun and Jameson solicited donations from their friends in the British Isles, raising about £600. They lent some money to St. John’s Anglican Church of Peterborough to generate returns for a clergyman’s salary. The church received its first resident clergyman in 1839, Thomas Fidler, who died in ! 1848 when his rowboat plunged over the falls.
Wallis benefited from extensive social connections in Canada. His friend Sir Charles Bagot, was Governor-General from 1841 until his death in May 1843. In 1842, Wallis petitioned Bagot to build a road from the head of Scugog Lake to Windsor (Whitby). Admittedly, Wallis was very interested in the completion of this project, as his lumber was teamed along this route after the completion of the Ogemah in 1853.
In Kingston on March 9, 1840, Wallis married Janet Fisher, one of the first ladies in the area, and a woman of considerable property. She was the daughter of Judge Alexander Fisher of Lennox County. Janet received considerable attention since at least 1836 as one of the first ladies who ventured to the upper lakes and she was admired by the gentlemen of the region for her status, appearance and temperament.
Jameson had not intended to reside in the Fenelon area and did not bring his wife with him. He usually returned home for the winter and his peers questioned whether he came back to the Falls for any cause other than a compulsion to continue derived from his heavy investment. Jameson’s speculation had included much property in Windsor (Whitby) which had previously been outside Wallis’ focus. In 1840 Jameson began to pull back, selling Wallis twenty town lots in Windsor, as well as two lots in the town plot of Fenelon Falls and 400 acres in Fenelon Township. By 1842 Jameson decided to return to Europe, so they agreed to a partition of some of their holdings on October 28, 1842. Jameson renounced his interests in ten lots in Fenelon Township in exchange for £450, for which he gave credit. Jameson and Wallis concluded a second partial partition in 1848, dividing the ownership of some lands not covered in the 1842 agreement, but much of their land continued to be jointly held.
By 1841, Major McLaren was managing the mills, and it seemed as though Wallis was losing his inclination to remain. For a couple of years, Wallis’ peers speculated that he might join the exodus, and he spent the winter of 1841-2 at the Peterborough home of his friend Stafford Kirkpatrick, who had married Janet’s sister. Wallis returned to Fenelon Falls in 1842, liquidated his furniture and the stock of his store and, after the partition of property with Jameson that September, sailed for England.
Wallis returned to Canada and in 1845 rented a house on the northwest corner of Sherbrooke and Aylmer Streets in Peterborough. In 1851 he established a beautiful home for his family, naming it Merino, after the breed of sheep, on Lot 10 of the thirteenth concession of Monaghan. Merino was built of pink and grey granite, with hardwood floors and French windows. The mansion was surrounded by landscaped gardens, orchards, wheat fields, milk houses, a smoke house, barns and a tennis court. Inside, there was “Beast Hall” featuring birds and animals that Wallis killed and mounted, as well as a display of muskets and bayonets. Wallis’ extensive library at Merino included the works of Dryden, Fielding, Johnson, Edgeworth, Swift, Scott, Leland, Hume and Byron. He also had an impressive collection of pipes, including an 1816 Meerschaum with an amber mouthpiece and a five foot long cherry stem. Another had a Viennese painting of a woman on its bowl.
Wallis farmed at Merino. He had a particular interest in the pedigree of his stock, importing Durham cattle, black pigs, horses and Merino sheep. He remained active in the Church, serving with Dennistoun and Langton as trustees of the endowment of St. James Anglican Church in Fenelon Falls. Interestingly, he was also a warden of St. John’s, Peterborough, the recipient of the loan. In July 1851, Wallis hosted an extravagant bazaar and fancy fair to benefit St. John’s. The festivities included a ploughing match, fireworks and a band.
Janet Fisher died in 1849. In December 1851 he married Louisa Forbes, daughter of Captain Robert Forbes of the Royal Navy. Born at Avranches, France, Louisa lived at St. Servain for about thirteen years and briefly at St. Heliers before emigrating to Canada in 1827. She was a talented singer and painter, deeply religious and noted for her generosity. Their children included Katherine Wallis, a renowned sculptor and author of Chips from the Block.
James Wallis’ speculations did not meet his expectations. Many of the lots were purchased from descendants of United Empire Loyalists or servicemen from 1812, two categories of residents who were entitled to grants of free lands from the crown. Jameson and Wallis purchased these lands for prices generally in the range of £25 to £30 for 200 acres. Wallis sold a few lots at prices around £35 for 200 acres and thirteen more on mortgage in the mid-1840s. On June 15, 1844, he auctioned ten of the lots he acquired from Jameson in Windsor for a total of £242.
Unfortunately for Wallis, the Crown still had land to sell in Fenelon Township two decades later, and he was unable to find enough settlers interested in paying his rates for land. On some lots he tried unsuccessfully for four decades to find a buyer. To make matters worse, Wallis had bought some of the land on credit. In February 1840, Wallis and Jameson mortgaged the 23rd lot of the tenth concession of Fenelon, which includes much of present day Fenelon Falls, to Margaret Stein of the Island of Bute for £500 sterling at 6% interest. Wallis was able to settle this mortgage by 1855, but he faced continual strain from several others: to the Farmer’s Bank for £325 in December 1841; to Jameson accompanying their partition in 1842; and to Jameson’s heirs for £562 10s, when he bought their share of Lot 23 of Concession 10 in Fenelon Township in 1853.
His financial situation began to worsen noticeably in the late 1850s. In May 1856 Wallis needed to borrow £1000 from his friend Robert Dennistoun, which he managed to pay off by March 1866. He borrowed $6,770 from William Cluxton in 1859 to settle debts with several Montreal merchants. Wallis owed at least £621 to the Crown for his speculative property, which he also mortgaged to Allan Gilmour for £8360. In December 1867, Robert Dennistoun settled Wallis’ accounts with seven Montreal firms, totalling $2937.84. Wallis then borrowed $1400 from James Campbell. He could not service these debts and lost Lot 23 Concession 10, including Maryboro, to his creditors in June 1860. His situation was worsened by the fire that destroyed his mill in Fenelon Falls sometime between 1856 and 1858.
Wallis’ Irish family’s wealth rescued him. He had been receiving life rent from the estate of a very wealthy aunt, Margaret McCall, since 1842. In 1858, he sold Maryborough, Ireland, which he had inherited upon his father’s death in 1842. His Aunt Margaret died in 1872, appointing Wallis life beneficiary of her property. This included the Coombola estate, with iron mines that had been in the family since the 17th century. His Irish nephew, J. Guthrie Smith, looked after the sale of the Irish holdings, procuring £15,500 for the Coombola estate in 1872, which cleared about £8,500 after the mortgages were paid. The same year, Wallis sold the Brown Mill in Peterborough to Robert Dennistoun. A year later, he sold his steamer, the Ogemah, to George Rose to settle the mortgages with Cluxton and Campbell.
Wallis’ liquidation of his assets allowed him to concentrate on his livestock in his final years. His life was quite comfortable and relatively quiet. Louisa died in 1887. A fire at Merino in 1893 was contained, but consumed several precious artifacts from his days in England, including his Royal Yacht Club banner and signalling flags. Wallis died on May 23, 1893 on his Peterborough estate at age 85.