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The Dobson Tintype: A Midland Family Revealed

At one time, Jabez Dobson owned a huge swath of land in Midland

Postcard Memories is a weekly series of historic postcard views and photos submitted by René Hackstetter.

How do we mark our view of ourselves and our community over time?

Often, through photographs as they record the view, the people and the event that has just transpired.

Midland’s first record of any people visiting the town was a family photo by Peter Larush. He was an itinerant photographer, who had pitched a tent on a swamp lot on the west side of King Street in 1875 and taken a tintype photo of Jabez Dobson’s family.

The occasion had, apparently, been an excursion to Midland, from Port Hope, coming as far as Waubaushene by rail and on to Midland by way of a scow towed by the tug ‘Maid of Midland.’

Jabez had come to ‘Mundy’s Bay’ in 1862 from Penetanguishene where he had been in charge of a farm at the Reformatory For Boys. It was while he was in Penetanguishene that he met and married Miss Ganton, whose home was on the Scotch Line of Medonte.

Mr. and Mrs. Dobson settled in Midland and owned all of the land between King and Eighth Streets, including the water lots as far as Ottawa Street, which he had purchased from Mr. James Tudhope. Hugel Avenue was the southern boundary of the Dobson farm.

Author George R. Osborne tells us in his book Midland and Her Pioneers that when Mr. Dobson arrived in Mundy’s Bay, “there were only three houses here, those of Richard Murphy, John Smith and Thomas Hartley. Two log shacks in the woods were also occupied by John Hartley, John and Joshua Grexton.”

It goes on to say that Mr. Dobson was path master for the district and one of his duties was to supply logs for the corduroy road along King Street as “it was nothing less than a bog.”

Jabez Dobson eventually sold his farm around 1871 with the Midland Railway Company securing the waterfront and the balance going to the Midland Land Company, Baron von Hugel and Dr. Spohn.

Mr. Dobson worked on the construction of the railway with his team of horses.

There were ten children in the Dobson family, all born in their home at the corner of Dominion Avenue and Third Street. 

Copyright. René Hackstetter April 17, 2020.