Heathcote

Histories of Heathcote say it was built by Mrs Agnes Heath in about 1840. Her husband, Lt.-Colonel Heath of the 13th Bengal Native Infantry died on active service at Ajanta, Maharashtra in India and is buried in Jalna. The widowed Agnes (a native of Arbroath in Scotland) returned from India and first took her young family (one son and two daughters) to Switzerland before settling at Toronto in 1836. 

 

In 1838, at Toronto, her younger daughter, Emily Mary Caroline Heath (1817-1903) married Lt.-Colonel D’Arcy Edward Boulton (1814-1902) who had grown up at The Grange. D’Arcy had been resident at Cobourg since the previous year when he’d come to study law under his uncle, The Hon. George Strange Boulton (1797-1869) who lived at Northumberland Hall. D’Arcy and Emily settled permanently at Cobourg and built The Lawn in about 1842. 

 

In 1837, Agnes built Deer Park in Toronto where she lived with her two unmarried children, Elizabeth Heath (1815-1899), and her “remarkably fine-looking” son Captain Charles Wallace Heath (1814-1900). Soon afterwards, Charles married his brother-in-law’s sister, Sarah Ann Boulton (1824-1906).

 

In about 1840, Agnes and Elizabeth moved to Cobourg and in 1846, Charles Heath bought Deer Park from his mother, which is presumed to have then enabled her to build Heathcote next door to The Lawn. Unlike many of the grand estates that later came to line King Street back then, The Lawn and Heathcote were permanent homes, not summer homes. Mother Agnes and daughter Elizabeth did not live in Heathcote long, moving into the Lawn with Emily, D'Arcy and their ten children around 1845. 

 

In 1893, Heathcote was purchased for use as a summer home by William Fowle Ladd (1846-1911) and his wife, Caroline Willis (1857-1899). Ladd, a native of New Hampshire, settled at Galveston in Texas and made his fortune in the cotton industry serving as President of the Cotton Exchange. He made the additions to the house that gave it its appearance as it was last seen. On Ladd’s death it passed to his eldest son, Charles Haven Ladd (1878-1915), who’d been educated at Trinity College, Port Hope, before passing on to Milton Academy and Harvard.  

 

After 1911, Haven Ladd and his wife Mary Stockett Jacob (1878-1951) had leased the house to Dr Joseph Anderson from Washington D.C. for use as a summer home for his family. He may have been related to Captain Thomas Gummersall Anderson (1779-1875), of Port Hope. By 1914, the Ladds had sold Heathcote to Frank Hess (b.1860) and his wife Marguerite Sullivan (b.1859) of Philadelphia.

 

Frank and Marguerite’s daughter, Katherine Hess (1896-1970), was married to Thomas Mifflin Jones III (1896-1966) of Pittsburgh. He was the son of Thomas Mifflin Jones Jr. (1874-1902), also of Pittsburgh, by his wife Mary Estelle Brown (1876-c.1970). In the same year that Mary’s first husband died, she became the wife of Charles Edward Speer Jr. (1874-1937), the youngest son of the President of the First National Bank. They divorced and in 1926 Mary was married for a third time to Lt.-Colonel Wilfrid Chatterton Dumble (1871-1963), C.B.E.

 

In 1914, Mrs Frank Hess was still the summer resident at Heathcote with her husband while their daughter’s mother-in-law, then styled Mrs Charles E. Speer, was the summer resident next door at The Lawn. That year, the neighbours  held a joint garden party in support of the troops departing for War in Europe. 

After her third marriage, Mrs Charles E. Speer was known as Mrs W.C. Dumble. In 1920, she purchased Heathcote from Frank Hess.