Heathcote
King Street East, Cobourg, Ontario
Built about 1840, for Agnes Wallace (1788-1874), widow of Lt.-Colonel Charles Heath (1776-1819). It was the adjacent property to her daughter and son-in-law’s home The Lawn and was among the finest mansions in Cobourg until it was demolished in about 1960 and replaced by an apartment building....
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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 in Toronto in 1836. It was there in 1838 that her younger daughter, Emily, married Lt.-Colonel D’Arcy Edward Boulton who grew up at The Grange. D’Arcy had been resident in Cobourg since the previous year when he’d come to study law under his uncle, George Strange Boulton, who lived at Northumberland Hall. D’Arcy and Emily settled permanently in Cobourg and built The Lawn in about 1842.
In 1837, Agnes built Deer Park in Toronto where she lived with her two remaining unmarried children, Elizabeth, and her “remarkably fine-looking” son, Charles, who was married not long afterwards to his brother-in-law’s sister, Sarah Boulton.
In about 1840, Agnes and Elizabeth moved to Cobourg and at the same time 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. However, neither Agnes nor Elizabeth were to live in their new home for long, opting instead to move into The Lawn with Emily, D'Arcy, and their children c.1845.
In 1893, Elizabeth sold Heathcote as a summer home for William Fowle Ladd and his wife, Caroline Willis. 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 pictured. On his death it passed to his eldest son, Charles Haven Ladd, who was educated at Trinity College, Port Hope, before graduating from Milton Academy and Harvard, and becoming an engineer in Texas.
After 1911, Haven Ladd and his wife, Mary Stockett Jacob, leased the house to Dr. Joseph Anderson (possbly related to Captain Thomas Gummersall Anderson, of Port Hope) from Washington D.C. for use as a summer home for his family. By 1914, the Ladds had sold Heathcote to Frank Hess and his wife, Sallie, of Philadelphia. Their daughter, Katherine, was married to Thomas Mifflin Jones III, of Pittsburgh, whose mother, Mary, was the longtime resident at the The Lawn (aka the Dumble Estate) next door. In 1914, Mrs. Frank Hess held a joint garden party with Mary in support of the troops departing for War in Europe. In 1920, Mary purchased Heathcote from Frank Hess, for the purpose extending her own gardens into Heathcote's. Forty years later, the house was demolished.
