This ongoing series from Barrie Historical Archive curator Deb Exel shows old photos from the collection and one from the present day, as well as the story behind them.
310 Codrington St.
This land transferred from the Crown to Henry B. Hopkins in 1857. Hopkins, born in Ireland in 1820, was one of the early reeves of Barrie (1857) and a County Crown Attorney — an office created in 1858 — from 1858 until 1862.
About the same time, in 1861, not far from this property by today’s standards, lived Frances Dorothea Drury, in Oro Township.
Drury's grandfather Joseph and two of his sons, Thomas (her father) and Richard, in 1819, were among the earliest of families settling along the Penetanguishene Road between the village of Kempenfeldt and Morrison’s Corners (now Craighurst).
Joseph died tragically in the bush during a snowstorm in 1823. His sons laboured away from their farm, building corduroy roads and other work, to make money.
It was in 1833 that Alexander Walker, the first settler to Barrie, worked with the Drury brothers to open up Sunnidale Road.
Thomas Drury married Elizabeth Stretton at Fort Willow in 1826. Their daughter, Frances, was born in 1841 at the family homestead in Crown Hill, in the house where Hon. E.C. Drury would live.
In 1862, Frances married Alexander Laurie. Born in Haddington, East Lothian, Scotland in 1832, Laurie was working as a printer compositer in Edinburgh by 1851, before coming to Canada. In 1871, the Laurie family — Alexander, Frances and their children Margaret, Charles, Alexander and Francis — was living in St. David’s Ward, Toronto. Laurie was employed in the printing trade.
A few years later, the Lauries were in Barrie, living in this exceptional home at 310 Codrington St., said to have been built for them in the mid-1870s.
By the early 1880s, the Laurie family, still in their gracious Codrington Street house, had expanded: two more children – Reginald and Bessie (Elizabeth) – had joined the clan.
The Lauries were on the move again. Records show that in 1891, the entire family, except for daughter Margaret, were back to the historic St. David’s Ward in Toronto. Alexander Laurie was still working as a printer when he was injured in a trolley accident and died in St. Michael’s Hospital in 1898.
Frances Drury Laurie would outlive her husband by almost 30 years, passing away in Vancouver where she had been living with her daughter for some time.
Another Scot is believed to have occupied the Lauries' lovely house. Alfred Donaldson, a tailor, born in Aberdour, Aberdeenshire, Scotland in 1873, called Port Perry, Yonkers, N.Y., Parry Sound and Toronto home before settling in Barrie for the remainder of his years, which turned out to be in 1951.
The Laurie house, with its marvellous brickwork patterns, multiple sets of double leaf doors on the verandah and balcony, and large pinwheel-inspired brackets topping the graceful porch columns is clearly a captivating home.
