Headford and
Dollar
![](RH7-20s.gif) |
Headford in 1860,
adapted by Janet Allin from a map prepared by Ruth Reaman. |
East of
Richmond Hill, on
present-day
Leslie Street just
south of
Major Mackenzie
Drive, the settlement of
Headford, or
Headford Mills, owed its
mid-century prosperity to mill sites rather than
Yonge Street
travellers. Here, along a headwater tributary of the
![](RH7-19s.gif) |
The search for oil at
Klink's
farm. |
Rouge River, were a
variety of mills and tradesmen's shops and a general store. A
Methodist
Episcopal Church was dedicated in 1850 and a
post office
established in 1856.
Headford even witnessed an
outbreak of oil fever in the 1860s. Drilling began on
John Burr's land, gas
kept bubbling up, but no commercially viable oil was ever extracted. By the
early twentieth century, as small mills proved uneconomical,
Headford declined and
eventually died as a recognizable community.
![](RH7-23-s.gif) |
Headford Public
School. |
![](RH7-22Bs.gif) |
Headford
Methodist Church, built in 1882, pictured before lightning destroyed its
steeple on August 24, 1914. |
![](RH7-22As.gif) |
Headford
Methodist Church, built in 1882, pictured after the lightning
strike. |
![](RH7-25s.gif) |
Mr. and
Mrs. C.
Brooke on the front porch of the
Dollar Post
Office, July 1, 1907. |
Even less recognizable today is
Headford's neighbour
settlement of
Dollar, two sideroads south
at
Leslie Street and
Highway 7. There in the
second half of the nineteenth century,
Dollar boasted a store,
post office,
blacksmith shop and church; today
Dollar is lost amid the
business establishments and industrial parks of late-twentieth-century southern
Ontario.
![](RH7-24As.gif) |
The ladies serve supper at
T. Thompson's
barn-raising,
Headford, June 15,
1909. |
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Copyright © Richmond Hill Public Library Board, 1991
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